Is Pornography Harmful? Arguments Against Censorship

Introduction

By and large, pornography is not harmful. Pornography has been stigmatized — as have many expressions of sexuality — but for the most part, performers are adults acting of their own volition, and consumers are finding an outlet for their sexuality. The stigma and judgment associated with pornography, to the point where the expression of human sexuality is considered harmful by some, is unfortunate. This essay constructs the case that pornography is not harmful.

For much of the 20th century, pornography was considered harmful, and many perspectives were put forward to support that idea. Some were rooted in the vestiges of Victorian-era prudishness, which regarded nudity and the human form as vulgar. Those perspectives are fairly easy to dismiss as cultural or religious oddities — believing something to be harmful and it actually being so are not the same argument at all.

Through the 1980s and early 1990s, studies were produced promoting the idea that pornography was harmful. These views seemed rooted in entirely different ideals. The prudish sensibility of the era — a time that also saw warning labels placed on music cassettes — appeared to be a conservative reaction against the free-spirited 1960s and 1970s. But feminists were simultaneously launching their own campaigns against pornography. The prevailing view was that pornography was produced by the dominant group (males) for its own consumption, and therefore conformed to the most base forms of female subjugation (Delgado & Stefancic, 1992). Pornography was, in essence, viewed through the lens of female depiction in media generally — a natural extension of a dominant group controlling how other groups are portrayed. Further, there was typically a conflation of pornography in the generic sense with pornography that was specifically violent and degrading, a subset that certainly exists but does not define all pornography by any means. Court cases of the time supported the belief that viewing pornography was inherently harmful because of its depictions of acts considered degrading (Brannigan & Goldenberg, 1986).

Principles of Harm

The legal and social environment surrounding pornography in the 1980s and 1990s highlights some of the key arguments made in favor of the harm thesis. First is the argument that pornography is violent and degrading. Such pornography exists, but it is not the sum total of all pornography; at best, such material represents a small percentage of total output. Second is the idea that pornography harms those who view it, because they internalize a view of degradation that leads to worse behaviors toward women than would otherwise occur. The third idea is that pornography harms performers — specifically female performers — on the grounds 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 flaws either in the studies cited in the case or in the judge's application of those studies. In each instance, they found little serious evidence to support the idea that pornography is harmful or that exposure to pornography causes men to be more aggressive or more tolerant of negative actions toward women. The authors essentially advanced a neutral argument: that there was insufficient evidence to draw conclusions about pornography's effect on society. The feminist view is better elaborated by Dyzenhaus (1992), who clarifies that the feminist position is not an opposition to the depiction of sexually explicit acts per se, but rather to the depiction of female subjugation to males — women as objects of sexual desire with little else to offer.

McKee (2010) presents findings that contradict the idea of pornography as harmful. Key findings include that exposure to pornography does not correlate with negative attitudes toward women, and that one of the more damaging elements of the way society treats pornography is that teenagers are expected to pretend ignorance in order to satisfy adult expectations, 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: suppression tends to produce unhealthier behaviors than the embrace of sexuality and the pursuit of healthy sexual expression.

There is a further argument to be made here. Whatever issues exist with pornography, women face discrimination across many other domains and lack control over how they are depicted in non-pornographic media as well. This is somewhat tangential to whether pornography is harmful, but it is worth noting that the question should be taken in the context of how women are depicted in media broadly, since any harm attributable to pornography is not independent of other depictions. Strossen's position, as outlined in Gelber and Stone (2016), is that suppression of pornography would do little to advance women's interests, while simultaneously suppressing a wide range of sexual expression. Furthermore, driving pornography underground would be antithetical to granting stronger rights, equality, and dignity to women working in the industry.

A broader claim in this discourse is that "women are silenced by pornography" and that women are "unable to stop unwanted acts of sex or violence through the utterance of words like 'no' or 'stop'" because of pornography (Gelber and Stone, 2016). There is no reasonable evidence provided to support such claims. Pornography is not necessarily produced only by men, and it is a depiction of acts — not something capable of blocking speech. Pornography may not always reflect a woman's voice, but that is not the same thing as silencing women, and it is a logical fallacy to equate the two. Indeed, there is a notable absence in this discourse of queer perspectives (Thompson, 2015), which observe that the feminist critique views pornography as the product of patriarchal heterosexuality — a view that is inherently limiting and excludes a significant portion of pornography that is actually produced.

According to Gelber and Stone, the apparent logic of such arguments is rooted in arguments against hate speech. Again, a logical fallacy is at work: hate speech is direct speech against an identifiable other. Pornography is not hate speech, and it does not constitute incitement to hate. Even at its worst, it depicts degradation — but that is not incitement to hate either. There is a leap being made here for which there is no rational basis. Pornography may in general be produced by men in accordance with their vision of sexuality, but there is, first, nothing preventing women from producing their own pornography, and second, an incorrect assumption that material produced by one group is by definition harmful to other groups. The assumption that all pornography is inherently violent and degrading appears to underlie this position, despite no hard evidence being offered to support it.

References

Brannigan, A. & Goldenberg, S. (1986). Social science versus jurisprudence in "Wagner": The study of pornography, harm and the law of obscenity in Canada. The Canadian Journal of Sociology, 11(4), 419–431.

Delgado, R. & Stefancic, J. (1992). Pornography and harm to women: "No empirical evidence."

Dyzenhaus, D. (1992). John Stuart Mill and the harm of pornography. Ethics, 102(3), 534–551.

Gelber, K. & Stone, A. (2016). Constitutions, gender and freedom of expression: The legal regulation of pornography.

McKee, A. (2010). Does pornography harm young people? Australian Journal of Communication, 37(1), 17–36.

Thompson, J. (2015). Invisible and everywhere: Heterosexuality in anti-pornography feminism. Sexualities, 18(5/6), 750–764.