Pornography and Feminism: The Case Against Censorship
By Feminists Against Censorship
Edited by Gillian Rodgerson and Elizabeth Wilson
Lawrence and Wishart, 1991
79 pp. $15 pb
Reviewed by Tracy Sorensen
Is there evidence of a direct link between the use of pornography and violence against women? Can porn be defined as sexual vilification and therefore compared to racial vilification, and legislated against in the same way? Is it true that "porn is the theory and rape the practice", as US feminist author Andrea Dworkin maintains?
This small book — an extended essay which can be read in one sitting — argues "no" to all these questions, and sets out a feminist case against the censorship of pornography.
The British group Feminists Against Censorship argues that writers such as Dworkin have painted a very lurid picture of pornography, as if it were all images of rape, sadism and degradation in which women are the victims. This is not the case, says FAC. There is a lot of "soft" porn about, and in this, a continuum with representations of women in many other genres.
The stereotype of passive women and active men appears, they say, in everything from Vogue magazine to the novels of Henry Miller. "This is not to say that pornography is good, simply that most of it is no worse than a great deal of the rest of the patriarchal and misogynist culture which it reflects."
FAC argues that a pro-censorship stance not only involves simplistic and counterproductive theories about human behaviour and the oppression of women, but leaves an opening for anti-sex moralists to leap in and move the discussion into non-feminist territory.
Rodgerson and Wilson outline attempts in the US to define pornography as sex discrimination and introduce laws allowing women to sue for damages. Australian feminist lawyer Jocelynne Scutt has argued that such legislation should be introduced here.
The legal definitions drawn up in the US in 1984 by Andrea Dworkin and lawyer Catherine McKinnon, says FAC, include "vague and all inclusive" phrases such as "the sexually explicit subordination of women" and "postures of sexual submission".
The results so far show that such phrases tend to be interpreted in non-feminist ways by the moral right. (Getting around this problem by being more specific, however, would create massive loopholes, making the exercise pointless.) FAC notes that during commission hearings on proposed anti-porn legislation in New York, the feminist phrase "degrading to women" was continually converted to "degrading to femininity" by the men who ran the hearings.
So far, state legislation based on the McKinnon-Dworkin approach has been overturned in the Supreme Court on the grounds that it conflicts with the constitutional right to free speech.
Legislative efforts to control degrading images of women are not d project of changing basic structures of power", the authors conclude.
"The long efforts to understand the complexities of patriarchal culture and then to challenge and change it, get short-circuited by an approach that simply takes up one side of a polarized argument within and outside feminism — a side which has allies among reactionary forces, and which has lost sight of the wider aims of feminism."
Women, argues FAC, need "open and safe communication about sexual matters ... we don't need new forms of guilt parading under the banner of political correctness".
It's clear that the moral right is gathering steam in this country. Meanwhile, degrading images of women in popular culture proliferate. How can feminists deal with the complex issues these trends throw up? Almost every line of this solidly argued book has something pertinent to add.