XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography (14 page)

None of these factors were considered legal evidence of consent. In essence, the ordinance prohibited the possibility of consent.

Then, Dworkin and MacKinnon orchestrated the public hearings at which the ordinance was aired. They called only the witnesses they wished to hear from. Sex-abuse victims and social scientists gave long testimonies about the horrors of pornography. Civil rights advocates, gay activists, and the city attorney's office were excluded from the hearings. The ordinance passed with a speed that precluded any real examination of its implications. The mayor vetoed it.

The next target for an antipornography ordinance was Indianapolis. There, conservative antiporn groups had been active, but not successful. The Republican mayor of Indianapolis, William Hudnut III, was also a Presbyterian minister. He saw the Minneapolis Ordinance as a prototype, and the perfect means to rid his city of pornography. Again, MacKinnon was hired as a consultant. Again, the ordinance passed.

Publishers and booksellers challenged the law in Federal District Court; they won. The case was appealed. In
1984,
the court ruling
American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut
[9] overthrew the ordinance as unconstitutional. The court was particularly concerned about prohibiting such vaguely defined images as the "sexually explicit subordination of women"; indeed, the ordinance's descriptions were so vague as to constitute prior restraint. That is, pornographers and vendors would have to censor themselves for fear of crossing some unknown line. Attempts to introduce similar ordinances in Los Angeles, Suffolk County, Long Island, and both Cambridge and Brookline, Massachusetts, proved unsuccessful.

Recently, however, courts have begun to look more favorably on antipornography arguments.

For example, in its 1991 ruling on
Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc.
[10] the U.S. Supreme Court held that nude dancing constitutes expression under the First Amendment and recognized that such dancing has been an important part of cultures throughout history. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court upheld a complete ban on nude dancing within a certain community, because the majority of that community found it morally offensive.

In February 1992, the Canadian Supreme Court embodied the MacKinnon/Dworkin perspective on pornography into law through its decision on
Butler v. Regina.
[11] It restricted the importation of material that "degrades" or "dehumanizes" women. The Court recognized pornography to be an aspect of free expression, but ruled that the prevention of harm to women was more important than freedom of speech.

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Ironically, this obscenity law has been used almost exclusively against gay, lesbian, and feminist material.

Also in 1992, Senate Bill 1521-the Victims of Pornography Compensation Act-was being considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee. To its credit, one of the most influential voices against the censorship of pornography came from another faction within the feminist movement: liberal feminism. A news release from the liberal organization Feminists for Free Expression [FFE] described S.1521:

The bill would have allowed crime victims to sue for unlimited money damages the producer, distributor, exhibitor and retailer of any book, magazine, movie or music that victims claim triggered the crime that harmed them.... It is because FFE is so concerned about violence that we protested this red herring distraction from its causes. A rapist, under this bill, could leave court a free man while the owner of a local bookstore could not. [12]

Largely because of FFE's concerted and vocal opposition, S.1521 was dropped from the Senate agenda.

The criticism of liberal feminists has posed something of a dilemma for radical feminists. They have been able to contemptuously dismiss women who are sex workers, because these women have so little status within society that few people listen to them anyway. It is more difficult to ignore liberal feminists, many of whom have been prominent within the movement for years.

When the pornography actress Marilyn Chambers defends pornography, she can be written off as a brainwashed victim who has fallen in love with her own oppression. When the President of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Nadine Strossen, argues against censorship in her book
Defending Pornography
(1995), a different line of dismissal must be taken.

Radical feminists disown their liberal counterparts and accuse them of working for the interests of patriarchy.

In the anthology
Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism
(1990), editor Dorchen Leidholdt claims that feminists who believe women make their own choices about pornography are, in fact, spreading "a felicitous lie" (p. 131). Wendy Stock accuses free speech feminists of identifying with their oppressors "much like ... concentration camp prisoners with their jailors"-(p 150).

Valerie Heller proclaims that sexual liberals "create myths to disguise and distort the effect of exploitative, abusive behavior ... placing the responsibility for the continued oppression of the victim on the victim herself" (p. 157). Andrea Dworkin accuses her feminist critics of running a "sex protection racket," and maintains that no one who defends pornography can be a feminist (p.

136)." [13]

Liberal feminists who dare to speak up meet with abuse and dismissal. Antipornography feminists deal with the liberal threat of sexual tolerance by simply defining liberals out of the movement. That's one way to eliminate dissent.

If radical feminist attacks against pornography spill over onto liberal feminists or women in the industry, so be it. These women can be redefined as traitors or as "victims" who require saving, whether or not they want salvation.

Women who actively enjoy pornography, or who speak out for the rights of pornographers, are treated with special contempt. At a National Woman and the Law Conference in 1985, for example, Catharine MacKinnon debated Nan Hunter, of Feminists Against Censorship Taskforce. MacKinnon accused Hunter of being there "to speak for the pornographers, although that will not be what she says she is doing." She left no doubt that long-time activist Hunter was no longer a sister feminist.

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Radical feminists have been distanced from their liberal counterparts. Ironically, however, they have become allied with another group of women: conservatives. Conservative women have been the
bete noire
of the feminist movement, because they oppose the full slate of feminist goals, from abortion to comparable worth. But these same women are willing to join hands with radical feminists on pornography. They are willing to march side-by-side in order to "take back the night." Why? Because they can co-opt the radical feminist agenda and use it for their own gains.

In Indianapolis, for example, the antipornography ordinance was backed by the religious right wing
and
the radical feminists. Local feminist groups gave it no support whatsoever. They spoke out against it. In Suffolk County, New York, the ordinance was put forward by an anti-ERA male legislator who claimed to be restoring to "ladies ... what they used to be."

Radical feminists have not only allied with conservatives; they have also called for help from their arch enemy, the patriarchal state. They have asked the state to provide legislation to restrict sexual expression. They have asked the patriarchal state for protection. It is a bewildering sight to see radical feminists appealing to a system that they themselves condemn as irredeemably corrupt. Yet, in
Only Words,
MacKinnon applauds the court system, whenever she perceives an advantage in its rulings. It is to the state that radical feminists now appeal for protection against pornography. Do they truly believe that women, not men, will pass and enforce the laws that result?

Even more frightening: Some liberal feminists-feminists like Ellie Smeal, president of the Fund for a Feminist Majority -are pushing aside their free speech principles and campaigning for antipornography laws. In the March 12, 1993, issue of
The New York Times,
Smeal declared of pornography, "I am not going to just sit here and ignore it any longer. The violence toward women is there, everywhere.... I don't want a police state.... But to do nothing, to not enter out of fear is wrong. We have to get beyond, `We can't do anything,' and do something." [14]

That "something" is the quick fix of censorship.

RADICAL FEMINISM'S SPECIFIC ACCUSATIONS AGAINST PORNOGRAPHY

Let's turn to the specific accusations being hurled at pornography. Porn is being attacked on three basic levels:

1. Pornography is morally wrong.

2. Pornography leads directly to violence against women.

3. Pornography, in and of itself, is violence against women. It is violence in several ways: a. Women are physically coerced into pornography;

b. Women involved in the production of pornography who have not been physically coerced, have been so psychologically damaged by patriarchy that they are incapable of giving informed or "real" consent;

c. Capitalism is a system of "economic coercion" that forces women into pornography in order to make a living;

d. Pornography is violence against women who consume it, and thereby reinforce their own oppression; and,

e. Pornography is violence against women, as a class, who must live in fear because of the atmosphere of terror it creates.

Do these accusations stand up under examination?

Pornography is morally wrong.

It is said that pornography is the way men subjugate women, in order to maintain their own position of power. It is the way men degrade and objectify women. Radical feminists avoid 57

words like
good
or
evil.
They prefer to use more politically/sexually correct terms like
oppression
and
exploitation.

Let's examine the second accusation first: the idea that pornography is degrading to women.

Degrading is
a subjective term. Personally, I find detergent commercials in which women become orgasmic over soapsuds to be tremendously degrading to women. I find movies in which prostitutes are treated like ignorant drug addicts to be slander against women. Every woman has the right-the need!-to define degradation for herself.

Next it is charged that pornography objectifies women: It converts them into sexual objects.

Again, what does this mean? If taken literally, it means nothing at all because objects don't have sexuality; only human beings do. But the charge that pornography portrays women as "sexual beings" would not inspire rage and, so, it has no place in the antiporn rhetoric.

Usually, the term
sex objects
means that women are shown as "body parts"; they are reduced to being physical objects. What is wrong with this? Women are as much their bodies as they are their minds or souls. No one gets upset if you present a women as a brain or as a spiritual being.

Yet those portrayals ignore women as physical beings. To get upset by an image that focuses on the human body is merely to demonstrate a bad attitude toward what is physical. If I concentrated on a woman's sense of humor to the exclusion of her other characteristics, would this be degrading? Why is it degrading to focus on her sexuality? Underlying this attitude is the view that sex must be somehow ennobled to be proper.

And, for that matter, why is a naked female body more of an "object" than a clothed one?

Pornography, it is said, presents false images about women. Pornography is a lie, because it presents women as large-breasted nymphomanics. If this accusation is true, the remedy is not to ban pornography, but to recruit a wider variety of women into the industry.

Moreover, if accuracy is the hallmark of whether or not images should be banned, then much more than pornography should be censored. For example, women in the ads in
Working Woman
tend to be underweight, casually sophisticated, young businesswomen. Doesn't accuracy demand that they be a little overweight, with a strand of hair out of place, perhaps even a bit frumpy? Do housewives feel degraded when they see the Work
ing Woman
caricature of a politically aware woman?

If society is to regulate depictions because they disturb some people, then we are reduced to the level of Andrea Dworkin, who castigates the painter Goya for exploiting women in his nude studies. Freedom means self-fulfillment. It also means putting up with other people's irritating pursuit of the same. It means being confronted by disturbing images and ideas.

Yet the charge lingers: Pornography is immoral. And, by some standard not my own, I'm sure it could be judged so. I find pornography to be morally acceptable and desirable, but I admit this is an open debate. The significant legal question, however, is, What does it matter? Why should the law concern itself with whether or not pornography is moral?

Underlying the antiporn assault is an assumption regarding the purpose of law in society. And, since legal sanctions are being suggested, it is useful to examine this assumption.

There are two basic and fundamentally antagonistic views regarding the purpose of law in society. The first one, to which individualist feminists subscribe, is that the law should protect rights. It should protect self-ownership. "A woman's body, a woman's right" applies not only to abortion, but to every peaceful activity a woman engages in. The law should come into play only when a woman initiates force or has force initiated against her.

The second view of the purpose of law is shared by both conservatives and antiporn feminists. It is that the law should protect virtue. Law should enforce proper moral behavior.

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From this perspective, certain acts (or images or words) are wrong. They ought to be suppressed whether or not they constitute peaceful behavior. Classic examples are laws against blasphemy, pornography, and homosexuality. Because men should not regard women as "body parts," the law should discourage this tendency. By this standard, laws come into play whenever there has been a breach of public morality-read, breach of "women's class interests."