The Ethics And Politics Of Pornography

Pornography is seen as morally problematic for a variety of reasons: coercion, exploitation, harm and the promulgation of inequality. The book looks at various ethical and political discussions concerning the production, exchange and consumption of pornography to propose a radical new approach centering on the concept of objectification.

Pornography is seen as morally problematic for a variety of reasons: coercion, exploitation, harm and the promulgation of inequality. The book looks at various ethical and political discussions concerning the production, exchange and consumption of pornography to propose a radical new approach centering on the concept of objectification.

Debates over pornography tend to be heated and deeply polarized--as with other topics that have to do with sex, pornography cuts to the core of our values and convictions. Philosophical debates concerning pornography are fraught with difficult questions: What is pornography? What does pornography do (if anything at all)? Is the consumption of pornography a harmless private matter, or does pornography violate women's civil rights? What, if anything, should legally be done about pornography? Can there be a genuinely feminist pro-pornography stance? Answering these questions is complicated by widespread confusion over the conceptual and political commitments of different anti- and pro-pornography positions, and whether these positions are even in tension with one another. For a start, different people understand pornography differently and can easily end up talking past one another. In order to clarify the debate and make genuine philosophical headway in discussing the topic of pornography, Mari Mikkola here provides an accessible introduction to contemporary philosophical debates conducted from a feminist philosophical perspective. The starting point of the book's examination is morally neutral, and the book provides a comprehensive discussion of various philosophical positions on pornography that are found in ethics, aesthetics, feminist philosophy, political philosophy, epistemology, and social ontology. The book clarifies different stances in the debate, thus clarifying and helping readers to understand what exactly is as stake. In addition, although the book does not argue for a single outlook, it puts forward substantive philosophical views on different aspects of philosophical debates about pornography. Mikkola ultimately offers readers important methodological insights about doing philosophical work on something as ubiquitous as pornography.

Pornography has long proven a polarizing and vexing subject in legal and feminist debates. Women's social movements have fought ferociously against pornography since the 1970s, emphasizing its contribution to violence against women. At least two to four of ten young men consume it three times or more per week. The pornography industry exploits poor populations, who are multiply and intersectionally disadvantaged based on gender, race, or other vulnerabilities. A thorough analytical review of empirical studies using complementing methods demonstrates that using pornography substantially contributes to consumers becoming more sexually aggressive, on average desensitizing them and contributing to a demand for more subordinating, aggressive, and degrading materials. Consumers are also often found wishing to imitate pornography with unwilling partners; many demand sex from prostituted people, who have few or no alternatives. While the supporting scientific evidence of harm is growing exponentially, the politics of legal challenges to pornography still constitutes an amalgam of some of the most intractable, thorny, and adversarial obstacles to change. This book assesses American, Canadian, and Swedish legal challenges to the explosive spread of pornography within their significantly different democratic systems, and constructs a political and legal theory for effectively challenging the sex industry under law. The obstacles to this challenge are exposed as more ideological and political than strictly legal, although they often play out in the legal arena. Legal challenges to the harms are shown to be more effective under legal systems that promote equality and when the laws empower those most harmed, in contrast to state-enforced regulations (e.g., criminal obscenity laws). Drawing on feminist and intersectional theory, among others, this book argues that pornography is among the linchpins of sex inequality, contending that civil rights legislation and a civil society forum can empower those harmed with representatives who have more substantial incentives to address them. This book explains why democracies fail to address the harms of pornography, and offers a political and legal theory for changing the status quo. These insights can be applied to other intractable problems associated with hierarchies, and will appeal profoundly to political theorists and those invested in civil and human rights.

As concerns about violence, war, terrorism, sexuality, and embodiment have garnered attention in philosophy, the concept of vulnerability has become a shared reference point in these discussions. As a fundamental part of the human condition, vulnerability has significant ethical import: how one responds to vulnerability matters, whom one conceives as vulnerable and which criteria are used to make such demarcations matters, how one deals with one’s own vulnerability matters, and how one understands the meaning of vulnerability matters. Yet, the meaning of vulnerability is commonly taken for granted and it is assumed that vulnerability is almost exclusively negative, equated with weakness, dependency, powerlessness, deficiency, and passivity. This reductively negative view leads to problematic implications, imperiling ethical responsiveness to vulnerability, and so prevents the concept from possessing the normative value many theorists wish it to have. When vulnerability is regarded as weakness and, concomitantly, invulnerability is prized, attentiveness to one’s own vulnerability and ethical response to vulnerable others remain out of reach goals. Thus, this book critiques the ideal of invulnerability, analyzes the problems that arise from a negative view of vulnerability, and articulates in its stead a non-dualistic concept of vulnerability that can remedy these problems.

Fresh empirical evidence of pornography's negative effects and the resurgence of feminist and conservative critiques have caused local, state, and federal officials to reassess the pornography issue. In The New Politics of Pornography, Donald Alexander Downs explores the contemporary antipornography movement and addresses difficult questions about the limits of free speech. Drawing on official transcripts and extensive interviews, Downs recreates and analyzes landmark cases in Minneapolis and Indianapolis. He argues persuasively that both conservative and liberal camps are often characterized by extreme intolerance which hampers open policy debate and may ultimately threaten our modern doctrine of free speech. Downs concludes with a balanced and nuanced discussion of what First Amendment protections pornography should be afforded. This provocative and interdisciplinary work will interest students of political science, women's studies, civil liberties, and constitutional law.

For years, mainstream feminist ethics focused criticism on male supremacy. Feminist philosophers in this volume adopt a less male-focused stance to look closely at oppression's impact on women's agency and on women's relations with women. Examining legal, social, and physical relationships, these philosophers confront moral ambiguity, moral compromise, and complicity in perpetuating oppression. Combining personal experience with philosophical inquiry, they vividly portray their daily engagement with oppression as both victims and perpetrators. They explore such issues as how pornography silences women and radical feminist politics' complicity in racism. Among these insightful essays, Sandra Bartky argues that women share guilt for racism when they benefit from it without protest; Susan Brison reflects on uses of narrative in trauma recovery from such experiences as being targeted for rape or murder; Joan Callahan examines fallout of derogatory speech directed at lesbians; Virginia Held proposes carrying care into marketplaces and governments; and, in her introduction, Claudia Card draws on Primo Levi's conception of "gray zones" in exploring dangers of character damage to victims of misogyny. A fitting companion to Card's highly regarded Feminist Ethics, this volume interweaves observations on character, political ethics, violence, and love into an accessible sourcebook for students. It tackles some of feminism's most pressing issues and helps readers to identify and then overcome the real damage caused by oppression.

This book presents thought-provoking research and data about pornography that will prompt readers to reconsider their positions on a highly controversial and current issue. Why do people use pornography? Is porn addiction a fact or myth? What is revenge porn and is it illegal? Can pornography be more diverse? This interdisciplinary collection presents well-researched facts and up-to-date data that encourage informed discussion about controversial and relevant issues in contemporary society. Chapters address topics such as the history and cultural trends of pornography, labor and production practices in creating porn, the effects of technology, current issues in obscenity law, and myths and facts about the effects of pornography. New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law challenges assumptions about this popular yet controversial industry. Contributors include top scholars from media studies, sociology, psychology, gender studies, criminology, politics, and the law. This book provides a comprehensive overview of pornography that will help students, educators, and general readers deepen their understanding of this provocative subject.