Mellifluence

Sex isn't the Problem:
Why the Leftist Anti-Porn Movement is Wrong

Are three anti-porn articles in leftist publications in the past couple of months a coincidence? It started when I saw the Utne Reader's Sept-Oct 2006 issue, with a series of articles indicated on the cover as: "Porn Culture: What It's Doing to Us." Then I was looking on Alternet and found a blog post called "Who's Co-Opting Feminism?" by Christy Burbridge at Feminista, that questioned the feminist creds of pro-porn feminists. Then today, I picked up a copy of the East Bay Express, the Berkeley-Oakland( supposedly) liberal weekly newspaper, to see a cover story on how internet porn is behind the rise in sex addiction.

One of the Utne articles claims that we're living in a "porn culture", where we're surrounded by sex all the time and so it's either making us into sexual freaks or numbing is to "real" sexuality. That's funny, how can we be living in a porn culture when a movie that shows any full frontal nudity in the non-sexual context of the story garners a movie an X-rating or at the very least an R and a stern warning about nudity before the film starts ? Not to mention that "happy sex" in American-made movies (depictions of people having healthy, fun, non-exploitive sex) is virtually nonexistent. Plus the fact that in most of America, sex-education in schools is hugely controversial. Where's the ubiquitous sex? In my experience, American culture is deathly afraid of sex and sexuality in almost all forms.

Another article was titled "That's Obscene! Or is it? Why Censoring Evil Does More Harm than Good", reprinted from Dissent magazine. Now porn is evil? I think that's going a little too far.

I remember traveling to Europe when I was 15 for a school trip with my liberal Catholic high school. One of my first memories of Paris is walking by a newstand that sold magazines, and seeing naked people on the covers of magazines, just hanging out there on the walls of the newsstand, for everyone to see. No brown paper covers, no hiding them behind the counter. I don't read French, but I think some of them weren't even porn mags. I was shocked. Shocked! Then later, as an adult, I reflected back on it and came to the conclusion that it's better to depict naked bodies as normal than to hide them in shady corners, both literal and metaphorical.

I've been a feminist since I was 19 (probably earlier than that, actually, but I didn't use the word until I was 19.) I used to be staunchly anti-porn, but now I'm a raving pro-porn, pro-sex feminist. My only complaint about porn is that there's so little good stuff.

This is not to say that the porn industry is some bastion of fairness, cleanliness, decency, and good hygiene. I know that's not true, and I'm sure there are people -men and women - who are exploited in it, just as there are people exploited in every industry . There are horrible fetishistic acts depicted in some porn that is - and should be - illegal (child pornography, snuff films, etc.) Being a pro-porn feminist isn't the same as saying "anything goes." But most of the porn I've seen depicts consensual sex between adults. True, it may not be particularly hot sex, it may even be really stupid sex with stupid music, no plot, and ridiculous looking actors. But you can say that about most current non-porn movies, too.

To my mind, the leftist anti-porn movement is really an anti-sex movement, and it's misguided. It's sexual fear that drives it, not the will to help people exploited by the sex industry. It's the same old hysterically religious sex-fear that drives fundamentalists in all religions to force women to cover up their bodies,lower their eyes, and shames them as "sluts" if they enjoy sex or have too much of it.

If you really wanted to help sex workers who need it, you'd reach out to them and offer substantive help: legislation to make sex work legal so the workers can have health benefits, protection from abuse, and a way out if they choose to take it. Anti-porn people often protest that this would allow the sexual exploitation of young women to continue in southeast Asia and other areas of the world, but actually, kidnapping and slavery is always illegal (or should be), and so helping those women isn't a sex issue, but a human rights issue. There are people who are virtual slaves in many other industries that don't have to do with sex (check out this article on modern-day slavery). Legalizing and regulating sex work would actually help these women (giving them an avenue for legal recourse, taking away much of the shame that often stops them from seeking help) while also supporting and helping women (and men) who go into sex work by choice.

In my opinion, the real problem in this so-called "porn culture" isn't the sex, it's the violence and the lack of human compassion. The porn that gets most people up in arms is the violent and exploitive porn: the rape, cruel S&M, torture, children, etc. I agree that this stuff is cruel and horrible and needs to be stopped, but it's not the sex that's the problem: it's the violence. It's the violence in movies and TV that bothers me, too, and that leads to this violent and degrading porn. THAT's what I think anti-porn crusaders need to focus on, not making porn illegal or shaming us into thinking porn is bad.

What about the fact that most kids see something like 200,000 violent acts on TV and movies by the time they're18 (how many explicit sex acts - happy or otherwise - do most kids see in this time period? Probably not nearly as many.) Or the fact that TV news focuses on the most outrageous, nasty stuff and very little on the positive, good things that happen? Or that a Christian video game has kids killing "heathens" for points? Or that the leadership in this country thinks nothing of invading a country and killing hundreds of thousands of people who they then won't even acknowledge? THAT's the true shame of this nation - and of most of the rest of the world, for that matter. Not the fact that some people enjoy watching other people have sex.

Now if someone could just do something about all the just plain bad porn that's out there, I'd be happy.