A feminist critique on pornography

In August 1995, Hustler magazine honoured me with the asshole of the month award. In this article, I was called amongst many names an "enemy of freedom", a "porn suppressionist", my views were labelled "emotionally laden feminist drivel" and "pseudo-intellectual". Finally, Hustler claims that I am a would-be censor in mind and in spirit.

The substance of the attack though, was that I am confused, that I speak with a forked tongue and continually contradict myself. This is not an original attack on feminist theory. Feminists are always told that we want to have our cake and eat it and what this insult means is that we are inconsistent. We argue on the one hand for equality but we want special treatment when we fall pregnant; we claim our privacy rights in relation to the abortion choice, contraceptive practices and homosexual lifestyles, but we refute men's privacy rights in relation to domestic violence and possession of certain kinds of pornographic material.

So, in keeping with the stock attack on feminism's seemingly two-faced expedience, Hustler fragments me into Fedler number one and Fedler number two. They have grasped the fact that I am not totally anti-pornography in a blunt all-encompassing apocalyptic way like Horace van Rensburg and therefore pro-censorship. They've also cottoned onto the fact that I am neither completely pro-pornography or anti-censorship in an everything-under-the-sun should be protected under the rubric of freedom of expression way. This must mean, in Hustler's arithmetical vocabulary that my position is unintelligible.

These two views represent the two polar extremes on the pornography and censorship issues. I fully endorse neither. Rather, I have tried to forge a middle-path that extracts what is valuable from both of these positions, as I believe that each of them embodies useful insights into the way pornography ought to be dealt with in South Africa. My position, therefore, cannot be sloganized into a t-shirt saying "porn is the theory, rape is the practice", or "give us more beaver".

Defining feminism

Professor Patricia Williams, begins her book The Alchemy of Race and Rights with the sentence "Since subject position is everything in my analysis of the law, you deserve to know that it is bad morning". 1 Feminist methodology tells us to look at who is speaking. This methodology is termed "positionality" - the source of knowledge is experience. 2 "Truth", on this analysis, is always situated and partial.

So to put you in the picture so that you can contextualize what I am about to say, let me tell you something about myself. I have been working part-time at People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA) for the past eighteen months offering legal advice to battered and raped women. I have delved into the dark side of gender violence, I know what it looks like. When I speak about violence, I am not talking in the abstract. I see faces.

What is my involvement with pornography? Well I was the kid at school that all the boys used to come to, to see the latest pornography I had managed to get my hands on. I often pop into the sex shop in Yeoville for a chat with Clint about what's new, what's selling. He feeds me interesting bits of information like the fact that married men are the most avid buyers of gay porn and that there is an inexplicably large market for inflatable pigs.

I am not a religious person. I believe that if you get turned on by having your toenails tickled or wearing your mother's underwear, the constitution should protect your right to do so. In my sexual vocabulary there is only one rule: stay away from children.

I am not beyond being turned on by pornography. I think that's part of the hook. I have also been bored by it and at times deeply disturbed by some of what I have seen. It is this experience that forms the basis of my views on the subject of pornography. The title of my paper may imply that it is possible to incorporate the divisive and often acrimonious debates within feminism around pornography into one point of view. I set myself no such unrealistic goal. This paper is not "the feminist" viewpoint, it is the viewpoint of a feminist.

The Feminist Split on the Pornography Issue

Unlike any other issue in the feminist debate such as violence against women, abortion and sexual harassment, the pornography issue has practically split the feminist movement into two schools of thought. The "pornography as violence" feminists who occupy the dominant position and is represented by people like Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. On the other side are the "do-me" feminists often associated with the sado-masochistic lesbian constituency. Susie Bright and Pat Califia expound the perspective that pornography is liberating for womens' sexuality and transgressional, because womens' sexuality has always been ignored, stereotyped as passive. This is not just a case of the sisters being unable to see eye to eye.

Keeping in mind that feminism is essentially a political movement, to achieve gender equality, each of these sides represents a political position. This split represents serious dissent on a number of fundamental issues, like the meaning of sexuality, the right to privacy, freedom of speech and the legitimate use of state power (in relation to censorship).

Why does the pornography issue divide feminists, pitting them against one another when they should be pulling together? I think the answer lies somewhere in the assertion that the experience of being in our bodies is contradictory. Women's bodies are the source of both our power and our powerlessness, the site of pleasure and pain. When women experience violence, it is enacted on our bodies, in the form of rape, battery, sexual harassment. The question is, how do we resolve the ambivalence of being in a woman's body? What is the appropriate political response? Do we privilege the brazen hussey in each of us, the part that can seduce, that knows what she wants, that gets what she wants, the part that can experience multiple orgasms? Or do we pay more attention to the Nicole Brown Simpsons in each of us? Adopting either of these roles exclusively results in stereotyping of women. Not all women are in a position to be brazen hussies. And even brazen hussies get raped.

So, given all of this confusion, what do we do about pornography? First I think we need to start with the understanding that we don't experience pornography in the same way all the time. Circumstances can dictate whether we feel like a victim or a temptress:

"...no law has or should assume that the same woman harassed by pornographic images in the workplace might not enjoy those very images if given the opportunity to put them to her own use"(Amicus Brief, Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce). 3

The first problem that we have to overcome is the definitional one: are we all talking about the same thing when we talk about pornography?

Defining Pornography

I think I have come to the conclusion that it is epistemologically impossible to define pornography. Attempts to define it have inevitably been too broad, and the resulting definition ultimately depends on the viewpoint of the exponent. The least helpful but the most honest definition of pornography has come from Justice Stewart in Jacobellis v Ohio 4 when he said "I know it when I see it". The definition problem is exacerbated in the South African context given how neurotically erotophobic we are as a society. The arousal of sexual lust and sexual brutality have been condemned equally as shameworthy and the subject of legitimate governmental interference.5

Feminist attempts to define pornography, and I am thinking specifically of the MacKinnon/Dworkin Ordinance of Indianapolis, 6 have provided a useful framework for the discussion, focusing on dehumanization and the sexualization of brutality in a context that suggests endorsement or approval of such behaviour. But how do you explain the fact that students who were asked to apply the definition, have classified radical feminist works, including Dworkin's own novel Mercy, as pornographic? 7 Therein lies the problem: who gets to decide what pornography is? The combined wisdom of both schools of feminist thought reveals that pornography is not a one-dimensional discourse about female exploitation and oppression. It is, in Robin West's terminology, an indeterminate discourse. 8

The Meaning of Pornography and Context

Consider the contribution of the social context to a media moment in which thirty men ran around on a field chasing an oval ball. A ball-game became an event of national unification, the players political heroes, Jona Lomu - who is little more than an oversized Kiwi - a villian and Shoshaloza a national anthem.

In order to constrain meaning so that we can formulate some response to pornography that goes beyond our individual perceptions, we have to look at the context. Linda Williams, in a book called Hard Core 9 claims that pornography is less about sex than it is about gender. This is a crucial point, because it politicizes the pornography issue beyond what each of us might think about it in the privacy and safety of our bedrooms. 10

Hustler creates a paradigm within which we can understand what pornography means. It does this by interspersing explicit nudity with racist, homophobic, anti-semitic, feminist-bashing, misogynist articles and jokes. In the last few months, Hustler has run articles on how feminists brainwash children into laying charges of child sexual abuse 11 , how men are getting screwed by women in divorce cases 12 and how date rape is a figment of the feminist imagination. 13

It could be argued that Hustler is not recontextualizing these images, but is simply reflecting the broader social context, the status quo within which women are socially, economically and politically disempowered. Rape, which is one of the most prevalent crimes in South Africa, is often the subject of jokes in Hustler 14 as is sexual harassment 15 and femicide.

What has been really useful about the feminist contribution to the definition of pornography is the way feminists have insisted on harm and not morality as the touchstone of what counts of pornography. The fruits of this analysis have been reaped in decisions like R v Butler 16 in Canada, which is what I would consider a feminist decision because of its focus on equality and harm.

It is important to define pornography in terms of harm and not morality, 17 to distinguish feminists from the moral conservative right who mistakenly believe that we are all fighting the same battle. It is only in respect of pornography that conservatives side with feminists. On all the other issues fundamental to gender equality they fight us to the death, calling us "baby killers" when we argue for reproductive rights and "family destroyers" when we argue for gay and lesbian rights.

Feminists are not Bible-thumpers. Yet, we often get lumped together with people who pray, either by way of misguided alliance, as the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) did to me by citing me in support of their submissions to the Constitutional Assembly on freedom of speech. The pornographers also do this to discredit us. Feminists do not invoke God as a sexual referee to assure us that sex is really sacred, to paraphrase Angela Carter. 18 Pornography is not about sexually acceptable behaviour. 19 How do you tell feminists from Bible-thumpers? When people use words like "dirt" or "filth" to describe pornography, you can be sure that their mission is sexual sanitation. Feminist catchphrases are "industry", "ideology", and "consent".

Industry

That brings me to a discussion of the gendered economic context, the industry of pornography. Susan Kappeler says:

"Industrially, the women who model in the production of visual pornography are a group of non-organized, non-unionized, casual workers with bad pay and worse working conditions, and without a share in the massive profits of the industry. This male industry for a male clientele makes its profits within a social order where men own over 99 per cent of the global wealth; that is where women own less than one per cent collectively and have the worst opportunities for employment and income." 20

Andrea Dworkin says it more forcefully:

"Pornography uses those in the United States who were left out of the constitution. Pornography uses white women who were chattel, uses African-American women who were slaves. Pornography uses African American men usually as rapists, who were slaves. Pornography is not made up of old white men. Nobody comes on them. But they are the ones who are profiting from it". 21

Gender equality is integrally tied to access to resources, wealth and media. If we examine the industry of pornography, what we find is a systemic inequality. It is the self-same system in which women earn more than men in only two professions - modelling and prostitution. That tells us something about how women are valued. Some feminists claim that if women reclaimed the industry so that the wealth produced by pornography was in the hands of women, this would ultimately result in gender equality. I have my doubts about whether women have enough power to turn the industry to their benefit and until such time as women can make money within institutions where we don't have to have a 36DD bust size, or spread our legs, I'd like to reserve that option as a very last resort.

Consent

The focus on the industry does raise issues about consent. Do women choose to become pornography-fodder? Who are the women who end up in pornography, or are there women who when asked "what are you going to be when you grow up", who say, with all of life's choices laid before them, "I'm going to be a Penthouse Pet" or a "Hustler centrefold"?

"Pornographers promote an image of free consent because it is good for business. But most women in pornography are poor, were sexually abused as children and have reached the end of this society's options for them, options that were biased against them as women in the first place. ...the fact that some women may 'choose' pornography from a stacked deck of life pursuits (if you call a loaded choice a choice, like the 'choice' of those with brown skin to pick cabbages or the 'choice' of those with black skin to clean toilets) and the fact that some women in pornography say they made a free choice do not mean that women who are coerced into pornography are not coerced." 22

Consent is a very important concept in law, both in private law (the law of contract), and in public law (rape defence). Feminism has offered a counternarrative to the dominant formal notion of consent 23 as simply: was there a "yes"? Just as we argue for substantive equality, so we argue that there must also be substantive consent. If a person is not in a position to negotiate the terms of sexual interaction, a work contract, how real is the consent? This analysis is also applicable to prostitution, domestic work, marriage, motherhood, abortion, surrogate motherhood, compulsory heterosexuality.

It was on this basis that the Indianapolis Ordinance devised by MacKinnon and Dworkin which gives women who have been hurt through pornography either in the form of assault, forcing, coercion, trafficking or defamation and are sueing the person responsible, a proviso that consent to the assault or the trafficking shall not be a defence to an action under the Ordinance. 24 The point that radical feminists make is that until women are socially equal to men, it will be impossible to know whether any women are in pornography freely.

Whether we individually embrace pornography or reject it, I think it is impossible to refute the fact that the industry is characterized by abuse. The question is: what do we do about it? Should we censor it? I don't think so. Educate and ask people to choose. It's like people who wear fur coats or pregnant women who smoke - they know that animals have been killed so they can be wrapped in fluff, or that smoking might damage the foetus, so they can get a nicotine fix. In a democracy we leave it up to them to decide.

There are some feminists though who believe that there are some decisions that people should not be allowed to make on their own because they'll make the wrong decision. They'll make decisions to keep women unequal. And the state will collaborate and protect those decisions under rubrics such as "freedom of speech".

Pornography and Freedom of Speech

Catharine MacKinnon argues in her new book Only Words 25 that pornography is not speech at all. It is an act of discrimination. The words "I do" or "not guilty" are treated as institutions and practices, not as ideas or speech. Saying "kill" to a trained Rottweiler is more than just words as is the sign saying "Whites Only". Likewise, pornography is not only words. Yet it is treated as speech, and is therefore protected by the First Amendment. Andrea Dworkin says:

"All these debates about pornography have such a bizarre quality to them. Because we're talking about women's real lives and thing that happen to real women all the time. Women in the pornography and women on whom the pornography is used. And yet we live in a world in which we're told that this is really about ideas. Well, a rectum doesn't have an idea. And a vagina doesn't have an idea. And the mouths of women do not express ideas. And when a woman has a penis down to the bottom of her throat, as in the film Deep Throat...that throat is not part of a human being who is involved in discussing ideas" .26

Yet there are other feminists who say:

"Sexually explicit material is not per se sexist or harmful. Like any mode of expression, it can be used to attack women's struggle for equality, but it is also a category of speech from which women have been excluded". 27

Whether we regard pornography as speech or not will reflect the value we attach to pornography. Ronald Dworkin recognizes that:

"The conventional explanation of why freedom of speech is important is Mill's theory that truth is most likely to emerge from a 'market-place of ideas' freely exchanged and debated. But most pornography makes no contribution at all to political or intellectual debate: it is preposterous to think that we are more likely to reach truth about anything at all because pornographic videos are available. So liberals defending a right to pornography find themselves triply on the defensive: their view is politically weak, deeply offensive to many women, and intellectually doubtful. Why then should we defend pornography?" 28

Other feminists argue that even if pornography is speech, it is a form of hate speech, which can justifiably be limited in terms of section 33 of our Constitution. Far from encouraging debate, it silences women, as it has been recognized in the labour law context. Pornography in the workplace creates a hostile work environment, undermining women's capacity to be taken seriously as workers.

There is a category of pornography, that I know when I see, that is hate speech against women, where the words used to describe women are so degrading and the images used clearly promote the idea that women are dirty, disgusting, vessels to be used for male gratification. I have heard stories of real abuse that mirror pornographic discourse, and I am at a loss to know what to do with that information.

What about censorship? Unless there is a guarantee that it works, censorship, like the death penalty, cannot be justified. The problem with the pro-censorship position is that it is grounded on a wobbly premise, namely that if you censor material, it disappears from culture along with its effects.

First it is, impossible to determine conclusively what the effects of pornography are. Feminists such as Diana Russell 29 have made bold attempts to prove the causal link between pornography and sexual violence. Fortunately or unfortunately, there is no conclusive evidence that pornography breeds rapists. Even if this is so, it seems that this occurs only in a very small number of cases where there is a pre-existing pathology of a violent and misogynist temperament.

Secondly, we know that censorship does not remove material: it simply hides it, turning it into a delicious taboo. Having said that, I still believe that child pornography should be censored and heavily patrolled. I am aware that this will do nothing more than serve as an ideological warning that child abuse is not tolerable.

The argument for censorship also depends on the premise that an exposure to pornography can only have one effect on the viewer: the planting of the seeds of an insatiable appetite for more and harder porn. Yet this is a simplistic conclusion. An exposure to pornography is just as likely to create an anti-porn fanatic as it is to create a hungry convert.

Lastly, there are important feminist concerns about giving the state more power. In the Hudnut case, a group of feminists calling themselves the Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce submitted an Amicus Brief against the Indianpolis Ordinance, claiming that such an ordinance would erode womens' freedom even further, because the power to censor and therefore to control culture will be in the hands of the self-same, gendered state officials and will result in the further erosion of women's autonomy and privacy. And I think that is the strongest argument against censorship.

In conclusion then, what do feminists have to add to this debate? First, I'd like to say that I think we should talk less about pornography and more about rape, domestic violence and other factors that inhibit women's equality in this country at this time. More worrying in South Africa are the alarming rape statistics than the flood of pornography.

Secondly, to contextualize pornography in the reality of gender inequality, and to call pornographers to account for the racism, the homophobia, the misogyny that is sexualized and to provide a relentless questioning of media representations of women.

Thirdly, to remind women that we are not only victims but powerful actors in the sexual arena. Zillah Eisenstein says in The Female Body and the Law:

"MacKinnon believes that women live in the world pornography creates. We live its lie as reality. I would add that women live in a world that they have helped create. Thus women are not only victims who need protection from sex, but human beings who need the freedom and equality to explore sex as well. And pornography may be a part of what women want to explore. It may be that in the discourse of pornography we can find that sexual freedom exists alongside sexual inequality in which case we may want to eliminate the inequality without sacrificing the sex of the freedom".

Fourthly, to remind ourselves generally that there is no single "woman's experience" or indeed a consistent experience of sexuality. Being human and being sexual is riddled with contradiction, ambiguity and complex nuance that can catapult us from a moment of power to one of debilitating powerlessness.

Hustler's attack on my feminist views as being contradictory and schizophrenic speaks volumes about Hustler's inability to see women as anything more complex than one-dimensional fixed frames - flattened on a page with our legs open. We reserve our right to be raunchy on our own terms. And we reserve our right to be a lot more than that.

Notes