The culture of pornography.

Despite many gains in the latter part of this century, women as a group are still clearly inferior to men in status, power, knowledge, and wealth. As a result, many unresolved ethical issues still exist in the relationship between the sexes. Two of the thorniest of these are prostitution and pornography.

Many great feminists of the past considered the institution of prostitution as central to an understanding of the socially subordinate position of women. These individuals include essayist and historian Mary Wollstonecraft, poet and novelist Olive Schreiner, political activist and anarchist Emma Goldman, writer and suffragist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and economist and sociologist Victoria Woodhull - to mention only a few of the most notable.

This concern about a very old institution has carried over into the present day, both in the work of feminist scholars and in the debates that are taking place within the women's liberation movement. Even though there is a minority of women who defend prostitution and other work in the sex industry as a legitimate career choice, many women - even some who would not label themselves as feminist - feel that the sex industry in general, and the institution of prostitution in particular, diminishes the lives of the women who work in it, as well as diminishing the general status of all women. Yet there are differences as to what changes can and should be made within the constraints posed by our constitutional system.

Activist scholar, teacher, and writer Jane Anthony, in her article "Prostitution As 'Choice'" (Ms., January/February 1992), points out that, traditionally, prostitution has been considered a necessary evil that helps to preserve the institution of marriage by providing a readily available outlet for men's sexual desires. To illustrate this attitude, Anthony quotes from Thomas Aquinas, who wrote that "prostitution is like a sewer system, despicable but necessary." As Anthony points out, Aquinas' view overlooks the fact that there are casualties in the system brought about by the fact that "one class of women is granted status as wives or girlfriends at the expense of another class, whores, who are reduced to sperm receptacles for numerous men."

Some recent literature, written by women who consider themselves feminists, has presented a pro-prostitution stance in which prostitution is portrayed as a "career choice." Anthony maintains that pro-prostitution ideology, often considered sexual liberalism, reflects a dualism in which nineteenth-century views of prostitutes as victims are set off against cur, rent views of prostitutes as women who make active decisions to become whores. According to Anthony, only if commercial sex is decontextualized from the social and cultural forces that constrict women's choices - such as job discrimination, gender inequality in the courts, and a "sexism so pervasive it is often invisible" - can prostitution be seen as a choice. Thus, says Anthony, "in decontextualizing women's choices, pro-prostitution ideology inadvertently trivializes prostitution."

Anthony also calls into question those who see prostitution as a form of empowerment for women. She maintains that this may be true temporarily for those women who have been sexually abused prior to becoming prostitutes (and these constitute a large percentage of prostitutes, according to Anthony) and for whom a sense of empowerment exists relative to their previous abuse. Still, under conditions of prostitution, a sense of empowerment is transitory and illusory, Anthony maintains. She states that she speaks from personal experience, having worked as a prostitute for several years. She also quotes Evelina Giobbe of Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt (WHISPER), who says: "Dismantling the institution of prostitution is the most formidable task facing contemporary feminism."

In a more academic vein is philosopher Laurie Shrage, who contributed an article to the anthology Feminism and Political Theory entitled "Should Feminists Oppose Prostitution?" Declaring that "prostitution raises difficult issues for feminists," Shrage asks whether or not persons opposed to the social sub, ordination of women should seek to discourage commercial sex. Her answer is emphatically yes. Shrage focuses her arguments on what must be done to subvert widely held beliefs that legitimize prostitution in our society, because once these beliefs are undermined, "nothing closely resembling prostitution, as we currently know it, will exist."

Shrage, like Anthony, considers prostitution within its cultural context. She declares that "it epitomizes and perpetuates pernicious patriarchal beliefs and values, and, therefore, is both damaging to the women who sell sex and, as an organized social practice, to all women in our society." She also argues that it reinforces certain cultural assumptions which give legitimacy to women's social subordination, including the belief that men are naturally suited for dominant social roles and the belief that a person's sexual practice defines him or her as a particular kind of person (for example, a "homosexual," a "whore," a "virgin," or a "pervert").

In Shrage's view, the principles that organize and sustain the sex industry are the same ones that underlie many other pernicious and oppressive gender asymmetries in our social institutions. She concludes:

I am unable to imagine nonpernicious principles which would legitimate the commercial provision of sex and which would not substantially alter or eliminate the industry as it now exists. Since commercial sex, unlike marriage, is not reformable, feminists should seek to undermine the beliefs and values which underlie our acceptance of it. Indeed, one way to do this is to outwardly oppose prostitution itself. . . . In this respect, a consumer boycott of the sex industry is especially appropriate.

There is a close historical connection between pornography and prostitution. (The word pornography itself means, quite literally, "writing about prostitutes.") Along with the concern and debate over prostitution, then, an even fiercer debate is raging in the current women's movement over pornography.

The name most prominently associated with the abolitionist view regarding pornography is Catharine A. MacKinnon, professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. In her own contribution to Feminism and Political Theory, entitled "Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: Pleasure Under Patriarchy," MacKinnon focuses on the processes by which the social subordination of women to men is accomplished and maintained under patriarchy - processes in which, she claims, the learning and practice of a sexuality of dominance and sub, mission play a crucial role. To MacKinnon, pornography is one of the ways in which the system of dominance and submission is maintained, a system whose underlying dynamic depends on the sexual objectification of women. MacKinnon places the dehumanization of women along a continuum of female submission - from visual appropriation of the female in pornography, to physical appropriation in prostituted sex, to forced sex in rape, to sexual murder.

MacKinnon cites many recent feminist studies on rape, battery, sexual harassment, sexual abuse of children, prostitution, and pornography that point out specific mechanisms of sexual objectification. According to MacKinnon, when pornography is seen as part of a totality of mutually reinforcing sex practices, it both symbolizes and actualizes the distinctive social power that men as a class have over women as a class in patriarchal society. To quote MacKinnon:

In feminist terms, the fact that male power has power means that the interests of male sexuality construct what sexuality as such means in life, including the standard way it is allowed and recognized to be felt and expressed and experienced. A theory of sexuality becomes feminist to the extent that it treats sexuality as a social construct of male power: defined by men, forced on women, and constitutive in the meaning of gender. Existing theories, until they grasp this, will not only misattribute what they call female sexuality to women as such, as if it is not imposed on women daily, they will participate in enforcing the hegemony of the social construct "desire," hence its product, "sexuality," hence its construct "woman," on the world. The gender issue thus becomes the issue of what is taken to be "sexuality": what sex means and what is meant by sex, when, how, and with whom and with what consequences to whom.

Such questions are almost never systematically confronted, even in discourses that purport feminist awareness. Feminist theory becomes, then, a project of analyzing that situation in order to face it for what it is, in order to change it.

Thus, MacKinnon sees pornography as one of the primary means by which women are made into sexual objects: "First in the world, then in the head, first in visual appropriation, then in forced sex, finally in sexual murder. . . ." It is partly through the means of pornography itself, claims MacKinnon, that the gender qualities we know culturally as "male" and "female" are socially created and enforced in everyday life.

Like Anthony and Shrage, MacKinnon sees human sexuality not as a given of nature but as a construct of a specific culture, conditioned in both women and men by the ubiquitous existence of gender inequality in a patriarchal culture. To MacKinnon, being a thing for sexual use is fundamental to the content of sexuality for women under patriarchy:

Specifically, "woman" is defined by what male desire requires for arousal and satisfaction and is socially tautologous with "female sexuality" and "the female sex." . . . To be clear: what is sexual is what gives a man an erection. Whatever it takes to make a penis shudder and stiffen with the experience of its potency is what sexuality means culturally.

To the question, "What do men want?" MacKinnon notes:

Pornography provides an answer. . . . From the testimony of the pornography, what men want is: women bound, women battered, women tortured, women humiliated, women degraded and defiled, women killed, or, to be fair to the soft core, women sexually accessible, have-able, there for them, wanting to be taken and used, with perhaps just a little light bondage.

To buttress this point, MacKinnon cites experimental data on pornography which, she claims, substantiates the connection between gender inequality, pornography, and male sexuality. When "normal" men in a laboratory setting view pornography over time, they become more aroused by scenes of rape than by scenes of explicit (but not expressly violent) sex, even if the woman is shown as hating it. Apparently, sustained perceptual exposure to pornography inures subjects to the violent component in overtly violent sexual material, while increasing the arousal value of such material. Experimental studies also show that viewing sexual material containing explicit aggression against women makes normal men more willing to aggress against women, as well as more likely to see a woman rape victim as less human and more blameworthy. Even so-called nonviolent material in which women are verbally abused, dominated, or treated as sexual toys makes men more likely to see women as less than human, good only for sex, blameworthy when raped, and unequal to men.

MacKinnon, Shrage, and Anthony, as representative modern feminist scholars, agree that specific forces in our patriarchal culture create and maintain a hierarchy of gender in which the social institutions of prostitution and pornography can flourish. None of the three believes there is an innate human sexuality as such, unconditioned by specific cultures, although at times MacKinnon seems to forget her basic premise and writes about male sexuality as if it is a natural, unconditioned given, outside of culture.

These three writers also agree that feminists cannot ignore these issues, difficult as they are with their many legal, political, and social ramifications. They take to task those people who defend prostitution or the pornography industry as legitimate career choices for women. They maintain that, overall, women who work in these areas are exploited and demeaned, that their civil rights are frequently trampled upon, and that they face severe physical and psychological risks. While not blaming the victim for being a victim, all three writers are searching, both theoretically and practically, for ways in which these institutions can be altered or abolished. To accomplish such formidable tasks within the constitutional framework of law is seen by these writers and by many other feminists as primary among the compelling ethical, legal, and political challenges facing the women's movement in the twenty-first century.

What should the humanist position be on those questions? I think this depends on which aspect of the humanist movement one considers most important: the free-thought, skeptical, liberal current of humanism; or the (in my opinion) far deeper current that humanism shares with certain other philosophical traditions - namely, concern for the welfare and betterment of humanity. If concern for humanity's welfare is considered as foremost in humanism, then attitudes of skepticism and liberality are viewed as a means to an end rather than as ends in themselves. They are employed where useful (for example, to critique religious dogma) but not revered on general principles. Skepticism and liberalism need not hobble us in the face of pernicious social institutions. If one stresses humanity's welfare, prostitution and pornography would have to be viewed as giant-sized stumbling blocks to human progress, inasmuch as they demean one class of humans by converting them into commercial objects.

Alice Leuchtag received a B.A. in psychology and sociology from the University of California at Los Angeles and an M.A. in sociology from San Diego State University. This article is adapted from her article, "Ethical Questions Concerning Gender Inequalities: Some Feminist Views on Prostitution and Pornography," which appeared in the 1992 anthology of essays, Ethics and Humanism, edited by Marian Hillar and H. Richard Leuchtag and published by Humanists of Houston, a chapter of the American Humanist Association.