¶ … large, pornography is not harmful. Pornography has been stigmatized as have many expressions of sexuality, but for the most part the performers are adults performing of their own volition, and the consumers of pornography are finding an outlet for their sexuality. That there is stigma and judgment associated with pornography to the point where expression of human sexuality is considered to be harmful by some is unfortunate. This essay will construct the case that pornography is not harmful.
For much of the 20th century, pornography was considered to be harmful, and there were many perspectives put forward to support that idea. Some perspectives were rooted in the vestiges of Victorian-era prudishness, that considered nudity and the human form to be vulgar, and those perspectives are fairly easy to dismiss as either cultural or religious oddities. Believing something harmful and it being so are really not the same argument at all.
Through the 1980s and early 90s, studies were produced that promoted the idea that pornography was harmful. The views seemed to be rooted in entirely different ideals. The prudish ideal of the time -- this was also a time of warning labels on music cassettes -- seemed a conservative rebellion against the free-spirited 60s and 70s. But feminists were also launching their own crusades against pornography. The view of the time was that pornography was produced by the dominant group (males) for its own consumption. It conformed, therefore, to the most basest forms of female subjugation (Delgado & Stefancic, 1992). Pornography was, in essence, viewed through the lens of female depiction in media in general -- a natural extension of a dominant group controlling the way other groups are portrayed. Further, there was typically a conflation of pornography is the generic sense and pornography that was specifically violent and degrading, a subset that certainly exists but does not define all pornography by any means. Court cases at the time supported this belief that viewing pornography was inherently harmful because of its depictions of acts that were considered degrading (Brannigan & Goldenberg, 1986).
Principles of Harm
The legal and social...
First is the argument that pornography is violent and degrading. Such pornography exists, but is not the sum total of all pornography; at best, such media is a small percentage of total output. Second is the idea that pornography is harmful to those who view it, because they internalize this view of degradation, and it leads to worse behaviors towards women than would otherwise occur. The third idea is that pornography is harmful to the performers, or specifically the female performers, on the principle that they have limited power and are essentially selling themselves for money, itself considered degrading by many.
Harm to Society
Brannigan and Goldenberg (1986) wrote what is essentially a rebuttal to the conclusions of the judge in their case study. They found that there were flaws either in the studies in the case, or in the judge's application of those studies. That in each instance, there was little serious evidence to support the idea that pornography was harmful or that exposure to pornography causes men to be more aggressive or more tolerant of negative actions towards women. The authors essentially tabled a neutral argument, that there was insufficient evidence to make conclusions about pornography's effect on society. The feminist view is better elaborated by Dyzenhaus (1992) who points out that the view is not an opposition to the depiction of sexually explicit acts but rather to the depiction of female subjugation to males, as objects of sexual desire with little else to offer.
McKee (2010) presents a set of findings that contradicts the idea of pornography as harmful. Key findings include that exposure to pornography does not correlate with negative attitudes towards women, and that one of the more negative elements of the way society treats pornography is that teenagers have to pretend to be ignorant in order to satisfy adults' expectations of them, rather than engaging in free and open dialogue about sexual matters. Indeed, this is one of the major issues with the suppression of pornography and sexuality in general -- that suppression leads more to unhealthy behaviors than the embrace of sexuality and the pursuit of healthy sexual expression.
There is a further argument to be made here. It is that whatever issues exist with pornography, there are many other areas in which women face discrimination, and where women lack control over how they are depicted, including how they are sexualized in non-pornographic media. This is tangential to whether or not pornography is harmful, but worth stating that to some…
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