Sex is not inherently bad, but pornography and American culture demonizes sex through over-sexualization and objectification. There exists no love in pornography. It lacks compassion and empathy. As Chris Hedges says in “Illusion of Love,” "Porn reflects the endemic cruelty of our society." Everything has changed because of the Internet, constantly reinvigorating our need to have a discourse on the banning of obscene materials. If one wants to see all that has become wrong and vile about humankind, they are just a few Google searches away from finding it. People find stimulation in porn sites and websites like World Star Hip Hop which appeal to their sense of depravity. According to Pew polls, more adults watch porn than ever before, and the number of women who watch porn is increasing (Slate article).
Pornography has always had a central role in the discussion of free speech rights as can be shown by various historical court cases on obscenity law. In the beginning it was a concernment of religious sexual morality. Under religious blasphemy law, obscenity was defined by the Hicklin rule as anything intended “to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences.” Religion (especially Christianity) has often used concepts of immorality, sin and wickedness to justify repression of sexuality. It can be argued that the anti-eroticism of Christianity has led in many regards to deep sexual repression in our society. “Creation of a taboo creates desire” explains historian and professor at Occidental College Thaddeus Russell. This has manifested itself strangely in the Catholic Church as its fixation on same-sex marriage and circumcision. Christopher Ryan writes in Psychology Today that “if expression of sexuality is thwarted, the human psyche tends to grow twisted into grotesque, enraged perversions of desire” (Ryan, Psychology Today). On the other hand, our hedonistic culture constantly bombards us with sexualized images everywhere, making us crave that which is unattainable. Many of us have become aware of this paradox in American culture. Russell calls it our “split-mind” culture between our roots in tradition/”Puritanism” versus hedonism/“Popular culture” (Joe Rogan Experience #553). Even though blasphemy is no longer a crime, our values on right and wrong, decent and indecent, still correlate mainly to religious principles.
U.S. District Judge John Woolsey adapted the Hicklin’s rule definition of obscenity in 1933 by the decision to allow the importation of the book Ulysses by James Joyce (pg. 126). The significance of this ruling is in Woolsey saying that there must be a dominant theme of sex throughout a whole work, in other words, “the work must be judged as a whole (not by isolated passages).” The Roth Test clarified that “the First Amendment must protect ideas, and obscenity has no ideas worth protecting.” By this definition, anything of sexually lewd nature is “worthless.” Miller v. California (1973) established the reading of the Supreme Court ruling that pornography is obscene if it appeals to the “prurient interest” or is advertised as such to appeal to the prurient interest (Freedom of Speech in the United States, pg. 137). Recognition of ‘prurient interest must be according to the thinking of the “average person, applying contemporary local community standards.” Ironically, obscenity is thus categorized based on the definition society gives it in a particular era. The final “test” of characteristics of obscenity involve whether the material has any serious literary, artistic, or political, or scientific value (SLAPS Test), which needs to be determined by a reasonable person (pg 137). That is why photographs or scenes of sexually explicit conduct cannot possibly receive protection under the First Amendment. The only exception of course is for educational purposes, such as medical journals.
Let us examine the intersubjective morality of pornography. The issues with pornography fit into two categories: nudity and the sexual act. According to cultural and social mores, nudity in artwork/sculpture/film has merit. Nudity among strangers in public on the other hand is seen as “indecent.” Indecent exposure is illegal because public nudity (and other forms of exhibitionism) are considered unwanted. Performing a sexual act in public is also public indecency. Although pornography has these same features (nudity and the sexual act) it has different rights because porn is sought out for and one has the right of private viewing. A sexual act like vaginal, oral, or anal penetration is deemed obscene according to the Miller test because it clearly appeals to prurient interest, depicts offensive material, and lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. An example of a possible solution is the censorship in Japan. In opposition to “indecent” materials, the male or female genital area is censored with a mosaic in Japanese pornography but pornography is not altogether banned.
From a human biological perspective, porn is addictive for a significant percentage of people. Like a drug, one’s tolerance increases the more one uses. People find themselves searching for porn with more intense and more inappropriate acts in order to get stimulation. We humans have neuro-chemicals (like dopamine and serotonin) which flood the brain upon seeing porn images, triggering “reward pathways” (fightthenewdrug.org). These “reward pathways” affect and control our happiness, mood, emotions, and feelings of ‘real love.' Recently there have been multiple studies researching the effect of pornography on the brain. According to biologist Rupert Sheldrake, pornography evokes an emotional response five seconds before one actually sees an image (Joe Rogan Experience #550). In other words, the body’s sympathetic nervous system prepares the mind for what one is about to see. This is evidence that the mind-body’s natural response/reaction is a severely negative one.
Pornography alters normal sexual fantasy and normative human sexual behavior. It promotes perverse or paraphilic forms of sexuality (using “perverse” and “paraphilic” as non-pejoratives here). Of course as Freud said, perversion is normal in humans, but there exist forms of sexual perversion which ignore mutual consent or inflict harm on oneself or other parties (like extreme forms of bondage, domination/submission, sadism/masochism [BDSM] and fetishism). The most common form is scopophilia, or voyeurism, which seems like the best internal explanation for watching pornography. People become aroused by visual stimuli of the naked body (either opposite-sex or same-sex). Exhibitionism rather exploits the on-looker, forcefully exposing one’s body parts or genitalia in public. A few porn actors/actresses probably suffer from martymachlia, a type of exhibitionism where one becomes sexually aroused by others watching the sexual act.
Many men claim that porn (in moderation) helps them with masturbation but for some of them it becomes more than that. Part of the problem is that teenagers have access to these Websites which can warp one’s perception of reality from an early age. In all, pornography can lead to serious problems when it disrupts ordinary activities or impairs mental function. People who become porn addicts typically have issues with autoeroticism, or becoming one’s own preferred sexual object. Regardless of one’s intimate wants/needs, pornography is simply not the way to positive sexual gratification. People have lost their ability to communicate with others and empathize at a basic emotional level. They have disconnected themselves from the need for human interaction, human touch and true expression of human sexuality. Sex replaces love in our society.
As I mentioned before, there exist cultural aspects of the Western worldview which create the system of perpetuating hate and violence towards women and minorities that we see throughout history. As Thaddeus Russell says, there exists a dichotomy between hedonism (the “pleasure-seeking”) and Puritanism (“the Protestant work ethic”) in America. Many people are conscientiously divided internally by these two complimentary ideas, and it causes conflict in their interpersonal relationships and personal life. Instead of directly attacking religion as a source of these problems, one will discuss the sexualization in our culture which leads to objectification of women.
In line with the “Stupidification of America,” everything in our popular media culture has succumbed to sexualization. Hypersexual images pervade film, television, advertisements in the most absurd ways. The pornography industry profits from people’s number one instinctual drive, libido, turning our “real” desires into a morphed form of unreasonable fantasy. Women become objects of man’s desire. Men objectify the female body, often portraying women without any identity or agency. A porn actress is treated like she does not have a soul. In addition to their clothes, they have all their power stripped away from them. Men are the oppressors in society. The sex object is idolized, but never idealized (Reik, pg. 21). We, as people in society, become desensitized to these images of sex and violence. The classic example is the Sports Illustrated magazine Swimsuit Edition, the haute-couture of girls wearing bikinis. Bombarded by these hyper-sexual images, men and women become ashamed of their bodies and ashamed of their sexuality. It is no wonder that young men and women develop unsubstantiated feelings of guilt, shame, and often self-blame. Pornography and sexualization of girls and boys hinders normal psychosexual development through socialization.
America’s obsession with pornography (and the graphic image in general) can be explained in Freudian/Jungian terms by our sexually repressed society. Our society has moved our attention away from the sexual act and directed it towards the sexual object. Freud theorized that the first love-object of a boy-child is the mother until this sexual energy is then transferred in the latency phase of psychosexual development. The preferred sexual object for culture constantly changes too. Back in the 90’s it was Pamela Anderson, and now it’s Jennifer Lawrence (the sex object often seems cliché and might reveal something about maturity level as previously stated). Porn negatively changes our expectations of beauty. All mass media in a way is responsible for both men and women’s negative or inflated self-image and body image. Many men seem to think that a woman needs to look and act a certain way in order to feel attraction. Women too fall into the trap of feeling like they have to live up to this false standard of beauty. They take pride in looking like a preferred sexual object (for example, showing breast cleavage).
Pornography is an ugly business. Women (and men) sell their bodies for money which for all practical purposes can be defined as prostitution. The Greek word ‘pornographos’ refers to “writing about prostitutes” (Google Etymology). Sadly, female porn stars think of it as a job, as work. They are called “actors” and “actresses” but their “acting” involves fornication for a price. The porn industry is a breeding ground (no pun intended) for cruelty and aggression. These women become victims of the porn viewer turned on by violence in conjunction with sex. Despite this blatant victimization, the extent to which these porn stars either play victim (self-victimization) or get blamed for being a victim (i.e. “slut shaming”) is disturbing. Many develop traits like learned helplessness which make them feel like the porn industry is their only way out.
It should not be a surprise that people act the way that they do given what our culture has taught us on television and in movies. Thaddeus Russell explains comically how people in Iran and Pakistan watch the “worst porn.” Despite banning YouTube, Pakistanis type the most sex-related search terms into search engines like Google, especially gay (male-male), “bizarre” and bestiality porn. In this way, “abnormal” or “deviant” sexual behavior is publicly forbidden yet in private it has prominence. This is evident by the wide variety of genres in pornography & the themes in adult entertainment today that since the 1970’s have gone to extremes. If one can think of a sexual fetish possible by human sexuality, one can guarantee you will be able to find pornography that caters to those desires.
We can analyze/critique pornography from a humanistic level by looking at how paradigmatic views, social mores and opinions on pornography reveal themselves in our everyday language. One hears this argument often enough if you ask men about their opinions on porn. “Women want it. They even say they want it!” It is easy to say that these men and women are just sado-masochistic narcissistic freaks, moving the blame from society to women in general. In fact there are deeper root psychological causes which may lead men and women into the industry. One must point out how that “reality” (of women as victims) is socially constructed. As a question of values, how did we (men and women) create such a sick society? Much of the problem stems from denial from men who are unwilling to see the harm they commit. “Women are not the victims.” This is often the argument about victims of rape. “She deserved it. Look what she was wearing.” Many men (and women) send/receive mixed messages about sex and they ignore the realities of sexual harassment and sexual oppression. Sexual violence is traumatizing. As Illusion of Love suggests, many porn stars come from poor families with past histories of sexual abuse and domestic violence. In their daily lives, porn stars turn to drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism. The demands of the industry are not only damaging to their bodies but damaging to their psyche.
Porn manifests the worst evil aspects of human nature, like misogyny and torture (real or psychological). Pornography changes the way that we view sex, women and even our conception of love. Pornography needs to be limited or at the very least regulated in a way that prevents people from having their essence corrupted by negative outside influence. Of course in this day and age there is no stopping film producers from making “entertainment” at the expense of individuals’ lives. But there is a reason that pornography is legal in this country whereas it is banned elsewhere around the globe. “There are no rights, only human politics.” Pornography producers like Larry Flynt are willing to fight at the highest level for their right to produce and distribute materials exhibiting sexual conduct. Some like author Salman Rushdie also argue that a “free and civilized society should be judged by its willingness to accept pornography,” citing the example of Pakistan.
Source Citation
Joe Rogan Experience #553- Thaddeus Russell. Podcast. YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjMX4_4faX4
Sarah Baxter and Richard Brooks. Porn is vital to freedom, says Rushdie. The Sunday Times. August 8, 2004. http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/article233891.ece
Fight the New Drug. http://www.fightthenewdrug.org/get-the-facts#porn-is-addictive
Hess, Amanda. How Many Women Are Not Admitting to Pew That They Watch Porn? Slate magazine. http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/10/11/pew_online_viewing_study_percentage_of_women_who_watch_online_porn_is_growing.html
Joe Rogan Experience #550- Rupert Sheldrake. Podcast. Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZklRSn92ek4
Reik, Theodor. Love and Lust: On the Psychoanalysis of Romantic and Sexual Emotions. http://books.google.com/books?id=_plS7LR3t4UC&printsec=frontcover
Ryan, Christopher. Sexual Repression. Psychology Today. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-dawn/201004/sexual-repression-the-malady-considers-itself-the-remedy
Thomas L. Tedford. Freedom of Speech in the United States. 7th edition.
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