by Pamela Paul
Pornography is degrading in its own way to men. In interviews, porn stars and strippers typically say they view their male patrons with revulsion and disrespect. They see men who frequent strip clubs as pathetic, egotistical, women-hating, superficial, stupid, out of control, predatory, or just plain rude. Yet men who use pornography have been stamped by the pornified culture as manly, virile, powerful, suave, and confident. They have been told that they’re “getting” women through the pages of magazines, the purchase of lap dances, the downloading of images. In reality, they are most certainly not getting any women while engaged in such pursuits. So why should men allow themselves to be manipulated in this way? And why shouldn’t men be allowed to speak out? If a man chooses not to go to a strip club for a bachelor party, not only out of respect for women but out of self-respect, he should be commended rather than mocked for his actions. If enough men did so decisively, pornography would no longer be fated for mass acceptance.
One of the greatest myths spread by the pornified culture is that all men look at pornography. Yet the only men who believed this to be true in interviews happen to be the men who looked at pornography themselves. According to the Pornified/Harris poll, only 27 percent of Americans agreed with the statement “All men look at pornography.” The truth is, despite what fans tell themselves about the ubiquity and necessity of porn, many men do not look at it, and their disinterest isn’t necessarily about religion or politics. Many men who do not look are neither asexual nor repressed, neither afraid nor unaware of pornography’s “appeal.” Yet expressing distaste or disinterest is considered shameful or foolish in a pornified culture. Those who oppose pornography are branded as pussies or wimps, cowed by women or afraid of their own sexuality. This is startling when you consider that, given most men’s preference for actual sex to pornography, to use pornography is to declare oneself amorously inept or impotent, unable to relate to women, socially and emotionally immature, unwanted, or lonely. If men truly prefer sex to porn, they should be allowed and encouraged to act that way.
The humiliation of using pornography back when it was a lot less anonymous and accessible wasn’t exclusively about religious guilt. It was about the embarrassing reality that using pornography denotes a lack of confidence in one’s manhood and insecurity in one’s sexuality. Women in pornography exist to tell men, “We want you”—we women of the Ivy League, we Hollywood starlets, we girls next door, we the blonde you could never get. A man’s sense of manhood is affirmed only by his acquiescence to the idea that he cannot get this woman in the real world, but needs to feel as though he can. Why should men be considered so pathetic as to need these forms of self-esteem trickery? Pornography is sold as something manly and adult, even though pornographic fantasy often stems from sorry episodes of adolescent rejection. It’s not just for their nubile beauty that men use pornography to get off on women who look like teenagers. It also serves an emotional need to prove themselves, to be able to say, “Look at me now, I can have you if I want.” Many men use pornography as a way to get back at the girls who rebuffed them during their adolescence—they still want to “get” the high school prom queen. Pornography allows men to feel better and stronger and more powerful than those women/girls, mirroring and mining their adolescent fear of emotions and vulnerability. Pornography allows men to fall backward into an arena in which sex is devoid of emotions and fear and risk. It coddles the grown man, then tells him to feel “manly” about his own regression.
In asking men to buy into its myths, pornography underestimates and assumes the worst in men. Most men are intelligent enough to distinguish material that celebrates women from material that denigrates women; they can recognize images that depict healthy sexuality and humanity and images that ridicule and cheapen sexuality and deprive participants of their humanity. It’s disrespectful of men’s capabilities to expect them to condone viewing pornography that quite clearly shows women in a negative light, doing things that men presume most women would not want to do—gag on semen, get doubly penetrated to the point of pain, be ejaculated on in derogatory ways—treated in so many ways like something less than human.
The pornography user might ask himself how comfortable he would be viewing such material with his teenage daughter or his mother, his sister, or his wife. There’s a reason for uneasiness that extends beyond the fact that for most men, as for women, sexuality and masturbation in particular are private matters. The material itself adds an unendurable aspect to public sharing. Few men want their wives to know precisely what they’ve become accustomed to getting off to. It’s usually a far cry from shared fantasies over pillow talk. Most men would not want their female boss at the office to know they spend evenings at home fantasizing over the humiliation of countless interchangeable female bodies. Most men take great pains to deny or rationalize it themselves. What if the lonely, isolated individual clicking away on his Internet browser were to log off not because he was forced to nor because he felt a sense of religious or puritanical guilt, but because he knows to stay online is self-defeating?
Women and the Reality of Pornography
Men are not the only ones who have been taught to seek a false sense of empowerment through pornography. Liberal female college students, third-wave feminists, and even female conservative realists of the “boys will be boys” school now argue that women deserve pornography, too. They claim that to “own” pornography is to make it theirs and that women empower themselves by harnessing their sexual wiles and using it to their advantage. In the same way that certain women’s groups have rallied behind prostitutes, demanding they be called “sex workers” and accorded labor rights, the pornography-as-empowerment movement sees no problem with women being bought for their bodies—as long as they are making the profit.
Indeed, pro-porn women are most definitely in favor of women raking in money for sex, and they angrily denounce those women who would have it otherwise. Pro-porn women such as Melinda Gallagher, founder of CAKE, accuse feminists of squelching women’s sexuality: “The imperialistic mentality of the anti-porn feminists, who came into women’s lives and said, ‘You shouldn’t like this and that’s bad and we’re gonna draw that line,’ created a lot of damage. CAKE is not going to buy into that mentality.”4 Tristan Taormino, a writer and director who bills herself as a “feminist pornographer,” travels to college campuses to speak out about women’s right to “pornify themselves.” At the first international conference on pornography in 1998, advocates on a panel called “Women and Pornography: Victims or Visionaries?” theorized that anti-porn women were more responsible for driving men and women apart than were their pro-porn counterparts. One went so far as to lay derogatory hardcore pornography at the feet of women who oppose pornography. “You’ve got them so scared sexually that they’re mad!” said Nina Hartley, a porn star who was featured in the film Boogie Nights. “They can’t get laid! They can’t get blow jobs! They can’t cum! That’s why you’re seeing more of these women getting dragged on their faces, and spit on, and having their heads dunked in the toilet. Men are mad!”5
When they’re not accusing anti-porn women of generating hardcore male pornography, many of the new feminist pornography purveyors claim to be subverting “patriarchal porn” with their own version of “alterna-porn.” Missy Suicide, the founder of the female-operated pornography Web site Suicide Girls, explains, “Sex and sexuality is [sic] nothing for a woman to be ashamed of, but for a long time it felt that way, even in feminism. It’s that old attitude that any time you take your clothes off you’re being objectified or exploited. I think the women on Suicide Girls are brave in saying, ‘I’m confident, I’m intelligent, and I don’t have a problem sharing my sexuality with the world. This is what a real body looks like, and it’s beautiful.’ This is what should be celebrated.”6 Of course, it is unclear where amid the naked poses women can be heard expressing intelligence or confidence. Nor is it clear that their message is getting through amid the barrage of male-oriented pornography out there.
There is something almost futile about the new alterna-porn sites, which, in featuring women who are less attractive to the mainstream man, are also vastly less popular than more stereotypical pornography Web sites. This lesson was learned the hard way when the Suicide Girls site was linked to Playboy.com for several months. Playboy.com members greeted the Suicide Girls’ untraditional bodies, piercings, and hipster hairstyles with anger and disgust.
Is it even desirable for women to become producers and consumers of pornography? Certainly there is no advantage to women’s sexuality becoming more visually cued so that women judge potential partners by their physical appearance to the same extent men do. Equality should come from elevating women to where men hold an advantage, not lowering them to share the costs of pornography with men. Even men who enjoy pornography recognize its degrading nature. One thirty-five-year-old who works in the used-car business and looks at pornography weekly said almost impatiently, “Of course pornography is degrading to women. They’re being used and that’s why I don’t like seeing porn where you can tell that they’re not enjoying it. If it seems like they’re enjoying it you can rationalize in your head while you’re looking at it that they’re enjoying it as much as the guy is…. I guess it’s possible she’s enjoying it, but I highly doubt it. Still, when you’re looking at porn, you just try not to pay too much attention to what the woman is thinking and what’s going beyond the scenes. Otherwise, you just won’t enjoy it at all.” By co-opting pornography, women will sink into the same pattern of denial and rationalization.
So why are women so eager to embrace porn? The women’s movement during the sixties, seventies, and eighties was accused of being elitist and of not understanding the needs, pressures, and desires of average American women and, in particular, poor, uneducated women. Part of the female pro-porn movement stems from an attempt to correct this alleged attitude. In their effort to be “nonjudgmental,” many younger feminists have become uncomfortable condemning pornography when its participants and stars are largely women who choose their work out of financial desperation. Embracing pornography has become almost a new form of political correctness—heaven forbid that someone might appear to “denounce” another person’s sexuality or “chosen” profession. Commenting on the university administration’s acceptance of Harvard’s pornographic magazine H Bomb, one of its female founders explained, “I guess they got past their fear of porn.” Such phrasing is carefully chosen. Rather than be opposed to pornography for ethical, feminist, or humanist reasons, the only opposition one could have to pornography is fear—that is, phobia as in homophobia. Pornography proponents have even taken to calling their opponents “pornophobic.” In other words, to disapprove of pornography is to be intolerant of other lifestyles, and people who disapprove of pornography are just as bigoted as homophobes. And naturally, this accusation of intolerance applies only to those who oppose pornography, not those who perpetuate it.
In other ways, the pro-pornography movement among women is more reactive than proactive. For years, women who fight for women’s rights—and especially women who oppose pornography—have been accused of having no sense of humor. If they could just laugh it off, they would realize pornography is fine, their opponents argued. Many women have bought into this absurd proposition, accepting the idea that if you don’t find porn funny or amusing or ironic, you just don’t get it. Anti-pornography feminists have also been accused of perpetuating a culture of victimization: by pointing out that many women who participate in the production of pornography suffer sexual and emotional abuse, pornography opponents supposedly turn these women into victims. Shouldn’t the real target of such accusations be the pornographers themselves?
Perhaps women who choose to participate in or consume pornography are making their own “choices.” But rather than make choices based on a regressive male ideal of sexuality and limited options, they could make choices based on something beyond body parts and financial desperation. Indeed, hypocrisy reigns in the pro-porn feminist movement. Why insist that it is okay for women to exploit other women, but when men do so, it is harm, harassment, or sexual crime? Some pro-porn feminists remain opposed to prostitution, failing to see the thin line that separates the two forms of sex for sale. Others advocate prostitution as well as pornography, yet are opposed to other forms of human sale, arguing against the sex slavery trade and championing labor rights. In all likelihood, many of those who suggest that pornography is about sexual liberation have probably not seen the kind of pornography that many, perhaps most, men find alluring: the glorification of male promiscuity and adultery, the subordination of women, the sexualization of pain, and even hardcore depictions of female torture. In this context, pornography is not about desire and fantasy; it’s about hostility and shame.
The pioneering feminists of the seventies anti-pornography movement were denounced as “radical” in their time; today, pro-porn feminists sometimes refer to their anti-porn counterparts as “conservative feminists.” Have women really progressed so far as to make the changes advocated in the seventies somehow retrograde?
Today, the next generation seems all too ready to mock or reject arguments against pornography without giving them serious thought. The truth is, we have not moved forward or beyond those supposedly outdated ideas—we’ve merely resigned ourselves to them or rationalized them away. Women need to ask themselves, Is this progress or is it prurience? It’s sad that ours is a culture where the inclusion of Olympic athletes in Playboy magazine is considered a leap forward. That female athletic achievement is reduced to a tool for male masturbatory pleasure is a sentiment scoffed at or ignored. The idea that women will do anything for a buck and a fleeting moment of fame not only still exists, women willingly propagate it. While pornography purports to value the female body above all, it devalues it substantially. Selling one’s image online for paying customers doesn’t exactly reflect a strong sense of self-respect.
One of the more insidious attacks against women who oppose pornography accuses them of being prudish and uncomfortable with their own sexuality, “insecure,” and “jealous.” Terrified of being labeled “anti-sex,” “humorless,” or “feminist,” many women have neglected to stand up to pornography. Yet to be opposed to porn in no way means a person is opposed to sexuality in all of its healthy and positive forms. Women who are the most secure and confident, who have the temerity to stand up to such fallacious claims, are surely stronger than the women held in sway by the pornified culture’s myths. Moreover, the idea that a woman can’t “own” or “explore” her own sexuality without incorporating pornography into her life (as “sex-positive” pro-porn feminists would have it) is insulting, and an extraordinarily narrow and limiting view of sexuality.
The idea persists that people who dislike pornography are somehow repressed or wrestling under religious dogma or stymied by a conservative upbringing doesn’t hold true. Interviewing women for this book, I repeatedly heard things like, “I don’t mean to sound like a prude but … “bookending comments criticizing pornography, and sometimes chased down with the disclaimer, “And I’m liberal!” Sadly, women seem to have absorbed the message that to criticize pornography is to be uncool, unsexy, and reactionary. The reality is that women who are opposed to pornography or troubled by its effects on our society come from all walks of life and espouse a wide range of political ideologies. Many are attractive, happily single, sexually active, married, or fulfilled. They are strong, smart, opinionated women who, when it comes to articulating their feelings about pornography, feel silenced or fearful. They are reluctant to complain about pornography or to speak out about the subject. They are afraid to confront their boyfriends and husbands about it, nervous talking to their teenaged sons, cowed into accepting what they know in their hearts to be unacceptable.
Their reticence is understandable. It is tempting to acquiesce to the defensive cries of, “But it’s just naked women! It’s just sex!” For there is nothing wrong with naked women or sex. But pornography is not ju
st naked women, and it is not sex. The sexual acts depicted in pornography are more about shame, humiliation, solitude, coldness, and degradation than they are about pleasure, intimacy, and love. The word pornography comes from the Greek pome, which means prostitute or whore, and graphos, which means depiction or writing. Pornography is, at its core, the commercialization of women, turning men into consumers and women into a product to be used and discarded. If pornography were truly just about sex and naked bodies, there would be nothing to get upset over, but those who know better, those who bother to think while they gaze or who stop averting their eyes for a moment and address what’s on-screen in the cubicle behind them, should—and can—no longer be ignored.
The longer we ignore the problem of pornography, the worse it becomes. The dissemination and availability of pornography inevitably bring about increased individual and societal acceptance. Research shows that the more pornography one is exposed to, the more tolerant of pornography and indeed in favor of pornography one becomes.7 What was once softcore pornography has become mainstream; magazines that were once considered pornographic are now filed under “men’s lifestyle”; men’s lifestyle magazines have in turn aspired toward the pornographic. As porn creeps into the mainstream press and into popular culture, it crowds out other, more positive forms of sexual expression. It also keeps raising the bar higher for “real” pornography, which stretches to surpass every imaginable ethical, humanistic, and societal limit. Pregnant women become pornified, their naked torsos wrested from personal Web sites onto “pregnant porn” Web sites, incest becomes fetishized, child pornography blends with adult pornography into an ageless “teen porn” middle ground. Any sense of taboo dissipates in a free-for-all porn world.
