The ethical case for and against censorship of pornography

The ethical case for and against censorship of pornography

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The Ethical Case For And Against Censorship Of Pornography

Can a government legitimately prohibit citizens from publishing or viewing pornography, or would this be an unjustified violation of basic freedoms?

This question lies at the heart of a debate that raises fundamental issues about just when, and on what grounds, the state is justified in using its coercive powers to limit the individual freedom. Traditionally, liberals defended the freedom of consenting adults to publish and consume pornography in private from moral and religious conservatives who wanted pornography banned for its obscenity, its corrupting impact on consumers and its corrosive effect on traditional family and religious values.

But, in more recent times, the pornography debate has taken on a somewhat new and surprising shape. Some feminists have found themselves allied with their traditional conservative foes in calling on the state to regulate or prohibit pornography-although the primary focus of feminist concern is on the harm that pornography may cause to women and childrenrather than the obscenity of its sexually explicit content.

And some liberals have joined pro-censorship feminists in suggesting that the harms that violent and degrading pornography causes to women's social standing and opportunities might be sufficiently serious to justify prohibiting such pornography on liberal grounds.

Many others, both liberals and feminists, remain unconvinced. As we shall see, the debate over whether pornography should be censored remains very much alive. Ohio US Can we do better? Here is a first, simple definition. Pornography is any material either pictures or words that is sexually explicit. This definition of pornography may pick out different types of material in different contexts, the ethical case for and against censorship of pornography, since what is viewed as sexually explicit can vary from culture to culture and over time, the ethical case for and against censorship of pornography.

Displays of women's uncovered ankles count as sexually explicit in some cultures, but not in most western cultures nowadays although they once did: the display of a female ankle in Victorian times was regarded as most risqué.

There may be borderline cases too: do displays of bared breasts still count as sexually explicit in various contemporary western cultures? However, some material seems clearly to count as sexually explicit in many contexts today: in particular, audio, written or visual representations of sexual acts e. Within the general class of sexually explicit material, there is great variety in content. For example, some sexually explicit material depicts women, and sometimes men, in postures of sexual display e.

Some depicts non-violent sexual acts both homosexual and heterosexual between adults who are portrayed as equal and consenting participants. Other sexually explicit representations depict acts of violent coercion: people being whipped, beaten, bound, tortured, the ethical case for and against censorship of pornography, mutilated, raped and even killed. Some sexually explicit material may be degrading, without necessarily being overtly violent.

This material depicts people most often women in positions of servility and subordination in their sexual relations with others, or engaged in sexual acts that many people would regard as humiliating.

Some sexually explicit material involves or depicts children. Some portrays bestiality and necrophilia; and so on. On the first definition of pornography as sexually explicit material, all such material would count as pornography, insofar as it is sexually explicit.

But this simple definition is not quite right. Anatomy textbooks for medical students are sexually explicit-they depict exposed genitalia, for example-but are rarely, if ever, viewed as pornography.

Sexual explicitness may be a necessary condition for material to count as pornographic, but it does not the ethical case for and against censorship of pornography to be sufficient. So something needs to be added to the simple definition. What else might be required? Here is a second definition.

Pornography is sexually explicit material verbal or pictorial that is primarily designed to produce sexual arousal in viewers.

This definition is better: it deals with the problem of anatomy textbooks and the like. Indeed, this definition is one that is frequently employed or presupposed in discussions of pornography and censorship.

See e. Of course, it is important to distinguish here between sexually explicit material that is wholly or primarily designed to produce sexual arousal i. The film, Last Tango in Paris arguably aims to arouse audiences, but this is not its primary aim. It does so in order to make a broader political point. It is sometimes assumed that pornography, in this second sense, is published and consumed by a small and marginalized minority.

But, while exact estimates of the size and profitability of the international trade in pornography vary somewhat, it is generally agreed that the pornography industry is a massive international enterprise, with a multi-billion dollar annual turnover.

Pornography is much more widely consumed than is sometimes supposed, and is a large and extremely profitable international industry. When many people describe something e. They seem to the ethical case for and against censorship of pornography saying, the ethical case for and against censorship of pornography, in addition, that it is bad -and perhaps also that its badness is not redeemed by other artistic, literary, or political merit the work may possess. This suggests a third definition: pornography is sexually explicit material designed to produce sexual arousal in consumers that is bad in a certain way.

This definition of pornography makes it analytically true that pornography is bad: by definition, material that is not bad in the relevant way is not pornography. It might be that all and only sexually explicit material is bad in a certain way e. But it might be that only some sexually explicit material is objectionable e. And, of course, it is possible that no sexually explicit material is bad in the relevant way e.

A number of approaches define pornography as sexually explicit material that is bad—although they disagree as to the relevant source of its badness, and consequently about what material is pornographic. A particularly dominant approach has been to define pornography in terms of obscenity, the ethical case for and against censorship of pornography. For critical discussions of this approach see SchauerFeinbergMacKinnon If all sexually explicit material is obscene by whichever of these standards is chosen, then all the ethical case for and against censorship of pornography explicit material will be pornography on this definition.

This is the definition of pornography that moral conservatives typically favour. But the badness of pornography need not reside in obscenity. Pornography might be defined, not as sexually explicit material that is obscene, but as that sexually explicit material that harms women. See LonginoMacKinnon Of course, women may not be the only people harmed by the production or consumption of certain sorts of sexually explicit material.

The consumption of sexually explicit material has often been thought the ethical case for and against censorship of pornography be harmful to its mostly male consumers: for example, by corrupting their morals or by making them less likely to have loving, long-term sexual relationships. This class of sexually explicit material is widely regarded as objectionable because it involves the actual sexual exploitation of children, together with a permanent record of that abuse which may further harm their interests.

But it is worth noting that there is an interesting fourth possibility. It is possible that some non -sexually explicit material might also turn out to be bad in the relevant way. It might be that some non-sexually explicit material is obscene in the relevant sense e. Or it might turn out that non-sexually explicit advertising that depicts women in positions of sexual servility in such a way as to endorse that subordination is also bad in the relevant way.

As many philosophers might be inclined to put the point, the sexually explicit materials that subordinate women via their depiction of women as subordinate may turn out not to form a natural kind. In this case, there are two options. The former option would clearly stick more closely to the everyday conception of pornography as involving the sexually explicit. But it might be that this ordinary conception, on reflection, turns out not to capture what is of moral and political interest and importance.

There may thus be a theoretical reason to conceive of pornography more broadly than simply sexually explicit material that is bad in a certain way, or perhaps simply to invent a new term that captures the theoretically interesting kind. Some feminists seem inclined to this broader approach, suggesting that material that explicitly depicts women in postures of sexual submission, servility or display in such a way as to endorse it counts as pornography See Longino and MacKinnon This may include some non-sexually explicit material that would not ordinarily be thought of as pornography: for example, photographs in artwork, advertising or fashion spreads that depict women bound, chained or bruised in such a way as to glamorise these things.

For further discussion, see Rea It seems to me that we do not need to choose between these different definitions, the ethical case for and against censorship of pornography, for all of them capture something of the term's everyday use.

What matters crucially is that we know which definition is being used in a particular case. Here is one topical example of how this might happen, the ethical case for and against censorship of pornography. Some feminists object to pornography on the grounds that it harms women. Other feminists claim that pornography may not always be harmful to women, and may even sometimes be beneficial.

It seems that there is genuine disagreement here. But is there? Not necessarily. So pornography, for them, is that subset of sexually explicit material that in fact harms women. This definition makes it an analytic truth that pornography, wherever it exists, is bad from a feminist point of view. There may thus be no genuine disagreement here. For both sides might agree that sexually explicit material that harms women is objectionable. They might also agree that there is nothing objectionable about sexually the ethical case for and against censorship of pornography material that does not harm women or anyone else.

Two really substantive issues at stake in the feminist debate over pornography are 1 whether any sexually explicit material is in fact harmful to women; and, if so, the ethical case for and against censorship of pornography should be done about it? Until comparatively recently, the main opposition to pornography came from moral and religious conservatives, who argue that pornography should be banned because its sexually explicit content is obscene and morally corrupting.

According to conservatives, the sexually explicit content of pornography is an affront to decent family and religious values and deeply offensive to a significant portion of citizens who hold these values. The consumption of pornography is bad for society. It undermines and destabilizes the moral fabric of a decent and stable society, by encouraging sexual promiscuity, deviant sexual practices and other attitudes and behaviour that threaten traditional family and religious institutions, and which conservatives regard the ethical case for and against censorship of pornography intrinsically morally wrong.

Furthermore, pornography is bad for those who consume it, corrupting their character and preventing them from leading a good and worthwhile life in accordance with family and religious values. According to conservatives, the state is justified in using its coercive power to uphold and enforce a community's moral convictions and to prevent citizens from engaging in activities that offend prevailing community standards of morality and decency.

Governments also have a responsibility to prevent citizens from harming themselves. This is true, even where the citizen is not a child who may not yet be competent to make responsible judgements for themselves about what is in their own best interestsbut a mature adult who is voluntary engaged in an activity which they judge to be desirable and which causes no harm to others.

Conservatives therefore think that it is entirely legitimate for the state to prohibit consenting adults from publishing and viewing pornography, even in private, in order to protect the moral health of would-be consumers and of society as a whole. See Baird and Rosenbaum Traditional liberal defenders of pornography famously disagree, rejecting both the principle of legal moralism and the principle of legal paternalism, at least where consenting adults are concerned. This is not to say that liberal defenders of pornography necessarily approve of it.

Indeed, they frequently personally find pornography-especially violent and degrading pornography-mindless and offensive.

But this does not mean that it should not be protected-quite the opposite.

11 Ethics Pornography and Censorship

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Pornography and Censorship (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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