XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography (15 page)

Liberal feminists have tried to bridge these two positions. They have tried to produce the best of both worlds by mixing a commitment to "a woman's body, a woman's right" with a demand for respecting women.

Their efforts are doomed, for one simple reason: the sticky issue of a woman's consent. What will liberal feminists say to women who choose to put themselves in situations where they are not respected-at least, by feminist standards? What will they say to the women who rush to pose for S/M pornography? To women who compete for the privilege?

If liberal feminists say that participation in pornography should be tolerated, they are conceding that the morality of it is irrelevant to whether it should be legal. If they say it should be prohibited, they are denying that a woman has a right to control her own body. A confrontation between these two views is inevitable. When you enforce virtue, you deny a woman's right to make an unacceptable choice with her own body.

This conflict is old wine in new bottles; it is nothing less than the age-old battle between freedom and control.

Pornography leads to violence against women.

The second basic accusation hurled against pornography is that it causes violence against women. Radical feminists claim there is a cause-and-effect relationship between men viewing pornography and men attacking women, especially in the form of rape.

But studies and experts disagree as to whether there is any relationship between pornography and violence. Or, more broadly stated, between images and behavior. Even the procensorship Meese Commission Report admitted that much of the data connecting pornography to violence was unreliable.

This Commission was the last national effort to define and suppress pornography. It was a circus of public hearings, conducted by the U.S. Attorney General's Commission on Pornography a.k.a.

the Meese Commission. Established in May 1984, this eleven-person body received a mandate from President Ronald Reagan to investigate what he called "new evidence linking pornography to anti-social behavior." Reagan obviously wanted to overturn the findings of the 1970 Federal Commission on Pornography and Obscenity, which had been set up by then president Richard Nixon. The earlier commission not only found no link between violence and pornography; it also urged the repeal of most obscenity laws. Its findings were dismissed.

The Meese Commission carefully avoided a repetition of this embarrassing liberalism. For example, the first Meese hearing allowed testimony from forty-two antiporn advocates as opposed and only three pro-freedom of speech people. Many anticensorship groups, including major writers' organizations, were denied the chance to speak. The reason given: lack of time.

But when radical feminist Dorchen Leidholt, who had already testified, rushed the microphone along with a group of other women, she was given extra time. The microphones stayed switched on. And the chairman requested a written copy of her remarks.

Is it any wonder that the Meese Commission found there to be a relationship between pornography and violence? In the
Virginia Law Review,
Nadine Strossen commented on the shaky ground beneath this finding: "The Meese Commission ... relied on Professor Murray Straus' correlational studies ... tòjustify' their conclusions that exposure tòpornography' leads 59

to sexual assaults. But, as Professor Straus wrote the Commission, Ì do not believe that [my]

research demonstrates that pornography causes rape.' " [15]

Other studies, such as the one prepared by feminist Thelma McCormick (1983) for the Metropolitan Toronto Task Force on Violence Against Women, found no pattern to indicate a connection between pornography and sex crimes. Incredibly, the Task Force suppressed the study and re-assigned the project to a procensorship male, who returned the "correct" results. His study was published.

Moving away from studies, what of real world feedback? In West Germany, rape rates have slightly declined since 1973, when pornography became widely available; meanwhile, other violent crime has increased. In Japan, where pornography depicting violence is widely available, rape is much lower per capita than in the United States, where violence in porn is restricted.

It can be argued that all forms of violence are lower in these countries. The low rate of violence against women may be nothing more than a reflection of this. Nevertheless, if pornography were intimately connected to violence against women, you would expect to see that connection to be manifested in some manner. It is up to radical feminists to explain why it is not.

But even generously granting the assumption that a correlation
does
exist between pornography and violence, what would such a correlation tell us? It would certainly not indicate a cause-and-effect relationship. It is a fallacy to assume that if A can be correlated with B, then A causes B.

Such a correlation may indicate nothing more than that both are caused by another factor, C. For example, there is a high correlation between the number of doctors in a city and the number of alcoholics there. One doesn't cause the other; both statistics are proportional to the size of the city's population.

Those researchers who draw a relationship between pornography and violence tend to hold one of two contradictory views on what that connection might be. The first view is that porn is a form of catharsis. That is, the more pornography we see, the less likely we are to act out our sexual urges. The second view is that porn inspires imitation. That is, the more pornography we see, the more likely we are to imitate the sexual behavior it represents.

Researchers who favor the catharsis theory point to studies, such as the one conducted by Berl Kutchinsky, which found that an increased availability of pornography in Denmark correlated with a decrease in the sex offenses committed there.

Radical feminists advocate the imitation theory, the idea that men will try to recreate the situations they see on a screen. The first comment to make about this claim is how insulting it is to men. Radical feminists seem to believe that men are soulless lumps of plasticine on which pornographers can leave any imprint they wish.

Although antiporn feminists cry out against viewing pornography, they must admit that there is at least one group of people who can survive such exposure without harm-namely, themselves. In their zeal, radical feminists view more pornography than the general population. Moreover, they dwell upon the small percentage of pornography that depicts violence. Either they are wonder women or they are human beings who have a normal response to brutal pornography: They are repelled by it.

Radical feminists are well aware of how disturbing most people find brutal pornography. This is precisely the reaction they count on when they show pornographic slides and films at lectures and debates. They count on the fact that most people are revolted by graphic violence and brutality. Ironically, this revulsion has sometimes worked against the antiporn cause. Several years ago in New York City, the group Feminists Fighting Pornography was ordered to remove a display of pornography that it had set up in Grand Central Terminal. Commuters were upset by 60

the sight of it. The New York Civil Liberties Union successfully defended the feminists' right to display pornography.

Despite the evidence that most people are repelled by pornography that depicts violence, radical feminists parade anecdotal studies that draw the connections they desire. For example, interviews in which rapists confess they consumed violent pornography before committing their crime.

Even if these stories are credible, they indicate nothing more than that men who rape may also tend to enjoy brutal images of sex. They say nothing about the reactions of men in general.

There is no reason to believe that pornography causes violence. There is a growing body of evidence that indicates that pornography either acts as a catharsis or has little impact at all.

Pornography is violence against women.

The third accusation antiporn feminists hurl is that pornography, in and of itself, is an act of violence. It is violence committed against every woman, whether or not she is personally exposed to it.

The type of violence done to the woman changes, however, depending on her relationship to pornography. The most direct harm is said to be inflicted on the women most directly involved.

Women who participate in the production of pornography are said to be victimized in one of several ways: They are physically coerced into pornography; they are so psychologically damaged that they are rendered incapable of giving informed or "real" consent; they have been forced by capitalism to sell their bodies for the camera.

Women outside the industry are also considered to be victims because if they consume it, they reinforce their own oppression; and, even if they do not consume it, they must live in the atmosphere of terror that pornography creates throughout society. Let's consider these accusations one by one:

Women are physically coerced into pornography.

My research indicates the contrary. But I would never deny the possibility that coercion exists.

Every industry has its abuses.

Nevertheless, the claim of "coercion into pornography" generally rests on a few horrifying and well-publicized accounts by women who had worked in the industry. After leaving, they claimed they had been coerced into performing pornographic acts. These accounts must not be cavalierly dismissed.

Nor should they be given a rubber stamp of acceptance. If the specific charges are found to be true, this truth should not be allowed to drown out the voices of women who have benefited from pornography.

If a specific charge of "coercion into pornography" is proven true, those who used force or threats to make a woman perform should be charged with kidnapping, assault, and/or rape. Any pictures or films that result from the coercion should be confiscated and burned, because no one has the right to benefit from the proceeds of a crime.

What radical feminists propose, however, offers women less protection than they already have.

Radical feminists insist that "coercion into pornography" is a civil rights violation, a form of discrimination against women. According to them, a man who kidnaps a woman, imprisons her, and forces her to pose at gunpoint has not committed a criminal act, but a civil one. Instead, feminists should be calling for the full enforcement of criminal laws.

Women in porn who have not been physically coerced have been so traumatized
by patriarchy that they cannot give "real" consent. And the absence of real
consent is the equivalent of coercion.

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This is the second way in which women in the industry are said to be victims of violence. They are said to be so brainwashed by white male culture that they cannot render consent. Thus, they are
de facto
coerced.

Consider how arrogant this statement is.

Although women in pornography
appear
to be willing, antiporn feminists see through this charade. They know that no psychologically healthy woman would agree to the humiliation and degradation of pornography. If agreement seems to be present, it is only because the women have been so emotionally beaten down they have fallen in love with their own oppression. In order to restore real choice to these victims, feminists must rescue them from themselves. In other words, any woman who poses for pornography is psychologically damaged, by definition, and her avowed wishes need not be respected. Like a mentally ill patient, she is incapable of acting in her own interests because she is incapable of knowing what they are.

If a woman enjoys performing sex acts in front of a camera, it is not because she is a unique human being who reasons and reacts from a different background or personality. No. It is because she is psychologically damaged and no longer responsible for her actions. She must, in effect, become a political ward of radical feminists, who will make the correct choices for her.

This is more than an attack on the right to pose for pornography. It is a denial of a woman's right to choose anything outside the narrow corridor of choices offered by political/sexual correctness.

The right to choose hinges on the right to make a "wrong" choice. Freedom of religion entails the right to be an atheist. Freedom of speech involves the right to be silent. Freedom of choice requires the right to make bad choices-that is, a decision society considers to be wrong. After all, society is not going to stop a woman from doing what it wants her to do.

But radical feminists are going one step farther than simply denying that women have the right to make wrong choices; they deny that women have the
ability
to choose.

How do radical feminists explain away the abundant and clear evidence of consent-contracts, witnesses, personal testimony, releases,
etc.
provided by these women? They handle this sticky issue by redefining consent so as to make it unrecognizable. According to the Minneapolis ordinance drafted by MacKinnon and Dworkin, for example, the following factors do not indicate the presence of consent: that the woman is of age; that she showed no resistance; that a contract was signed and witnessed; that payment was received.

According to radical feminists, even if a woman in pornography signed a contract with full knowledge, she can sue on the grounds of coercion. What legal implications does this have for a woman's right to contract? What legal weight will future negotiators give to a woman's signature? Women's contracts will be legally unenforceable; their signature will become a legal triviality.

For centuries, women have struggled against tremendous odds to have their contracts taken seriously. At great personal expense, they stood up and demanded the right to own land, to control their own wages, to retain custody of their children-in other words, to become legally responsible for themselves and for their property. A woman's consent must never again become legally irrelevant.

Yet this is what radical feminists propose to do. They claim that women are so weak-willed and feeble-minded that cultural pressures easily overwhelm their free will and make them into the playthings of patriarchy. Consider one fact:
Everyone is
formed by his or her culture. The very language with which we speak and formulate thought comes from our culture. And certainly there are times when cultural pressures lead people to make bad choices. But to say that any 62