Pornography

1. Pornography Pornography I I

2. Some Background • What constitutes pornography? • What ethical positions might one take on pornography? • What grounds might one present for these ethical positions?

3. The Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, “Pornography and Harm” The Commission’s Central Aim • The Commission seeks to investigate the hypothesis that pornography in general (and violent and degrading pornography in particular) causes harm to women. • Note: The version of the reportyou have read is 5 pages long; theoriginal is 1,960 pages long (sosuffice it to say some details havebeen left out).

4. Rte 1 Method & Multiple Causation The Commission is working on the hypothesis that pornography causes harm. • What would it mean for these harms to indeed be harmful? • Claim: “[I]f sexually explicit material of some variety is causally related to, or increases the incidence of, some behavior that is harmful, then it is safe to conclude that the material is harmful.” (93) • Here, the particular harms of concern to us are those of sexual discrimination and sexual violence towards women.

5. Rte 1 Method & Multiple Causation (cont’d) • Was this accident caused by… • Poor road conditions? • Driver unpreparedness? • Pedestrian stupidity? • The answer can only reasonably be “all of the above”. Each of these is a contributing cause to the accident.

6. Method & Multiple Causation (cont’d) • The same problem arises with the “harms of pornography.” • “We live in a world of multiple causation, and to identify a factor as a cause in such a world means only that if this factor were eliminated while everything else stayed the same then the problem would at least be lessened.” (93) • Identifying something as a cause of a particular harm is not to deny that there may be some greater cause of the harm.

7. Category 1: Sexually Violent Material • This category is increasingly the most prevalent form of pornography. • Standardly, this categoryinvolves sadomasochistic themes,with standard trappings of whips,chains, devices of torture, andso on… • Another recurrent theme is that ofa man making a sexual advancetowards a woman, being rebuffed,and then raping the woman or insome other way violently forcinghimself on the woman.

8. Category 1: Sexually Violent Material (cont’d) • Another large body of material otherwise associates sex and violence towards woman as in the modern ‘slasher’ film. • “In both clinical and experimental settings, exposure to sexually violent materials has indicated an increase in the likelihood of aggression [indicating] a causal relationship between exposure to material of this type and aggressive behavior towards women.” (94) • “Finding a link between aggressive behavior towards women and sexual violence, whether lawful or unlawful, requires assumptions not found exclusively in the experimental evidence. We see no reason, however, not to make these assumptions.” (94) • These assumptions are “plainly justified by our owncommon sense.” (94)

9. Category 1: Sexually Violent Material (cont’d) • “[W]e are confident in asserting that an increase in aggressive behavior directed at women will cause an increase in the level of sexual violence directed at women.” (94) Clinical and experimental evidence indicating causal link between exposure to sexually violent materials and aggressive behavior towards women. + Assumed causal link between aggressive behavior towards women and sexual violence. Support for hypothesis of a causal link between exposure to sexually violent materials and acts of sexual violence.

10. Category 1: Sexually Violent Material (cont’d) • This is not a claim that exposure to such images are the greatest cause of sexual violence perpetrated on women. • “Nevertheless, it would be strange indeed if graphic representations of a form of behavior, especially in a form that almost exclusively portrays such behavior as desirable, did not have at least some effect of behavior.” (94) • Other negative effects of substantial exposure to sexually violent materials suggested include: • The perception that victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence as responsible for their assault; • The perception that such victims have suffered less injury; • The perception that such victims have been less degraded by the experience; • The perception that the rapist or other offender is less responsible for the act;

11. Category 1: Sexually Violent Material (cont’d) • The perception that the perpetrator is deserving of less stringent punishment; and • A greater acceptance of the “rape myth”—that women enjoy being coerced into sexual activity, enjoy being injured during sex, and that “no” really means “yes.” • All of these harms are more pronounced when the women depicted in such materials are shown to be experiencing sexual arousal or other enjoyment as a result of the attack.

12. Category 2: Non-Violent, Degrading Material • The sort of material in this category includes material depicting the degradation of people—most often women—as “existing solely for the sexual satisfaction of others, usually men[, depicts them] in decidedly subordinate roles in their sexual relations with others, or depicts people engaged in sexual practices that would to most people be considered humiliating.” (95) • The effects of this category of pornography appear similar to, though not as extensive as, those of violent material. • When neither degradation nor violence is depicted, such effects are likely altogether absent. • “[F]orms of degradation represent the largely predominant proportion of commercially available pornography.” (95)

13. Category 2: Non-Violent, Degrading Material (cont’d) • Although the evidence is more tentative, it supports the conclusion that exposure to such degrading material bears a causal relationship to the attitudinal changes identified earlier. • Those who take on such attitudes “will commit more acts of sexual violence or sexual coercion than would a population holding these beliefs to a lesser extent.” (95) • Likewise, such exposure fuels the incidence of nonviolent forms of discrimination of women—reinforcing the view “that women’s function is disproportionately to satisfy the sexual needs of men.” (96)

14. Category 3: Non-Violent, Non-Degrading Material • The materials in this category include those in which participants appear to be fully willing participants with equal roles, and devoid of apparent violence or pain. • “This category is in fact quite small in terms of currently available materials.” (96) • Here, the commission notes substantial disagreement among its members regarding its conclusions. • “[W]e are, on the current state of evidence, persuaded that material of this type does not bear a causal relationship to rape and other acts of sexual violence.” (96) • Although there may be reason to think such materials may constitute “a harm in themselves” or be causally linked to other harmful consequences other than those focused on in this inquiry.

15. Category 3: Non-Violent, Non-Degrading Material • “Harms” associated with such materials tend to depend on the views of those doing the assessing as regards whether the acts depicted are themselves harmful: • “[I]t appears that a conclusion about the harmfulness of these materials turns on a conclusion about the harmfulness about the activity itself.” (97) • It is “far from implausible” that materials depicting promiscuous sexual activity may have a causal relationship to sexual promiscuity among its viewers, though whether or not this should be considered “harmful” is an open question.

16. Category 4: Child Pornography • The materials in this category are not so much a form of pornography as they are a form of the sexual exploitation of children. • As such, the focus of an inquiry into child pornography should be on the process by which children are induced into sexual activity and the process by which they are photographed while engaged in that activity. • “[E]ven if the photograph were never seen again, the very activity involved in creating the photograph is itself an act of sexual exploitation of children.” (97)