More on Pornography

I've already written a blog post on these comments by Andrew Koppelman, who makes some interesting points about pornography being protected speech. Koppelman notes this argument by Frederick Schauer:

"a refusal to treat hard core pornography as speech in the technical sense at issue is grounded in the belief that the prototypical pornographic item shares more of the characteristics of sexual activity than of communication." Such an item is a sexual surrogate, like a plastic or vibrating sex aid. It takes pictorial form only because that is another way of helping individuals achieve sexual gratification. "The mere fact that in pornography the stimulating experience is initiated by visual rather than tactile means is irrelevant if every other aspect of the experience is the same."

It seems to me that there is a basic mischaracterization here, which I think could stem, albeit unconsciously, from ideology (in its broadest sense): pornography has to do with sexual gratification, and sexual gratification, outside of certain strictly delineated parameters, is bad. While this is an idea that I think is common to all societies, it is the parameters that are at issue here, and we are dealing with some of the strictest -- those coming out of the traditions of the three great monotheisms, partriarchal, anti-female, and ultimately, strongly materialistic (after all, the whole idea of the importance of paternity is based on inheritance by "rightful" heirs). The conceptualization of pornography, then, is as a visual or verbal equivalent to (fill in your favorite sex toy). (Schauer's calling it an "item" is, to my way of thinking, a significant indicator of his bias here.)

I think Koppelman is quite correct in shifting the conceptualization of pornography from "sex aid" to fantasy, from "item" to "idea." This is not to say that the two are mutually exclusive, but that the approach is going to differ significantly.

Of course, given the ideological bias, it's quite obvious why we want to restrict or ban pornography -- it's "immoral." The uneasy realization that this reasoning may no longer be adequate is revealed by the attempts to tie pornography to violence against women and sex crimes. There is a recent study that I ran across a reference to (and if anyone can help me find a link, I'd be grateful) that indicates that viewing pornography actually reduces the likelihood of sexual crimes and crimes against women.

A broader inquiry that does include a similar conclusion is available in this essay, which includes a summary of some of the research in this area. It seems that contact with erotica -- i.e., viewing pornography -- can lead to a reduction in sexual anxiety and a reduction in sex crimes. (Dworkin and McKinnon, the researchers whom I seem to remember as most prominent among the anti-pornography faction, quite obviously have an agenda, and reasoned interpretation of research data doesn't seem to be included. Also, at least one of their studies included a non-representative population, from which they did the Paul Cameron trick: extending conclusions drawn from a selected population to the general population.)

What seems to be the key point in discussions of pornography and sexual violence is not "pornography per se leads to sexual violence" but the kind of pornography involved. Most of what we've heard on the subject has comes from advocates who want to restrict pornography, and it appears, from a cursory reading of sources, that those sources are dubious. It appears to me that we're dealing with a set of assumptions here that seriously need to be questioned. (This comes from my firm conviction that the state has no business regulating private morality.)

There may be more on this. You're welcome to make your own comments, as always. Besides, I'm sort of thinking out loud here, and it's helpful to have the feedback.