If you’re familiar with my academic career, you’ll know I’ve written about pornography. But who am I kidding? I’m not famous.
You can find this writing in a book chapter and an article.
Both of these works are broadly accessible to audiences both inside and outside of academic philosophy. The article is a major expansion of the material in the book chapter, and so that’s probably the best place to look.
My perspective on these issues is not exactly abstract. I’m thinking about it from within an ongoing debate over whether and how pornography subordinates, and perhaps oppresses or marginalizes, women. This is a debate conducted largely within academic literature. I’d like to help move it beyond academia.
I recently discovered a blog entry about my article. Someone thought it interesting enough to write about. And so I wanted to reflect on my past work and how I might approach it several years later. It was fun to read the blog entry and get another person’s take on the ‘theory’ I’ve developed.
In his blog entry, Danaher describes my view as a ‘contextualist’ view. I think that’s fine. ‘Contextualist’ has a certain amount of baggage within analytical philosophical traditions, so it’s probably not my first choice for a term. I’d probably use something that better locates my view within the traditions of, say, Hubert Dreyfus, Ian Hacking, or Sally Haslanger. But ‘contextualist’ isn’t a party foul.
I don’t think there’s any special expertise required to get this stuff, even what I was writing qua academic philosopher. That said, even I use jargon. But I can summarize the work with even less appeal to philosophical language and jargon than I used in my book or article.
My Approach to Pornography
The view I’ve developed is roughly this: the literal content of works of pornography play only a very minor role in what pornography does and how it does it. The content includes things like the images, videos, or sex acts happening in the images or videos. What is consequential is the broader social and material environment within which people view these works. This includes things like the social norms, hierarchical structures, institutions, infrastructure, gender and/or racial norms, and class structures involved.
Another component of my view is that the use of these works matters, but I won’t belabor this point. I suspect readers won’t have a difficult time figuring out what pornography is typically used for. We don’t need to go there.
Other philosophers tend to aim at analyzing and criticizing either the production of pornography or the content of pornographic works. This, I think, is misguided. The works themselves often do contribute to the subordination of women, but in this respect there’s nothing unique about pornography. And even when it does contribute, the content is not what’s doing the work.
An Example
The vast majority of pornography probably has fewer and less severe negative social effects than things like ‘sexy’ advertisements found in ordinary magazines people purchase every day at Walmart or Target. It has fewer and less severe negative social effects than ‘sexy’ billboards on the highway or sidewalk.
And, unless you’re operating under an unusual or idiosyncratic definition of ‘pornography’, these ‘sexy’ ads and billboards don’t count. I’m not address the issue of definitions in this post. It’s an ongoing debate of its own.
What these very widely viewed advertisements do is link to a broader social system where women are pressured into conforming to certain social norms. These norms are widely known. People expect women to be relatively hairless, thin, conventionally attractive people. People expect women to be sexually available or enticing to (especially, though perhaps not exclusively) men.
Pornography can and does do this, too. But it’s a less widely viewed, and thereby probably less impactful, form of these advertisements.
From a different angle, when people view pornography from within an affirmative, supportive environment, it’s unlikely to have these negative social effects. In these contexts, it probably even has significant positive social effects.
Political Implications
The political upshot is that attempts to regulate pornography often fail. In particular, attempts to regular pornographic content probably always fail.
At the time I was first writing on these topics, I singled out Iceland as an example of a country that has taken a harsh regulatory approach to fighting pornography. At the time, Iceland was implementing even stronger regulations against Internet pornography. I predicted that Iceland’s new regulations would fail. A few years later, those new regulations have indeed been a predictable failure.
We can ameliorate or root out the ill-effects of pornography in myriad ways. Probably none of these ways involve attending much to content. Most involve broader attention to social and material environments.
I included in both the book and the paper a discussion of feminist pornography as an example of one type of movement that’s aimed at creating social and material change. That doesn’t necessarily mean readers should go out and start producing or watching feminist pornography, though you can if that’s your thing.
Certain kinds of sadomasochist pornography probably serves a similar function. I’m referring to the type located within an environment that stresses the safe, sane, and consensual norms developed within many sadomasochist communities. The article on Iceland that I linked above suggests that, at least in Iceland, sadomasochist pornography viewership has already achieved gender parity. I wonder if that’s true in other countries.
How about it, social science? Generate more studies?
Postscript
The relevant philosophical literature is rich and potentially difficult to navigate. For a contextualist approach that more closely matches what analytic philosophers typically mean by ‘contextualist,’ I’d recommend checking out what Jennifer Saul has written on this topic. The classic (and overall fantastic) paper of the genre is Rae Langton‘s Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts.
Another Postscript, June 2019
I’m happy to report that there’s new philosophical literature on pornography, and that literature is moving in exactly the right direction. I’m referring to Mari Mikkola’s recent book, Pornography: A Philosophical Introduction. Mikkola takes these points about contexts and environment very seriously. As a result, I think she has written what’s now the definitive philosophical introduction to pornography.
