XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography (7 page)

(Every discussion I had with straight producers confirmed this. For example, when I suggested the possibility of using the condom in a sexy manner-perhaps having the woman put it on with her mouth as a prelude to oral sex-I was told brusquely "It's been done." No one was interested in the ethical issue, despite the fact that there had been recent AIDS scares and scandals.) The fellow added that gay porn
had
changed the straight industry in at least one way: The men were better looking, simply because gay actors were so attractive. I offered an alternative theory: Namely, more couples and women are consuming porn and -whatever feminists said - women wanted sexier men.

26

Upon hearing the word "feminist," a long, annoyed monologue erupted. "There is no coercion on any porn shoot," he assured me. "Everyone on a set knows
exactly
what is going on and
that's
why they're there."

For the rest of the day, the exhibit remained quiet, with some booths not even opening. I said my good-byes to the people who'd been generous with their time.

While I thanked Bill Margold, he took the opportunity to introduce me to a cherubic man who had invented phone sex lines. He looked familiar. I asked if he had attended a certain political meeting. He choked out an amazed yes. We had met years ago, in another context. A mild-visaged soft-spoken businessman, he would have never crossed my mind as a "sex worker." An accountant, maybe.

CONCLUSION

Pornography frightens people. Women in the industry threaten women who are not.

This became clear to me when I eagerly discussed my experience at the CES with girlfriends.

Their reactions varied widely, but they all agreed on one point: I was a fool to have taken my husband along.

Two assumptions lurk beneath this reaction. First, men cannot be trusted. Second, women in porn are predatory.

The first assumption is a pure insult to men and not within the purview of this book. The second assumption is also an insult, directed at women in pornography. But it is a part of what this book is about.

Women in porn do not appreciate how much they intimidate "regular" women, who usually put in long hours at tiresome jobs before rushing home to feed their kids-all the while trying to retain the fading blush of youth or enthusiasm.

Such women are intimidated by the images of porn on several levels: First, the women in porn today are extremely attractive, young, with large, unsagging breasts and aerobicized asses. They are a walking reproach to women who are trying to lose weight and to tighten up what gravity is loosening. There is no way to compete with the image of sexual perfection that porn projects. A lot of the scorn heaped on women in the industry undoubtedly springs from feelings of inadequacy and jealousy.

Second, the women in porn seem to be sexually available, uninhibited, and easily satisfied-none of which is true for the rest of womankind. Whether it is actually true of women in porn is irrelevant: This is the image projected. And, again, it is almost impossible to live up to. After going through a great deal of angst over sex, I know who I am sexually and I like that person.

But even now I am not perpetually available or totally uninhibited. I can only imagine the deep resentment felt by women who have real problems with sex.

Third, the women in porn receive a great of sexual attention from men-most of whom are husbands or boyfriends. This is upsetting to their wives and girlfriends, whose emotional and sexual needs are often being neglected. They blame the men. They blame the porn actresses.

For their part, women within the industry are less tolerant and sexually open than they imagine themselves to be. As accepting as these women are of each other, they can be strangely intolerant of outsiders. Some of this probably comes from a natural suspicion of the "regular" world, which usually treats them with disrespect. But much of the intolerance comes from a sense of sexual elitism.

People in porn consider themselves to be more sexually sophisticated and more liberated than the average person. They evince contempt for those who live conservative lifestyles-e.g. the Midwestern housewife with three children and a monogamous marriage. They call these choices 27

"uninformed" or "unnatural." They claim that the little housewife simply "doesn't know what she is missing"; if she did, she'd be stripping for the camera.

If the housewife retorted, with absolute accuracy, "You have no idea what the rewards of my lifestyle are," she would be dismissed out-of-hand.

I tried to argue that no choice was "right" for every person. Sexuality is richer than that: It is a banquet of choices and possibilities, none of which we can afford to dismiss. Yet over and over, in both small and large ways, I saw the "wrong" sexual choices being dismissed or ridiculed.

They were not condemned as right or wrong, good or evil. Instead, they were disdainfully brushed away as uninteresting, boring, or mundane. The effect was the same.

For example, when I brought up the sexiest movie I've ever seen -
Sex,
Lies and Videotape -
the

incredibly disparaging comments that came back ensured my silence. True, I wasn't called perverted, only boring. I was left to wonder which I preferred.

So ... what of the two main questions with which I approached CES?

Were women coerced into performing pornographic acts?

I saw no evidence that women are forced into performing pornographic acts. I saw overwhelming evidence of informed consent. Although I heard rumors of women who had been pressured into performing sexual acts, no one I spoke to had experienced it themselves. Of course, this does not disprove the rumors.

How were women in the industry treated otherwise?

Not especially well. Indeed, a few pornographers seemed determined to live up to society's worst caricatures of them. They spoke of women in brutally cold and dehumanizing terms, which appalled me. Other pornographers, who probably believed they did treat women well, actually displayed considerable contempt for them. These were the men who refused to deal with women as equals in contracts and negotiation.

At this point, men in the industry will loudly object that they acknowledge women as the core of their business. Without women, they will proclaim, the industry would not exist. This is a form of acknowledgment, but not a form of respect. Women in the industry are like thoroughbred horses, without which there could be no day at the races. The women are valued, they are cared for, they are protected-but I didn't see them respected.

For example, when men spoke of each other-whether to praise or to bury-it was about their work, their accomplishments or lack thereof. So-and-so was a genius, active in the Free Speech Coalition, or a bad agent. Women were always discussed in terms of their physical components.

This one has a good ass, that one's lost too much weight or her breasts are sagging.

As in every other endeavor-in or outside of the business world-women in porn will probably get respect only after they get power.

28

If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.

-Voltaire

There is no way to approach pornography without first struggling with the most fundamental question that anyone can ask: What is it?

For decades, the most common nondefinition of pornography was the one used by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in his concurring opinion on
Jacobellis v. Ohio,
"I shall not today attempt further to define [hardcore pornography] ... ; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it . . ." [1]

Why is it so important to define pornography?

If people were not trying to pass laws against pornography, a definition might not be so crucial.

But when courts become involved, definitions become essential. Whoever controls the definition of pornography will determine which words and images the law will suppress. They will decide the framework of future debate over pornography. Definitions directly influence how people think about an issue and the attitude with which they approach it. There is no mystery as to why antipornography feminists have spent so much time and energy in trying to define their terms. It is a quick and effective way to control the debate.

The purpose of definitions is to sketch the legitimate boundaries within which a word can be used. The beauty of definitions lies in their ability to let people know what they are talking about. Their magic is the clarity of thought that can result from drawing distinctions. Definitions are like the focus on a camera lens, bringing the intellectual outlines of an issue into sharp relief.

ELIMINATING NONDEFINITIONS

One step toward defining anything is to determine what it is
not.
A popular approach to the word
pornography
is an appeal to its ancient Greek roots. This approach should be discarded. The word
pornography
originally meant "writing about harlots or prostitutes." But its meaning has evolved over centuries of use through dozens of different cultures. Like the Greek word
gymnasium,
which originally meant, "place of nakedness," the word
pornography
has lost its connection with the past.

Nevertheless, Andrea Dworkin, in
Pornography: Men Possessing Women,
takes this "historical"

approach:

"Contemporary pornography strictly and literally conforms to the word's root meaning: the graphic depiction of vile whores, or in our language, sluts.... The word has not changed its meaning and the genre is not misnamed ... the graphic depiction of the lowest whores." [2]

Even granting that it is possible to understand the contemporary use of a word by referring to ancient Greece, this definition is a vacuum waiting to be filled. For example, in today's social context, what is a "slut"-especially to a woman, such as Dworkin, who openly denounces monogamous heterosexuality?

D. H. Lawrence-the brilliant novelist who was destroyed by censorship-claimed that a purely semantic definition of pornography offered no useful information at all. "The word itself, we are told, means `pertaining to the harlots'-the graph of the harlot. But nowadays, what is a harlot? ...

Why be so cut and dried? The law is a dreary thing, and its judgments have nothing to do with 29

life. The same with the word
obscene:
nobody knows what it means. Suppose it was derived from
obscena:
that which might not be represented on the stage; how much further are you?" [3]

Dworkin's definition may not transmit useful information, but it does clearly show her hatred of pornography. By calling pornography "the graphic description of the
lowest
whores"-when the adjective "lowest" is not in the Greek translation, Dworkin tells us more about herself than about the word
pornography.

Moreover, the spectacle of radical feminists leaning upon the support of etymological authority is a strange sight indeed. After all, they adamantly reject the science and history of Western civilization as manifestations of white male culture. They reject the chronicles of history, because they are not
herstory.
They rail against the hard sciences, because they spring from white male methodology. The white male study of etymology, however, is legitimate-at least, when it suits their purposes.

Enlightenment is not likely to come from antipornography feminists, who view the world through the lens of ideology. Their rhetoric is the linguistic equivalent of thermonuclear war.

Pornography is called "genocide"; Susan Brownmiller describes it as "the undiluted essence of anti-female propaganda"; Judith Bat-Ada compares Hugh Hefner to Hitler; Andrea Dworkin's book on pornography begins by claiming "Men love death ... men especially love murder."

Such descriptions are normative, or biased. They embody the viewers' reactions, and their desire to condemn pornography. It is important to understand why antipornography feminists spend so much time and energy trying to define pornography. Definitions not only control the debate, they can control what sexuality itself becomes. Radical feminists view sex as a social construct. That is, they do not believe the current expressions of sexuality are inherent in human biology; instead, they are products of culture. If women's sexuality is a blank sheet of paper, then defining it becomes tremendously important. Whoever controls the definition will determine the content.

The struggle to define pornography is part of radical feminism's attempt to control sexuality itself.

The stakes are high. High enough for freedom of speech to be jettisoned. Indeed, in her recent book
Only Words,
Catharine MacKinnon argues that pornography has no connection with free speech whatsoever; it is an
act
of sexual subordination, of sexual terrorism.

"Empirically, of all two dimensional forms of sex, it is only pornography, not its ideas as such, that gives men erections that support aggression against women in particular." [4]

Over the last decade or so, the feminist position on pornography has shifted toward this definition. Pornography is no longer viewed as merely offensive; it is redefined as an
act
of violence, in and of itself. It is the sexual subordination of women, by which their victimization is eroticized and perpetuated. It is the main way patriarchy subordinates women.

Other feminists have pointed out that rape existed long before
Playboy
appeared in the racks of corner stores. Such voices of reason are lost in the wind of hysteria. Antipornography feminists acknowledge them only to launch an
ad bominem
attack.

For better or worse, it is necessary to treat antipornography feminists with more respect than they are willing to give back. It is important to consider the substance of their definitions.

The antipornography definitions abound with emotionally charged and highly subjective terms like "humiliation" or "subordination." And they are commonly offered as the crowning statement of horrifying stories of sexual abuse.