EFFORTPOST Catharine Mackinnon on Pornography

Admittedly, she is one my favourite feminists and scholars so I do have a soft spot for her even I don't agree with all her arguments. Catharine is a feminist law professor whose work has focused on civil rights. Her most influential work has been in the field of sexual harassment and has had a considerable impact on laws regarding sexual harassment in the workplace and in education. Consequently, her book titled Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of S*x Discrimination, published in 1978, is one of the most academically cited American legal texts.

Before we begin, I should provide a few definitions beforehand. Erotica is a broad term that covers a host of erotic art including nude photography, erotic literature and many other mediums each with their own conventions and degrees of explicitness. MacKinnon defines pornography as a subcategory of erotica which serves to subordinate women. To explain it more clearly, here is MacKinnon speaking for herself.

For her, pornography is an enactment of male sexual dominance over women. What should be noted about her definition, as Encyclopaedia Britannica points out, is that “The distinction between pornography (illicit and condemned material) and erotica (which is broadly tolerated) is largely subjective and reflects changing community standards”

Typically, anti-pornography stances are based on religious objections and moral disgust at sexual behaviour individuals find personally offensive. However, MacKinnon takes a much different route, one I consider worthy of consideration even if I don't entirely agree with it. One of the biggest influences of MacKinnon's views has to do with her experiences she's had legally representing women who have been harmed while working in the porn industry. One of the most famous examples of this is Susan Boreman who in 1972, starred in the pornographic film Deep Throat under the pseudonym Linda Lovelace. The film became one of the highest grossing x-rated films at the time. However, years later Susan Boreman came forward with allegations that the director, Chuck Traynor, has abused her during filming. Furthermore, she claimed that she was forced to do several scenes against her will, with Chuck standing with an M16 rifle pointed at her just off camera. Furthermore, she claims that in the film, bruises from her abuse could be seen. Such cases have caused MacKinnon to state that pornography differs from other sources of media in that what is depicted may be fantasy, but it requires actual women to be subjected to the acts being seen. In other words, porn is done to women. As MacKinnon writes: “with pornography, men masturbate to women being exposed, humiliated, violated, degraded, mutilated, dismembered, bound, gagged, tortured, and killed. In the visual materials, they experience this being done by watching it being done.” She continues by writing “As an initial matter, it should be observed that it is the pornography industry, not the ideas in the materials, that forces, threatens, blackmails, pressures, tricks, and cajoles women into s*x for pictures. In pornography, women are gang r*ped so they can be filmed. They are not gang r*ped by the idea of a gang r*pe. It is for pornography, and not by the ideas in it, that women are hurt and penetrated, tied and gagged, undressed and genitally spread and sprayed with lacquer and water so s*x pictures can be made.” MacKinnon also makes that claim, without providing a source, that “all pornography is made under conditions of inequality based on s*x, overwhelmingly by poor, desperate, homeless, pimped women who were sexually abused as children”.

Although pornography is a subcategory of prostitution, the kind of widespread research Farley provides from prostitution isn't available for pornography. Thus, we cannot be sure that MacKinnon is talking about token cases, or whether she is describing what the majority of what the industry does. Consequently, one can find numerous cases of women within the industry speaking both positively and negatively about pornography. For the sake of fair representation, I shall display two camps from within the industry talking about their industry.

On the negative side, a porn actress has recently accused a popular porn production company of sexual assault and abuse during one of her shoots. She claims she was choked, slapped and thrown against a wall until she bled. In 2015, several porn actresses came forth with numerous claims that James Deen had r*ped and sexually assaulted them during filming. There are also testimonials from ex pornstars who document several cases of humiliation and abuse on porn sets. However, for every negative story, there are several positive cases of women who claim they feel empowered by porn and find it to be a fun occupation. It is for these reasons that I hesitate to agree with MacKinnon summaries of the entire industry. There simply needs to be more research. If one is interested in the topic, I would strongly suggest the documentary ‘Hot Girls Wanted' produced by Rashida Jones which offers a relatively objective and neutral look into the porn industry.

So, what I do wish to focus on with regards to her anti-porn arguments lie with her discussions of pornography as free-speech. According to MacKinnon, pornography, at least in the United States is protected as free speech. Because of this, there is a belief that all free speech should be protected lest we fall victim to tyranny. She sums up the argument as such:

“The evil to be avoided is government restricting ideas because it disagrees with the content of their political point of view. The terrain of struggle is the mind; the dynamic at work is intellectual persuasion; the risk is that marginal, powerless, and relatively voiceless dissenters, with ideas we will never hear, will be crushed by governmental power. This has become the "speech you hate" test: the more you disagree with content, the more important it becomes to protect it. You can tell you are being principled by the degree to which you abhor what you allow. The worse the speech protected, the more principled the result. There is a faith that truth will prevail if left alone, often expressed in an openly competitive laissez-faire model taken from bourgeois economics and applied to the expressive marketplace: the "marketplace of ideas" metaphor. The marketplace becomes the battlefield when we are assured that truth will prevail”

MacKinnon problematizes this by arguing that although free speech exists, not everyone has equal amounts of free speech. Furthermore, the privileged have louder free speech or ‘more' free speech. Thus, in the case of pornography, subordinated women's bodies become the free-speech of porn producers (almost always male of course). Secondly, she questions why some forms of speech are banned when they target marginalized groups yet pornography does the same thing. In other words, hanging a noose in front of black person's lawn or burning a cross are all forms of free speech which conveys ideas. So is sticking a ‘whites only' sign in front of a store. However, these are regarded as prohibited forms of speech using a kind of rationale that isn't extended to pornography. MacKinnon argues that the free speech of pornography sends the message that women are to be subordinated. She writes “at stake in constructing pornography as "speech" is gaining constitutional protection for doing what pornography does: subordinating women through s*x.” MacKinnon argues that pornography, if it is speech, is a kind of speech (much like racism) that is harmful to society. She writes “Social inequality is substantially created and enforced-that is, done-through words and images.” Thus, by displaying women in subordinated positions, pornography conveys the message in society that women are second-class citizens that exist for the sexual pleasure of men. Now, for this claim, MacKinnon may in fact have evidence on her side. A study by Maree Crabbe which looked at the most popular porn found that 88% of it depicted physical aggression. Of this 88%, 94% of physical aggression was directed towards women. So what message does such ‘free speech' convey? According to MacKinnon, “the message of these materials, and there is one, as there is to all conscious activity, is ‘get her,'”.

The second aspect of MacKinnon's arguments which I wish to discuss concern the effects of pornography on society. MacKinnon claims “Pornography makes the world a pornographic place through its making and use, establishing what women are said to exist as, are seen as, are treated as, constructing the social reality of what a woman is and can be in terms of what can be done to her, and what a man is in terms of doing it.”

Now, there is an interesting phenomenon I want to discuss. When the influences of media on society are brought up, there is often a pushback. The argument is typically as such: ‘I know how to separate fantasy from reality, thus it is ridiculous to claim that media makes people do things'. On the surface, the argument is true. In most cases, adults can distinguish fiction from real life and it is also true that one cannot hold media accountable for the actions that they commit. However, within this there is an often overlooked fact that media doesn't outright control so much as it surreptitiously influences and, furthermore, individuals who believe that they are immune to this are often most at risk. It is often claimed that video games, movies etc don't contribute to violence. However, when one does even the most cursory research, we find that the complete opposite is true. There is in fact an almost unanimous agreement among experts that what we consume affects our beliefs and actions. If this were not the case, a multi-billion dollar advertising industry would not exist and propaganda would not be the dangerous weapon it is. In an article by Craig Anderson et al we learn that:

“Research on violent television and films, video games, and music reveals unequivocal evidence that media violence increases the likelihood of aggressive and violent behaviour in both immediate and long-term contexts

This isn't limited to violence. Another study by Todd Heatherton et al found that:

• Compared to adolescents with low exposure to smoking in movies, those with high exposure are about three times as likely to try smoking or become smokers.

Yet many laymen still believe that media doesn't influence people. To explain this phenomenon in the face of an unquestionable scientific consensus, Brad Bushman et al posits that

• One reason is people think the media have a much stronger effect on others than on themselves—called the third person effect (Davison, 1983)

In other words, everyone thinks that they are the exception. More than just media having an impact on society, there is evidence that pornography itself has permeated society. According to Maree Crabbe, among “13–16 year olds in Australian schools, 93 per cent of males and 62 per cent of females had seen pornography online”. For many of these young children, porn will serve as one of the only sources of s*x-ed, which is a frightening thought. Maree writes, “porn has become a central mediator of young people's sexual understandings and experiences. Young people are exposed to porn at unprecedented rates. Many young people discover porn before they've encountered s*x. They are seeing it more frequently, through more media, and what they are seeing is harder and more aggressive. Young people are living in an era of new sexual expectations, acceptance and practices […] There is evidence that many young people are enacting porn scripts.”. Part of the issue is that porn catalogues women according to their race and body parts – in other words, this is peak objectification where women are merely the sum of their parts. This is problematic because, as MacKinnon points out “Sexual objectification is the primary process of the subjection of women”. She also adds that this objectification is far from different to the worker alienation described within Marxist theory.

Now if porn does create a misogynistic society, an opposition to pornography becomes a little more of a reasonable idea. For instance, oppositions to confederate statues in USA are often based on the grounds that the existence of these statues contribute to creating a society where African Americans are degraded every time they are forced to walk past them. In fact, similar arguments are made in South Africa regarding colonial statues. In other words, what these statues say is conducive to a white supremacist society. Could those same arguments be transferred to pornography? Does the proliferation of pornography create a male supremacist society? This is a very difficult question and, of the four horsewomen, I'd argue that MacKinnon poses some of the most troublesome ideas to wrap our heads around.

One criticism of MacKinnon and her theory is that it falsely categorizes r*pe as s*x. In other words, porn depicts s*x and thus could have nothing to do with r*pe. This is a rehashing of the “r*pe is about power” mantra. MacKinnon outlines these criticisms by writing that “some feminists have encouraged and participated in this type of analysis by conceiving r*pe as violence not s*x”. The problem with this, as MacKinnon points out, is that it fails to account for the fact that for some men, the force and violence in r*pe is arousing and sexually satisfying. Sexual sadists do exist. A huge deal of criticism towards MacKinnon has also come from Judith Butler. Summing up MacKinnon's views, in Excitable Speech, Butler writes: “In Only Words (1993) pornography ought to be construed as a kind of ‘wound' according to MacKinnon, because it proclaims and effects the subordinated status of women.” Butler's problem with this is that by insisting that pornography is subordinating, it limits the ability to rearticulate the hate speech as something that isn't subordinating. As Moya Lloyd summarises, “Dworkin, MacKinnon and Helms are, for Butler, actively and somewhat ironically engaged in rearticulating and reinvigorating the very discourses they seek to repudiate” (114-5). Thus, Butler argues that “keeping such terms unsaid and unsayable can also work to lock them in place, preserving their power to injure”. If one is familiar with Butler's work, it becomes clear that Butler very much favours rearticulation, that is, disrupting the relationship between signifiers and signifieds. Now, broadly speaking, I agree with Butler's theory. However, I feel as though examples of successful rearticulation of hate speech are few and far between. Language and symbols change over time, but hate speech seems to be very resistant to change. Hate speech such as BIPOC and queer are said to be rearticulated and have been used in different contexts, yet it's plainly obvious that after all these years they still carry their injurious power. In terms of pornography, there have been attempts to rearticulate it. Some feminists have championed feminist pornography which features female directors, sets to depict genuine female sexual pleasure and seeks to subverts the harmful tropes of traditional pornography. Furthermore, with the proliferation of webcams, amateur pornography which is not dependent on large corporations has been allowed to flourish, enabling a variety of pornography which strays from heteronormative and subordinating depictions of women.

So, in closing, I'd like to ask the rest of you: In light of everything I've said, considering the fact that 84% of pornography depicts physical aggression (the vast majority of it directed towards women) does pornography create a pornified society? Is pornography, as it exists today, the proliferation of hate speech? Can pornography be rehabilitated to promote a healthier kind of sexuality?

For further reading, I would suggest MacKinnon's text Only Words as well as her excellent article titled “Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State” which, for me at least, has offered one of the most definitive outlinings of the purpose of feminism and what its methodology for action should be. It also brings up my discomfort regarding the relationship between capitalism and feminism.