- Position1 of 3›
- Pornography harms women
Pornography gives a distorted view of men and women's bodies, as well as the actual sexual act, often showing the performers with synthetic implants or exaggerated expressions of pleasure. Pornography has a detrimental effect on self-esteem, particularly amongst women.
The argument
Pornography puts forth unrealistic body images that can cause body dysmorphia. Pornographic performers often have implants and use exaggerated sounds and facial expressions that create false expectations in viewers, and because the material is presented as a record of real people, nothing in it signals that what is being shown has been constructed. People, especially teenagers, can be convinced by the bodies shown in pornography that their own bodies are inadequate. When individuals who are already insecure with their bodies view the artificially created bodies that populate pornographic videos, it can cause them to move from insecurity to full-blown body dysmorphia. The comparison is unwinnable in a particular way: the standard being measured against is not an unusual real body but an altered one, so no change in the viewer could ever close the gap. Timing makes the effect worse. Pornography is widely available and can be easily accessed, so it is likely that pornography will be the first intimate introduction that many people have to another person's body. A first impression has no earlier reference to be weighed against, which is why it tends to be taken as the baseline rather than as one example among many. If that first introduction includes bodies that are altered from reality by implants, beauty enhancement, and acting, then people may immediately have a skewed perspective of how they ought to look — a perspective formed before they have encountered enough ordinary bodies to correct it. This is especially harmful to women, who already face societal pressures of appearance, so these images arrive on top of an existing set of demands rather than onto neutral ground. Because pornography encourages body dysmorphia in this way, pornography harms women.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Pornography is viewed much less frequently by women than other things, like magazines and television shows, that contribute much more heavily to body dysmorphia. As such, pornography is not a major concern. While the link between body dysmorphia and pornography has been shown to be clear for men, it is not clear that pornography is a genuine cause of body dysmorphia.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] Altered and idealised bodies are not distinctive to pornography. Advertising, magazines and television present them to far larger audiences far more often, so the premise does not isolate pornography as the source of the standard. [Rejecting P2] First exposure is not the same as formative influence; the argument gives no account of why an early image should outweigh years of subsequent experience of real bodies. [Rejecting P3] The step from insecurity to clinical body dysmorphia is asserted rather than traced, and the counter-argument notes that what evidence exists for the link is clearest in men — which does not support a conclusion about harm falling specifically on women.