Pornography encourages the sexual abuse of women · Encyclopedia of Opinion

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: How do feminists view pornography
Position1 of 3›: Pornography harms women
Argument‹4 of 4: Pornography encourages the sexual abuse of women

Pornography is a cause of rape and other forms of violence against women - "Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice." Anti-pornography feminists charge that pornography eroticizes the domination, humiliation, and coercion of women, and reinforces sexual and cultural attitudes that are complicit in rape and sexual harassment.

The argument

Pornography—especially pornography that depicts violent acts, domination, or rape scenes—encourages viewers to act violently toward women. It eroticizes brutality and can desensitize its viewers to the point that they may become inclined to act out their violent sexual fantasies on real women. When women are portrayed in pornographic films as enjoying unconsented sex, it reinforces the idea that women actually want sex regardless of what they say. This encourages men to ignore protests toward their advances and proceed without consent. Thus, pornography harms women because it encourages sexual abuse and even goes so far as to normalize it. While it may not be a direct cause, it lowers inhibitions toward rape, which can cause someone who is predisposed toward a desire to rape to do so.

Premises

[P1]Pornography — especially that depicting violence, domination, or rape — eroticizes brutality and can desensitize viewers to the point of inclining them to act out violent sexual fantasies on real women. [P2] Portraying women as enjoying unconsented sex reinforces the idea that women want sex regardless of what they say, encouraging men to ignore protests, lowering inhibitions toward rape and normalizing it. [C] Therefore pornography encourages the sexual abuse of women, which is how it harms women.

Counter-arguments

Violent pornography is a small subset of pornography as a whole, so even if violent pornography does encourage violent sexual behaviors, it should be categorized separately from the rest of pornography. It is unclear how strong the correlation between pornography and sexual assault is, and it is even less clear if there is any line of causation between pornography and sexual assault. Sexual assault, after all, existed long before pornography.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise runs a description and a causal claim together. That some pornography eroticises violence is a statement about content; that viewing it inclines people to act is the empirical claim, and none is offered in support. Desensitisation is standing in for a mechanism, and the research on it is contested and largely correlational, so it cannot separate material attracting people already disposed to violence from material producing the disposition. [Rejecting P2] The reinforcement argument depends on viewers taking depiction for instruction, which is asserted rather than shown, and it applies at most to a subset of material — the counter's point that violent content is a small share of the whole. The premise also treats every link as automatic, from portrayal to belief to lowered inhibition to act, when each is a separate claim requiring its own support. [Rejecting C] The conclusion is causal and the premises establish content and plausibility. Sexual violence long predates the mass availability of pornography, and the strongest version of the feminist critique being advanced here does not need the causal claim at all: it concerns what the material depicts and the conditions under which it is made.