Most people probably think of opposition to pornography as a right-wing cause grounded in religious fundamentalism or out-dated Victorian notions about sex and sexuality. What I'd like to do is to introduce you to a different anti-pornography position that is rooted in feminism. I will try to convince you that the pornography issue creates a serious ethical dilemma for humanists because it brings out a conflict between two of the basic moral tenets of humanism: a commitment to freedom of expression and a belief in the moral and civil equality of persons.

The view I'm going to discuss is espoused by Catherine MacKinnon, a lawyer and political scientist at the University of Michigan. MacKinnon maintains that pornography is not simply a form of expression, but is a political practice that constitutes a form of sex discrimination. Pornography, in her view, harms women by helping to create a social definition of women as subordinate to men, thereby preventing us from having a moral and civil status equal to men. On these grounds MacKinnon advocates the adoption of local anti-pornography ordinances that would enable women to sue for damages if they can show that a piece of pornography has harmed them.

There are two words that are conspicuously absent from the brief summary I just gave: "offense" and "censorship". Here is why they are absent. First, the feminist anti-pornography position is based upon the premise that certain sexually explicit material harms women by making us morally and civilly subordinate to men. It is important to recognize that the harm that concerns MacKinnon has nothing to do with offense. Second, "censorship" is a word that properly applies to speech or expression. MacKinnon's argument, as we will see, is that pornography is not exclusively speech, but is, in important respects, an action. Restricting pornography, in her view, is like restricting sexual harassment: even though sexual harassment is speech, it is regarded as discriminatory conduct. If prohibiting sexual harassment is not censorship (even though it restricts speech), then restricting pornography is not censorship.

MacKinnon's argument that pornography is a kind of action is based on the notion that certain (though not all) sexually explicit materials themselves subordinate women. (Note that this claim differs from the more common assertion that pornography causes men to subordinate or discriminate against women.) MacKinnon supports her view by drawing analogies between certain types of pornography and various actions that involve speech. She claims that these types of pornography are similar to speech acts such as "help wanted-male" and "sleep with me and I'll give you an A." These utterances are regarded, both by common sense and by the law, as harmful actions rather than as forms of expression. In other words, these utterances, though instances of speech, are in and of themselves harmful. They don't cause harm, they are harm. Pornography, MacKinnon claims, is a harm of this sort. Her argument for this contention, however, is inadequate. In attempting to support her analogies, she tends to fall back upon the more common claim that pornography causes harm to women. But this is just to conflate two logically distinct arguments.

Although MacKinnon's argument is flawed, I believe it is still reasonable to conclude that certain pornography contributes to women's subordinate civil and moral status by fostering sexist and misogynistic attitudes and conduct. Is this a sufficient reason for making pornography civilly actionable? In my view, no, though this is a reluctant "no." If it is true that sexist and misogynistic speech contributes to women's oppression, it seems rather arbitrary, to my mind, to concentrate exclusively on pornography. By targeting pornography, MacKinnon commits herself to the view that only sexually explicit misogynistic speech is so harmful to women's status that it must be limited. This commitment, however, is generally not argued for.

--Cynthia Stark, Ph.D.