Pornography: Sex Or Subordination? Essay, Research Paper

Pornography: Sex or Subordination?

In the late Seventies, America became shocked and outraged by the rape,

mutilation, and murder of over a dozen young, beautiful girls. The man who

committed these murders, Ted Bundy, was later apprehended and executed. During

his detention in various penitentiaries, he was mentally probed and prodded by

psychologist and psychoanalysts hoping to discover the root of his violent

actions and sexual frustrations. Many theories arose in attempts to explain the

motivational factors behind his murderous escapades. However, the strongest and

most feasible of these theories came not from the psychologists, but from the

man himself, ?as a teenager, my buddies and I would all sneak around and watch

porn. As I grew older, I became more and more interested and involved in it,

(pornography) became and obsession. I got so involved in it, I wanted to

incorporate (porn) into my life, but I couldn’t behave like that and maintain

the success I had worked so hard for. I generated an alter-ego to fulfill by

fantasies under-cover. Pornography was a means of unlocking the evil I had

buried inside myself? (Leidholdt 47). Is it possible that pornography is acting

as the key to unlocking the evil in more unstable minds?

According to Edward Donnerstein, a leading researcher in the pornography

field, ?the relationship between sexually violent images in the media and

subsequent aggression and . . . callous attitudes towards women is mush stronger

statistically than the relationship between smoking and cancer? (Itzin 22).

After considering the increase in rape and molestation, sexual harassment, and

other sex crimes over the last few decades, and also the corresponding increase

of business in the pornography industry, the link between violence and

pornography needs considerable study and examination. Once the evidence you

will encounter in this paper is evaluated and quantified, it will be hard not to

come away with the realization that habitual use of pornographic material

promotes unrealistic and unattainable desires in men that can lead to violent

behavior toward women.

In order to properly discuss pornography, and be able to link it to

violence, we must first come to a basic and agreeable understanding of what the

word pornography means. The term pornography originates from two Greek words,

porn, which means harlot, and graphein, which means to write (Webster’s 286).

My belief is that the describe, in literature, the sexual escapades of women of

pornography has grown to include any and all obscene literature and pictures.

At the present date, the term is basically a blanket which covers all types of

material such as explicit literature, photography, films, and video tapes with

varying degrees of sexual content.

Now that pornography has been defined in a fashion mirroring its content,

it is now possible to touch upon the more complex ways a community, as a society,

views or defines it. Some have said it is impossible for a group of individuals

to form a concrete opinion as to what pornography means. A U.S. Supreme Court

judge is quoted as saying, ?I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see

it? (Itzin 20). This statement can be heard at community meetings in every

state, city, and county across the nation. Community standards are hazy due to

the fact that when asked what pornography is to them, most individuals cannot

express or explain in words what pornography is, therefore creating confusion

among themselves.

Communities are left somewhat helpless in this matter since the federal

courts passed legislation to keep pornography available to adults. The courts

assess that to ban or censor the material would be infringing on the public’s

First Amendment Right (Carol 28). Maureen O’Brien quotes critics of a

congressionally terminated bill, the pornography Victim’s Compensation Act, as

saying ?That if it had passed, it would have had severely chilling effects on

the First Amendment, allowing victims of sexual crimes to file suit against

producers and distributors of any work that was proven to have had ’caused’ the

attack, such as graphic material in books, magazines, videos, films, and records?

(Carol 7). People in a community debating over pornography often have different

views as to whether or not it should even be made available period, and some

could even argue this point against the types of women used in pornography: ?A

for greater variety of female types are shown as desirable in pornography than

mainstream films and network television have ever recognized: fat women, flat

women, hairy women, aggressive women, older women, you name it? (Carol 25). If

we could all decide on just exactly what pornography is and what is acceptable,

there wouldn’t be so much debate over the issue of censoring it.

The bounds of community standards have been stretched by mainstreaming

movies, opening the way even further for the legalization of more explicit fare

(Jenish 53). In most contemporary communities explicit sex that is without

violent of dehumanizing acts is acceptable in American society today.

These community standards have not been around very long. When movies

were first brought out, they were heavily restricted and not protected by the

First Amendment, because films then were liked upon only as diversionary

entertainment and business. Even though sexual images were highly monitored,

the movie industry was hit so hard during the Great Depression that film-makers

found themselves smeaking in as much sexual content as possible, even then they

saw that ’sex sells’ (Clark 1029). Films were highly restricted throughout the

30’s, 40’s, and 50’s by the industry, but once independent films of the 60’s

such as: “Bonnie and Clyde? and ?Whose afraid of Virginia Wolfe?” (Clark 1029-

1030), both with explicit language, sexual innuendo, and violence started out-

performing the larger ”wholesome’ production companies, many of the barriers

holding sex and violence back were torn down in the name of profit. Adult

content was put into movies long ago, we have become more immune and can’t

expect it to get any better or to go way. Porn is here for good.

Pornography is a multi-million dollar international industry, ultimately

run y organized crime all over the world, and is produced by the respectable

mainstream publishing business companies (Itzin 21). Although the publishing

companies are thought to be “respectable”, people generally stereotype buyers

and users of pornographic material as “dirty old men in trenchcoats”, with

disposable income (Jenish 52). Porno movies provide adults of both genders with

activities they normally wouldn’t get in everyday life, such as oral pleasures

or different types of fetishes. Ultimately adult entertainment is just a quick-

fix for grown-ups, as junk-food would be for small children.

Pornography’s main purpose is to serve as masturbatory stimuli for males

and to provide a sexual bent. Although in the beginning, society was it as

perverted and sinful, it was still considered relatively harmless. Today there

is one case study, standing out from the rest, that tends to shatter this

illusion.

The study done by Monica D. Weisz and Christopher M. Earls used ?eighty-

seven males . . . that were randomly shown one of four films?, by researchers

William Tooke and Martin Lalumiere: ?Deliverance, Straw Dogs, Die Hard II, and

Days of Thunder?, for a study on how they would react to questions about sexual

violence and offenders after watching. In the four films there is sexual

aggression against a male, sexual aggression against a female, physical

aggression, and neutrality-no explicit scenes of physical or sexual aggression.

Out of this study the males were more acceptable of interpersonal violence and

rape myths and also more attracted to sexual aggression. These same males were

less sympathetic to rape victims and were noted less likely to find a defendant

guilty of rape (Jenish 71). These four above mentioned movies are mainstreamed

R-rated films. If a mainstream movie can cause this kind of distortion of value

and morality, then it should become evident that continuous viewing/use of

pornographic films depicting violent sex and aggression could lead vulnerable

persons into performing or participating in sexual violence against their

partners or against a stranger.

Bill Marshall, psychology professor at Queen’s University and director

of a sexual behavior clinic in Kingston, interviewed one-hundred and twenty men,

between the years 1980 and 1985, who had molested children or raped women. In

his conclusion he found that pornography appeared to be a significant factor in

the chain of events leading up to a deviant act in 25% of these cases (Nicols

60).

Rape myth is a term pertaining to people’s views on rape, rapists, and

sexual assaults, wherein it is assumed that the victim of a sexual crime is

either partially or completely to blame (Allen 6). To help understand the rape

myth a “Rape Myth Acceptance Scale” was established, which lists some of the

most prominent beliefs that a person accepting the rape myth has. They are as

follows:

1. A woman who goes to the home or apartment of a man on their first

date implies that she is willing to have sex.

2. One reason that women falsely report a rape is that they frequently

have a need to call attention to themselves.

3. Any healthy woman can successfully resist a rapist if she really

wants to.

4. When women go around braless or wearing short skirts and tight

tops, they are just asking for trouble (Burt 217).

Pauline Bart reports that studies held simultaneously at UCLA and St.

Xavier College on students, demonstrate that pornography does positively

reinforce the rape myth. Men and women were exposed to over for hours of exotic

video (of varying types; i.e. soft, hard core, etc.) and then asked to answer a

set of questions meant to gage their attitudes of sex crimes. All the men were

proven to be more accepting to rape myths, and surprisingly, over half of the

women were also (Burt 123). Once again, the women in these films were portrayed

as insatiable and in need of constant fulfillment. After so much exposure to

women in this light from films and books, it is generally taken for granted that

women should emulate this type of behavior in real life (Burt 125).

In regards to pornography perpetuating violent acts toward women,

pornography defenders claim that the use of pornographic material can act a s a

cathartic release, actual lessening the likelihood of males committing violent

acts. The reasoning is that the pornography can substitute for sex and that the

‘want’ to commit sexual crimes is acted out vicariously through the pornographic

material (Whicclair 327). This argument, however, does not explain the crimes

committed by serial killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacey, who regularly

viewed pornography during the lengths of their times between murders and rapes

(Nicols 70). By saying the pornography would reduce harm to women through

cathartic effects, pornography defenders display a large lack in reasoning

because through their argument the rise in the production of pornography would

have led to a decrease in sexual crimes, but as has been shown previously, that

simply is not true.

Pornographers and pornography defenders proclaim that the link between

pornography and violence is exaggerated and that the research linking

pornography to sexual crimes is inconclusive. They state that the fundamentals

of sex crimes are found inherently in the individuals and that the sexual

permissiveness of American society cannot be blamed on the increase of

pornography’s availability (Jacobson 79). David Adams, a co-founder and

executive director of Emerge, a Boston counseling center for male batterers,

states, ?that only a minority of his clients (perhaps 10 to 20 percent) use

hard-core pornography. He estimates that half my have substance abuse problems,

and adds that alcohol seems more directly involved in abuse the pornography?

(Kaminer 115). The statement made by Adams and the view that pornography does

not contribute to the act of sex crimes is heavily outweighed, however, by the

various studies connecting violence and pornography. Bill Marshall’s

observations on his patients and the examples of individual crimes originating

from pornography, show this acclimation to be invalidated.

Some also say that attacks on pornography merely reflect the majority of

feminist’s disdain for men, cynically stating that people who fear pornography

think of all men as potential abusers, whose violent impulses are bound to be

sparked by pornography (Kaminer 114). Researcher Catherine MacKinnon, says that

?pornography works as a behavioral conditioner, reinforcer, and stimulus, not as

idea or advocacy? (Kaminer 114). However, this idea is proven to be false by

the use of pornography in and by the Serbian military. This example shows that

pornography does advocate sex crimes and that ideas of sexual violence are able

to be stemmed from the viewing of pornography.

From its inception, in most cases, pornography is a media that links

sexual gratification and violence together. This fact can only lead a rational

mind to the conclusion that a chain of events will begin, combining sex and

violence further in the minds of those who watch pornography and will ensure and

unhealthy attitude towards women and their sexual identities. Only through

discussion and individual action can the perpetuation of the negative impacts

of pornography be swept from the closets and dark corners of the American

household.

Works Cited

Allen, Mike. “Exposure to Pornography and Acceptance of Rape Myths.” Journal

of

Communication. Winter, 1995: 5-21. Burt, M. “Cultural Myths and

Supports for Rape.” Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology. 38 (1980): 217-230. Carol, Avedon. “Free Speech and the

Porn Wars.” National Forum. 75.2 (1985): 25-28. Clark, Charles S. “Sex,

Violence, and the Media.” CQ Researcher. 17 Nov. 1995:

1019-1033. Itzin, Catherine. “Pornography and Civil Liberties.”

National Review. 75.2 (1985):

20-24. Jacobson, Daniel. “Freedom of Speech Acts? A Response to

Langton.” Philosophy &

Public Affairs. Summer 1992: 65-79. Jenish, D’Arcy. “The King of

Porn.” Maclean’s. 11 Oct. 1993: 52-56. Kaminer, Wendy. “Feminists Against

the First Amendment.” The Atlantic Monthly.

Nov. 1992: 111-118. Leidholdt, Margaret. “Take Back the Night: Women

on Pornography.” New York:

William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1980. Nicols, Mark. “Viewers and

Victims.” Newsweek. 10 Aug. 1983: 60. Webster’s Dictionary. Miami, Florida.

P.S.I. & Associates. 1987: 286. Whicclair, Mark R. “Feminism, Pornography,

and Censorship.” Contemporary Moral

Problems. ed. James White. Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: 1994.

Health and Hygiene 24 February, 1997

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