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Pornography and women

May 23, 2009 Editorial

Recently the Advisory Committee on Broadcasting (ACB) was forced to warn one TV station about the pornographic content of a movie it had broadcast. We had hoped that there would have been wider discussion about the substantive issue rather than only on the bona fides of the ACB, as has occurred.
There are a host of questions raised by the issue of pornography. As the feminist writer Catherine Mackinnon reminds us, pornography acts mainly against women and affects them twice: when it is made, and when it is viewed. First, women are degraded, raped and even killed in the making of pornographic pictures and films.

Then, the viewers participate in the degradation, rape and murder of women.The rebuttal against the complete prohibition of pornography has typically pointed out the dangers to the Constitutionally protected right to free speech, which ranks right up there in the pantheon of rights in modern democracies. Mackinnon, however, points out that “freedom of speech” allows the stronger, more dominant speaker to silence the weaker one, and believes that women have been silenced by the “speech” of men.
Though one may argue this position portrays women as shrinking violets in need of protection, most would concede that speech can in fact silence speech and even attack one’s sense of self-worth. This is the speech of the schoolyard and the street, the howling taunt, the racial epithet, and the sexual bombardment that women receive.

The latter, the sexual harassment that every woman must face in the world every day, is of the same quality and the same effect as the former. The racial taunt says, “You are an animal, not a human being,” and the sexual taunt says, “You have no identity, no personality — you are a collection of appealing body parts.
The Right to Free Speech is founded on the premise expounded by J.S. Mill that good speech ultimately drives out bad. Free speech, like our court system, is based on a faith that truth ultimately wins. However if in either case, victory goes to he who shouts the loudest, the system breaks down.
Mackinnon – a professor of law, believes that men, having more power and aggression, will always shout loudest; that their speech is backed by the threat of violence, and that the pornographic speech of men, supposedly protected by the Constitution, is itself violence.

Mill, though, believed not only in free speech but that no action should be prohibited that harmed only oneself and the government should only intervene to bar acts that harmed others. His goal was the full development of the individual in any direction –accepting the possibilities of deformities.
In our world, however, and largely because of sexual speech and sexual violence, women still do not have the opportunity to grow into whatever they will; the fact that women cannot go out alone at night, or travel to many places even in daytime without the company of a man means that women cannot easily take even the first steps necessary towards full self-development. Mackinnon believes that free speech perpetuates this, that male power uses speech to enforce inequality.

While Mackinnon makes a powerful case with which we are very sympathetic, in our estimation, the only hope lies with free speech. Without free speech, there cannot be equality. With free speech, equality is not guaranteed, but we have the opportunity to pursue it.
It gives us the tools we need to begin the work. Mackinnon is also right that the final battle for equality between men and women may be much harder than that for racial equality (which is still being fought) because it must overcome forces deeper in the human soul (desire is more primal and more powerful than xenophobia).
But we can combat the ill effects of pornography, by raising our voices, rather than by demanding censorship, which will backfire upon us. But free speech, like all rights, is not an absolute right. The ACB can stimulate and engage in public discourses on its boundaries and nuances.

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