Just harmless fun

Advertising

It has been said that the most disingenuous argument in the pornography debate is that porn doesn’t influence people. If images don’t influence attitudes and behavior, how do we explain the existence of the advertising industry?

The first argument put forth by the report is based on advertising. It is argued that since ads are such big business, this proves that what we see affects our thoughts. Then it is claimed that pornography advertises harmful sexual behaviors, largely by the same emotional mechanism that commercials do products, and that the effect is the same, i.e. an increase in what is perceived to be harmful behavioral patterns.

It is hard to deny the part about ads. Of course they influence our decisions. They might even help us make bad ones. But does this mean that the ad industry should be controlled, or better yet, abolished in its entirety? The answer is no, since advertisements leave people with the possibility of rational choice, and by any reasonable moral theory, the responsibility for such a choice is the viewer’s.

The comparison with advertisements is in fact itself a bit misleading. Ads are engineered to push ideas on people, and people know it. They actively dislike ads, but are willing to tolerate them in exchange for services rendered. This is the essence of network television finance. Porn, however, is something people pay for. In this case, the market would immediately kill your business off if you tried to push something on people that they did not want. This is nicely exemplified by the attempts to sell moralizing TV programming to an audience which does not care for it. The choice is again the one that the viewers make, and no advertising is involved. People seem to fantasize about promiscuity, rapes and the lot; hence the dehumanizing qualities of pornography. There is no incentive on part of the pornographer to push anything other than what the people want, and what they want of porn is often less than admirable.

If ads are bad, that’s because they will end up paying for the mistake. If porn is bad, that is because it appeals to some specific, real interest of the viewer. Which one? While those opposed to pornography would probably answer prurient, I tend toward basic or unsatistified. If one looks at pornography, one is looking at the wrong place, as it is the viewer that is the key.

The report goes on to state that pornography is inherently dehumanizing, degrading and objectifying to women, touts promiscuity and, overall, gives a highly erroneous picture of human sexuality. Porn is then compared to fraudulent advertising. But there’s a problem with this argument: the kind of promiscuous, mind‐consuming sexuality portrayed in pornography does indeed exist, although it is quite rare. Similarly, there are tons of film and television depicting the kind of sexual demure that EiE so likes. It just isn’t called pornography, but quality programming. I think it is fair to say that, taken as a whole, what you see in the media faithfully represents human sexuality, or if we control for availability and exposure, might even be inclined to underrepresent the importance and misrepresent the standard of average human sexuality. For instance, if we hold realism as the standard against which we measure, can you point to quality programming which accurately portrays the average married couple’s two to three times per week frequency of intercourse, with the consistency and agonizing graphic detail miscarriages, divorces and deaths are being handled with? I tend to think that hardcore pornography simply balances for the general lack of explicit sexuality in primetime television.

Impact of Sexually Oriented Businesses

The curious toxic nature of pornography is also illustrated by the consistently negative impact that sex businesses have upon the areas in which they are located. This impact of sexually oriented businesses (SOBs) has been clearly demonstrated through land use studies.

The report now points out that businesses dealing in titillation usually attract what might be called the unfavorable element, lead to decreases in land values in their surrounding areas, and cause measurable increases in crime. The increase in sex crimes is given special attention. Then the report arrives at the conclusion that, given the evidence, porn must have something toxic or inherently harmful in it.

The funny thing is that later in the report, Oklahoma City is cited as an example of a noticeable decrease in rape rates after most of the city’s adult oriented businesses were closed down. This would be compelling evidence, except for the fact that a considerable parallel increase in rape rates in the area surrounding Oklahoma is also reported. So we can again argue that sexually oriented business simply draws in the criminal element without actually contributing to its rise. What was a compelling argument against porn becomes more of an argument for the wide decentralization/dezoning of adult business to avoid ghettoization. If people must go to the bad part of town in order to gratify an urge deemed reprehensible, it is likely that acts deemed reprehensible overall will gravitate there. This is the essence of why inner cities are born, and why liberal zoning and homogenized populations generally avoid the buildup of bad neighbourhoods. Want to avoid high rape rates? Put a porn store in every street corner instead of ten along a single street.

Besides, something harmful in the nature of [pornography], as the review puts it, is actually an accusation of causal relationship between pornography and rape, not just one of a statistical correlation between the presence of adult business and high rape statistics in an area. These are completely separate things. The first says porn begets rape, the second rape happens where porn is. The first is a causal argument (like anger makes murderers), the second a one about the typical circumstances of rape (like rape usually requires a man and a woman in close proximity to each other). People with sexual frustrations diffuse to where porn is, and are also more likely to commit rape. Poor impulse control, often facilitated by intoxicants, does not help either. So there might be a case for watching the immediate neighbourhood of porn outlets and/or liquor stores more closely for sexual assaults, but probably not for regulating pornography itself.

Empirical Research Studies

The characteristic message of pornography is that women are sluts […]. Empirical research sets out to test the obvious question: do users absorb the message that pornography is selling?

This section of the report gives pointers to both governmental and non‐governmental research supporting the view that pornography desensitizes people to sexual violence, causes sexual callousness, and tends to lead to dehumanization and objectification of females and female sexuality. It ends up supposedly debunking a couple of strawmen questioning the suggestive power of pornography.

Now, if the problem of pornography is that it dehumanizes and objectifies women, pornography which does not should be no problem, right? Wrong. To pornbusters all porn is the same, with no exceptions granted. Little redeeming value is perceived in the inverted gender stereotypes, occasional involved storylines, thoughtful contemplation of sexuality, or the fairly balanced view of it we often witness in, e.g., French erotic cinema. It is quite obvious that this assumed harmful message isn’t the real reason people have trouble with explicit sexuality. Otherwise the Christian Coalition would likely produce politically correct pornography for its members to view.

Now, if we still suppose that objectification is the real problem with porn, we get to nasty little problem: the idea that female sexuality is somehow radically different from its male counterpart. This is one form of the popular myth that women express their sexuality in a more emotional, comprehensive or subdued manner than the erection toting savage of the other sex. But this is hardly justified. In fact, it is more a remnant of the time before the sexual revolution when women weren’t as emancipated and in touch with themselves as they are now. Whereas once women were perhaps perceived as senseless household automata, with little role to play in porn except as boytoys, the precise same pornography interpreted against an age where women do take the initiative instead suggests mutual participation and active self‐determination on behalf of the female. This idea actually manifests itself in the gender roles one observes on the street: while it is true that male sexual attraction has all the graphical elements it’s purported to have, today’s young women display many of the same characteristics, proving that both sexes are now actively on the hunt. If one reads common pornographic imagery with this in mind, the woman takes on a considerably more active and participatory, perhaps even conspiratory, role. In fact, one must wonder whether perhaps the man is now the one who is reduced to a mere object. After all, he’s rarely given the center of attention, or indeed even power over the course of events shown on screen.

Then there is the question of whether ideas can ever be harmful enough so that censorhip is genuinely warranted. While I conceed that some forms of pornography, especially the violent kind, probably does affect people’s attitudes toward sexuality, and may even help perpetuate the myth that all women subconsciously crave to be raped, it is not at all clear that this can serve to make it a threat, yet alone give us a reason to attach strings (like the Surgeon General’s Warning) to it. After all, tons of stuff that affects our attitudes get through every day without anyone complaining loudly about it. Religious indoctrination in its various forms is very widespread and subtle, and certainly leads to various forms of bigotry, yet there is no need for censorship, or even worry. Why? Because the most efficient remedy to propaganda is not censorship, but correct information, shouted from the rooftops and validated by personal experience.

If we want people to better understand their and others’ sexuality, why not inform them more thoroughly? Encourage open discussion about and sharing of experiences in human sexuality? Teach children about what sex is, what it feels like and how to do it safely before they are exposed to it? Give the facts and consequences before the fiction in order to help people develop their critical ability in time to deal with porn when faced with it?

My recipe would be to tell young people that they alone decide about their own sexuality, not the sex crazed boyfriend, the overly protective parent, the nice man next door with tons of candy or, indeed, the concerned citizens of one’s home parish. When one learns this, the extension to other people’s rights is trivial. A critical, well‐informed mind is the best vaccine against any dubious information, and the effect is pretty much guaranteed to last throughout one’s lifetime. Plus, self‐determination always buys one more fun.

Correlational Studies

The advocates of pornography usually reject correlational evidence of pornography’s harm, saying it provides no evidence of causality. […] Setting the hurdle impossibly high is the same device the tobacco companies used for decades to evade the link between smoking and cancer.

Yep. Big Tobacco chose the wrong strategy and are paying the price. What they should have said instead is that people themselves are responsible for their own actions. Giving drunk driving and resulting harm as examples of effective correlational study isn’t enough either: drunkenness can be shown to directly cause slow reactions, which make surprising situations difficult to manoeuvre out of safely. No such impairment has been linked to pornography, and the statistics do not really stand on their own on issues like these. Besides, whoever said DUI offences are morally sound if no actual harm has yet been done, or even practically useful if we instead use performance evaluated against other traffic behaving completely by‐the‐book as the standard? Pornography cannot be said to have harmed anyone as long as one does not act out a harmful fantasy, and the effect filthy magazines can have are certainly outweighed after seeing the first lifted skirt with a nice smile on top. Porn does not tell people to rape any more than does a flashy appearance of the to‐be victim.

Even if correlational evidence can be used to establish an indisputable link between the availability of porn and increased crime rate, this in itself does not lead to the right to control pornography. Why? Because people have immutable rights. The people appearing in pornographic materials have the right to their trade and profession, just as tobacco companies have a right to churn out a toxic recreational. The people distributing pornography have their right to freedom of speech/information, which at least I have a very broad, dogmatic commitment to. To me and many cyber‐enthusiasts alike, bits are untouchable. The buyers of pornography have their right to control their own spending, and to enjoy the arousal they get from legally available material, just as people are allowed the enjoyment of getting drunk or getting beaten up in the boxing ring. The fact that collective harm is involved does not in itself give the society the right to intervene. Only when other people’s basic rights are directly violated, as is the case with sexual assaults, does prudence override these protections. In the case of pornography, you really do have to wait until something bad happens.

Media Studies

Since studies indicate that violence in the media affects violence in society, and since Hollywood believes positive media images can influence individuals to behave in a more responsible manner, one might reasonably expect sexual images to influence people also.

This part goes again into the issue of whether the media can affect people’s perceptions. This time the text goes on to say that increased media viewing is associated with more stereotyped views, especially about gender. Again we have to point to the multiplicity of perspectives available in the media, and the fact that counter‐propaganda is probably a better andidote.

The final paragraph is more interesting, though. There the issue of right versus moral obligation is raised: even if one has the right to produce harmful material, one does have a moral obligation not to do so. True enough. But as is always the case on a market, one has to appraise the positive side too in order to arrive at a dependable cost‐benefit analysis. The entertainment value of porn seems to be exceedingly high, a lot of people derive their income from the porn industry, and we might even propose that pornography, as an integral part of contemporary sexual expression, is an essential part of the right to sexual freedom of people who have no sexual outlets besides autoeroticism.

I suggest these more than offset the increase in risk of violence caused by porn, since the latter is indirect and statistical in nature, and sanctions for actually instantiating such trouble are already in place. Plus, we’re now talking about whether pornography should be produced, not whether it should be allowed. In questions such as these, one usually turns to the market for the answer. In this case, its answer is a resounding yes.

Experience of Clinical Psychologists

It is ironic that, while the pornographers make intellectual arguments that their product is harmless, businesses in the real world are dealing with its consequences.

This section deals with the way pornography supposedly manifests itself in the corporate world, ebbing away at productivity, enslaving executives and burdening psychologists. The concept of sex addiction is introduced, as are two basically Christian fundamental theories about a gateway progression through porn to sexual abuse and a family of common psychological malfunctions caused by consumption of pornography.

First of all, sex addiction is a fabrication—as a medical condition, it is precisely as plausible as food addiction or a disorder where the subject defecates compulsively. That is, it is a fact of life, not a disorder. Frigidity is a disorder, while sex addiction is a builtin, useful facility realized by the fact that orgasm is the most powerful natural reward known to man. As for sex addiction in the weaker sense, well, saying people like fun things is a bit circular. When people like something, they tend to come back for more.

Second, while I’ve already conceeded that pornography may change subjects’ views over what has been elevated to the status of ideal sexuality, and it may be that things like voyeurism, objectification, insecurities, trophyism and fear of intimacy can, in the extreme, result, these symptoms do not yet make for a disease. Viewing them as symptoms is based on a highly polarized viewpoint where consensual, life‐long, caring relationships are the ideal, while it is clear that a sustainable society can result even when sex is rid of all these attributes. It may be that pornography propagates a view of sexuality that seems cold and meaningless to us, but if that is what people fantasize about and want to buy, it is very difficult to show that there is something inherently wrong or mockworthy about it. One is lead to wonder whether sex could indeed be more enjoyable to people without the warm, fuzzy side.

Third, any gateway theory is a suspect even before knowing what it is being applied to. That flagrant a failure it has been in its primary application area of drug use. Treating pornography as a starting point to an addiction which escalates via desensitization to acting out violent impulses is tantamount to seeing a meal as the starting point to force feeding your neighbour. It may be that a certain amount of desensitization is going on, even if we consider that by far the majority of porn out there is of the soft, lingerie type. Acceptability of previously taboo forms of sexuality is a fact too, and a one to be expected considering how terribly limited the supply of pornographic material has been in the past. But acting out fantasies on unwilling subjects is a long shot. Even if notorious sexual predators are known to be voracious consumers of pornography, it isn’t evidence for the acting‐out part. Simply put, people may get funny ideas from the media, but if they act out, they either are extremely stupid (in which case they should have been educated better), are quite frustrated (in which case prostitution should be subsidized), are delinquent by nature (this we can’t correct; just lock ’em up for good) or have exceedingly poor impulse control (they should be brought up to behave and/or put under preemptive sedation).

Finally, let’s not forget that there are quite a number of people willing to participate in even the most eccentric of fantasies out there, if not else, then simply as a result of that spreading menace of desensitization. Acting out in a consensual setting ought not to be a problem as far as societal harm is considered. In keeping with this, the EiE report refers to problems in marriages. If people are in a wedlock and one of them does not approve of the desires of the other, it is one disastrous conflict. Perhaps the way to dissolve it would be to think twice about entering into such a restrictive contract…

Anecdotal evidence

Some say pornography doesn’t have any victims. I know better. I look into the tear‐filled eyes victims nearly every time I speak about the Enough is Enough campaign.

I seriously do not know why they bothered with this one. I mean, if you’re going to offer something as vague as anecdotal evidence to support your case, you could at least keep the personal opinions and sentimental mumbo‐jumbo of your chosen cult leader out of it…

Somehow I also suspect that the testimonies after testimonies of the misfortune caused by pornography cited by the report have not been sufficiently balanced with positive views over porn, that no attempt has been made to separate the harm supposedly caused by pornography and the harm caused by the incompatibility of the people’s background and worldview with it. As for the positives experiences, I’ve certainly had some, as you’ve probably gathered by now. But that is something I’m not going to go into; anecdotes rarely matter without other evidence to back them up, and even then they are of marginal use to an argument. Suffice it to say that the emotional pleadings of EiE do not sound plausible coming from the mouths of a bunch of religious fundamentalists on an anti‐porn crusade.

Factors Particularly Affecting Children

Although no evidence will ever sway some porn advocates to concede its potential for harm in the lives of adults, one might expect less dispute in the case of children. After all, children usually have less maturity and discernment.

This one is the final nail in the coffin. Just about everything is permitted in a rational debate, but the superfluous but‐we‐must‐protect‐the‐children‐type of argument is simply not tolerable. This section first paints a protective, diminutive picture of children’s ability to understand sexuality, and to deal with it, even comparing exposing children to pornography to sexual abuse, and then goes on to claim that the only reason the harmfulness of porn to children hasn’t yet been proven is because no experimental study can be performed.

This argument is easily found to be lacking. If no experimental evidence can be gathered, what is the government, or indeed anyone, doing trying to shield children from the influence? The public simply has no business intervening if no experimental evidence can be gathered. Unlike the example with children and crack the paper offers, the evidence of harm to grownups, the effects to whom can be ethically studied, is in this case shoddy at best. Extrapolation isn’t an option. Furthermore, many of the effects the report cites simply do not apply to children as they do to adults, because of the simple fact that they are predicated on a concept of morality, ideal societal order, individual relationships and development that are only relevant to adults. It is true that densensitization and the lot, if real, probably can affect children too, but the harm incurred by this cannot be inferred from the conflict between the more traditional gender roles and the roles purportedly advanced by pornography the adults suffer. It is entirely possible that children can internalize a consistent, workable model of sexuality which includes elements from hardcore pornography, since they are not yet bound by the societal norms and attitudes their parents were brought up with.

Furthermore, telling us that children do not have the cognitive facilities to handle sexuality, and then arguing that it is a maxim of parenting that you don’t give children more information than they are ready to handle, is as patronizing as it is wrong. Children are curious, and in fact quite capable of understanding such things as insemination and childbirth. We see this from the fact that children in rural communities often witness, and fully comprehend, both acts in farm animals. It is wholly inadequate to suppose that children cannot handle such basic things as reproduction and sexuality, and keeping the facts from children simply because the parent feels awkward about the issue at hand borders on criminally negligent.

Perhaps contrary to parents’ hopes, children are not asexual. Even at the very least they can grasp the ideas of love, pleasurable stimulation, nudity, and how the above relate to physical proximity—one need but to remember one’s own childhood to recognize as much—and sometimes the extent of their knowledge far exceeds what is commonly thought. Hence even if intercourse and the sexual pleasure derived from it probably cannot be fully understood by young children, the cognitive load imposed by pornography is hardly on a level to cause severe stress, repression of memories related to exposure, or the other sorts of permanent damage the paper argues it does. The older children too have a better understanding by far of the subject matter than the EiE people seem think. What is then said about adolescents shaping their worldview based on media images, and pornography, is no longer as relevant as is claimed by the paper: if promiscuity, non‐traditional sexual morale, and heightened sexual expression is around, adolescents will with good probability adapt to fit, but given that children do understand a lot of what is happening, this only violates the principles of the narrow minded, and cannot be used to show damage.

In conclusion, the section champions for realistic descriptions of the consequences of sexual expression, implying that mimicry of any and all of the expression seen in pornography is intrinsically dangerous. Once again, this is a very one‐sided and narrow viewpoint. Of course children will experiment, even with their sexuality, but that rarely leads to permanent damage. Scornful parents are in my mind by far the greater risk to the child. And if sexuality is to be realistically described, we should never forget its positive side. Does the fundamentalist tell his/her children that sex feels good irrespective of whether it happens within the confines of marriage, or that there are valid forms of sexual expression beyond vanilla intercourse between heterosexuals, or that most sex is not about procreation but recreation, that STDs are rare, that abortion is an option, or indeed even that sexuality is such a fundamentally private thing as to be completely beyond the proper sphere of influence of parents, church and society alike? I don’t think so. Stout believers should never prompt for honesty or completeness in media

Conclusion

The report makes some heavy conclusions along the way, just as one would expect of Christian fundamental propaganda aimed at curbing indecency. It nicely demonstrates how any evidence, however slim, is used in the pornography debate (is there really still such a thing?) to argue for censorship. Along the way we also see a host of skewed viewpoints and flawed assumptions. Anti‐porn crusaders do not seem to have a lot to support their cause, or the scale of action they propose.

I am a staunch supporter of pornography as a private, consensual activity, and as an expression of people’s right to be left alone when no crimes are committed. As a border case, porn is a perfect lithmus test of how well the protections afforded to civil liberties are holding in a society. In the US, the situation sadly seems to be headed for the worse.

Even if pornography can one day be shown to have negative externalities, which I gravely doubt, mitigating them will require thinking out of the box instead of burying one’s head in the sand. The EiE viewpoint represents the latter approach, and as a solution, cannot be implemented without depriving people of their rights to free thought, contract and business. My own hunch is that the right way to deal with pornography is to encourage openness, to endorse the kind of porn which has less of the dehumanizing element the report continuously reminds us about, to advise people on how to safely engage in sexual expression in its various forms, and to strive for eventual normalization of the sexually explicit. After all, sex ought to be the most natural of things; telling stories about it—pornography—just harmless fun.