Here’s an interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald about the effect of online pornography on relationships. The Herald looked at academic articles, previous surveys on internet porn use, and conducted a survey of its own. The results are intriguing, and relevent to feminist discussions of pornography. I’ll mention just one though:
According to the survey, where men used lots of internet pornography, the depictions of sexual interaction very soon come to “inform” the couple’s sexual practices. To pull a quote from one interviewee: “It [sex] became more ‘porn’ style – pulling my hair, no kissing, slapping around a bit, all stuff I was initially OK with. And always he wanted to come in my face. There was no real intimacy, no thought about what I might like.”
Having taught Rae Langton and Jen Hornsby’s uses of Speech Act theory, students are often sceptical that the authority felicity condition for subordination can be met – that is, they doubt the claim that porn has authority in informing male notions of sex and sexuality. At best, they think it has only a moderate influence, and even then, only over teenage boys who very quickly drop ‘porn’ style ideas about sex.
It seems to me that this article says lots to undermine that scepticism – and it even refers to connections between the increase in the pornography’s depiction of anal sex and ordinary demand for it drawn in Haggstrom-Nordin, Hanson, and Tyden’s (2005) paper “Associations between pornography consumption and sexual practices among adolescents in Sweden” – The International Journal of STD and AIDS. Vol16, No 2. 102-107. (As a matter of fact, Elisabet Haggstrom-Nordin’s work on pornography and sexual practices are often good for empirical sources).
Feminist Philosophers 
I wonder if there is any research about women consuming porn… or lesbian couples… Does the above research distinguish between different kinds of porn, kinds that would be considered more ‘tasteful’?
I think this tells more about sex than porn. This suggests that even men are deeply unhappy with their own androcentric model of sex ([be]foreplay->penetrate->ejaculate), especially in monogamous marriages…
Exercise for our students: point out features of the article discussed which favours the report in the original post as opposed to the following one.
Internet Porn Liberates Aussie Marriages
Here’s an interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald about the effect of online pornography on relationships. The Herald looked at academic articles, previous surveys on internet porn use, and conducted a survey of its own. The results are intriguing, and relevant to feminist discussions of pornography. I’ll mention just a couple of thoughts:
According to the survey, the rising tide of internet pornography has offered a form of sex education. It has helped extend sexual repertoires, re-invigorated flagging sex lives, and assuaged anxieties or hang-ups. It has been, some Australians argue, a liberation.
It is true that some men are using porn in ways that are secret, shameful and damaging and this is having a damaging impact on intimacy and sexuality. But compared with alcohol problems, and violence-control issues in relationships, obsessive pornography use is certainly a second-order marriage-wrecker, and it affects men with pre-existing compulsive personalities. In these cases, however, it is not the use of porn itself to be blamed, but its secret use, according to most of the psychologists contacted. “When it’s consensual use in a limited way, it’s unproblematic,” says Eric Hudson, the national president of the Australian Association of Relationship Counsellors. “But where it is secretive, it is experienced as a betrayal of the relationship.” And secret use, he says, like an affair, can be a symptom of other problems.
Having taught Rae Langton and Jen Hornsby’s uses of Speech Act theory, students are often sceptical that the authority felicity condition for subordination can be met – that is, they doubt the claim that porn has authority in informing male notions of sex and sexuality. It seems to me that this article says lots to highlight how a dose of this scepticism is undoubtedly philosophically healthy.
Thanks for your comment, Not All Feminists Blame Porn, you provide an interesting re-read of the Herald article. I like the summary you give of the article, especially the line:
“According to the survey, the rising tide of internet pornography has offered a form of sex education.”
You see what you did there? You cited pornography as educator. That’s pretty much the same point I took from the article too, that porn seems to be acting as an educator. It looks like we agree that porn is having an influence on peoples sex lives, then, maybe even enough to fulfil the authority felicity condition mentioned by, for example, Langton. Actually, the only difference between my take on the article and yours seems to be that I think that’s probably bad, and you seem to think its not so bad.
Maybe it is a good thing that women’s hang-ups about being slapped a bit and having their partners ejaculate in their face are assuaged, but then again, maybe its not.
digivordig,
Thanks for your response. I had probably misunderstood you, for I thought that your conclusion was that the article said lots to undermine scepticism “that porn has authority in informing male notions of sex and sexuality.” If rather it was merely that porn probably plays some role or other, good or bad, in our sexual education, then it is much more uncontroversial. (But students do not usually doubt this, do they?) For a possible positive effect of pornography in sexual education, in connection with issues arising from labiaplasty, see this recent post by Jender.
(For the record: I do not necessarily endorse myself any of the claims in the report I submitted. It just seemed to me to be as close to (parts of) the article as to your original one. Hence why I thought that comparing them might be an interesting exercise.)
digivordig,
Thanks for your response. I had probably misunderstood you, for I thought that your conclusion was that the article said lots to undermine scepticism “that porn has authority in informing male notions of sex and sexuality.” If rather it was merely that porn probably plays some role or other, good or bad, in our sexual education, then it is much more uncontroversial. (But students do not usually doubt this, do they?) For a possible positive effect of pornography in sexual education, in connection with issues arising from labiaplasty, see this recent post by Jender.
(For the record: I do not necessarily endorse myself any of the claims in the report I submitted. It just seemed to me to be as close to (parts of) the article as to your original one. Hence why I thought that comparing them might be an interesting exercise.)
It occurred to me that part of what might be going on here is that while some use ‘pornography’ as expressing the concept we find ourselves currently using, others might be pursuing instead a revisionist, “ameliorative” strategy, perhaps along the lines of MacKinnon’s:
“the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women in pictures or words that also includes women dehumanized as sexual objects, things or commodities; enjoying pain or humiliation or rape; being tied up, cut up, mutilated, bruised, or physically hurt; in postures of sexual submission or servility or display; reduced to body parts, penetrated by objects or animals, or presented in scenarios of degradation, injury, torture; shown as filthy or inferior; bleeding, bruised or hurt in a context which makes these conditions sexual.”
which is the revisionist definition that, for instance, Langton & West 1999 (cite and) adopt. (That this is indeed revisionist is guaranteed, I take it, by the very existence of gay male porn, among many other things.)
In my view this distinction is crucial in the debate as to whether the there might be positive effects of pornography: according to the former usage, this is (arguably) partly empirical—according to the latter, this is (arguably) something which might well be substantially settled by the very stipulations. (This might be related to JP’s comment above in this thread.)
I think is probably worth insisting on students (and colleagues!) that they be clear as to whether they are employing the ordinary or the revisionist conceptions.
Ups, I meant fp, not JP, sorry!
I’ve just seen that West’s SEP entry seems to be making a similar point:
“Some feminists object to pornography on the grounds that it harms women. Other feminists claim that pornography may not always be harmful to women, and may even sometimes be beneficial. It seems that there is genuine disagreement here. But is there? Not necessarily. For the two sides might mean different things by “pornography”. Suppose that feminists who object to pornography are defining “pornography” as sexually explicit material that subordinates women. So pornography, for them, is that subset of sexually explicit material that in fact harms women. This definition makes it an analytic truth that pornography, wherever it exists, is bad from a feminist point of view. Feminists who defend pornography, however, may be using “pornography” to mean simply sexually explicit material (regardless of whether it is harmful to women). There may thus be no genuine disagreement here. For both sides might agree that sexually explicit material that harms women is objectionable. They might also agree that there is nothing objectionable about sexually explicit material that does not harm women (or anyone else). If protagonists in the debate are using “pornography” in different senses in this way, they may simply be talking past each other…. (I think this might help to defuse some of the frequently acrimonious debate in feminist circles surrounding MacKinnon’s now famous claim that one cannot genuinely be a feminist and be pro- (or at least fail to be anti-) pornography. For of course feminists are opposed to anything that subordinates or oppresses women. Yet there is surely room for reasonable disagreement about what, if any, sexually explicit material does this, and whether pursuing legal regulation of it is a desirable feminist strategy).”
NAFBP, I don’t think you did misunderstand, that was my conclusion. I’ve found students (and others) have doubted the claim that pornography holds any sway over mens’ ideas about sex – generally, people don’t really learn about sex from porn, is the thought. I think both our reports on the article suggest that, actually, men and women are, possibly, learning about sex from porn. The stuff I highlight suggests some negative effects of that (the kind of thing that might support the subordination claims of Langton et. al. and might enable us to challenge students who are sceptical on the grounds I mention). The stuff you highlight suggests some positive effects. But that’s a seperate debate (as far as these things can be kept seperate).
As a matter of fact, I think you’re right that there is a lot of stuff reported in that article that can be used for raising interesting questions/exercises. For example, the point you made in your OP about the secrecy of consumption being a problematic part of porn is useful for highlighting a distinction between problems arising from how we consume porn, and problems arising from the content of what we consume.
(For the record: I don’t necessarily endorse the views which I suggested the article might support. Like you, I thought there was useful stuff there for pushing students reflections about pornography and feminism a bit further).
D, I think you’re right that the kind of definition used in much of the current debate is the revisionist/ameliorative definition that we get from those such as Mackinon, and Dworkin. I also think that this jars with definitions which track our more ‘ordinary’, pre-theoretical ideas, and that lots of problems do arise from our not keeping these things distinct.
But, here’s a quick question – what do you think this distinction does for using empirical research to support arguments which use the ameliorative definition of porn? The reason I ask is that I assume that the definition used in articles (like the SMH mentioned in the OP), empirical research, etc is probably closer to our pre-theoretical definitions than our ameliorative ones. In which case, unless we know that the pornography studied covers only that subset which falls under the revisionist definition, the empirical research may be of no use in arguing for or against feminists who use make claims about pornography using ameliorative definitions. Just a thought.
D and Digivordig– these issues with the definition are really messy and tough. It seems to me that MacKinnon’s definition makes it analytic that pornography subordinates women. So empirical research doesn’t bear on the question of whether porn subordinates. However, empirical reseach can (perhaps) help us to find out whether there is any porn, and which things are porn. By the way, D, MacK’s definition doesn’t necessarily rule out gay porn. (1) She allows that use of men in place of women is still porn. (2) On Haslanger’s reading of MacK, ‘women’ and ‘men’ are gender terms, where ‘women’ refers to the sexually subordinated and ‘men’ to the sexual subordinators. Anatomical sex isn’t relevant to these categories, so some of what you think of as exclusively gay or lesbian porn may count for MacK as featuring sex between men and women.
I was thinking about this yesterday, while reading the excellent West 2004. It seemed to me that usages such as MacKinnon’s are revisionist in two different, independent counts: (i) on the descriptive side, by focusing on a proper subset of the set of the “arousing-oriented sexually explicit material” (heterosexual, “hardcore”, etc.); and (ii) on the evaluative side, by stipulating the normative contention that it necessarily “depicts women’s subordination in such a way as to endorse that subordination.”
I do still think that gay porn suffices for (i). The fact that one can use revisionist “ameliorative” new concepts for ‘man’ and ‘woman’ so that, under them, ordinary same-sex sex are to be described as “sex between men and women” doesn’t seem to change that. Common usage clearly allows for the truth of: “there is porn with just men having sex with men;” and this does not seem to be so according to MacK’s proposal. Hence the latter seems revisionist. Perhaps there is something here I am missing, sorry.
As to (ii), West suggests that perhaps it is not so revisionist, as there seems to be ordinary context where ‘porn’ is used with negative connotations:
“When many people describe something (e.g., a book such as Tropic of Capricorn or a film such as Baise Moi) as “pornographic”, they seem to be doing more than simply dispassionately pointing to its sexually explicit content or the intentions of its producers-indeed, in these debates, the intentions of producers are sometimes treated as irrelevant to the work’s status as pornography. They seem to be saying, in addition, that it is bad-and perhaps also that its badness is not redeemed by other artistic, literary, or political merit the work may possess. (Consider, for example, how people use the term “visual pornography” to condemn certain sorts of art or television, often when the material is not even sexually explicit).”
In my own view, those are arguably cases of non-literal meaning, so that (ii) stands. But I am very interested in learning what other people here think.
Good points, which bring us to the tricky issue of what makes a definition revisionist. My thought was that the existence of gay male porn alone doesn’t show MacK’s definition to be revisionist, because her definition of ‘porn’ combined with her definitions of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ could have the result that everything we now call ‘gay male porn’ is still called ‘porn’– so the extension of ‘porn’ could be preserved. But you rightly point out that there are still lots of changes in meaning, and I think I have to concede the point. With relief, actually, as trying to defend MacK’s definitions as non-revisionary is pretty crazy and I know that. By the way, though, your (ii) is weaker than she’d want. She doesn’t just think porn depicts and endorses subordination. She thinks it *is* subordination.
Oh, I see. I think it would be worth distinguishing two different kinds of claims concerning evaluative aspects in the meaning of ‘pornography’: (a) contending that the expression does have some negative evaluative connotations (in some of the ordinary uses) (à la West); vs (b) contending that is part of the meaning of the expression a certain strong relation (depiction, endorsement, even identity(!)) with respect to subordination of women (à la MacKinnon).
(b) is clearly (and admittedly?) revisionist. I’m not sure about (a), but it seems to me that it might well be revisionist aswell, West’s examples notwithstanding. For I agree that people sometimes do express con-attitudes by calling certain works pornographic but, as I suggested. this might be a case of non-literal meaning. Similarly, one might think, people sometimes do express con-attitudes by calling certain works fairy tales—compatibly with the fact that the expression ‘fairy tales’ by itself does not carry such negative connotations.