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THE ANTI-PORNOGRAPHY MOVEMENT |
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by Ana Carreon Abstract: Ana Carreon, Stanford class of 2006, submitted this paper in satisfaction of course requirements for Professor Susan Olzak's class on "The Roots of Social Protest," to explore the strange alliance between liberal feminists and right-wing Christians to enact legislation restricting the distribution of pornography, and the ultimate disintegration of that alliance. Ms. Carreon's analysis is not only a historically accurate and analytically insightful view of a subject that many believe may have already had its fifteen minutes of fame; it also provides a cautionary tale illustrating how alliances between left and right-wing causes result in the dominance of the stronger over the weaker, in this case the dominance of right-wing politically repressive goals over the human-rights agenda of left-wing anti-pornographers. To get the PDF version click here. The anti-pornography movement is part of the larger “moral reform” movement, which is comprised mainly of women and religious individuals. Though the movement today is known to be an issue of importance mainly to the right wing Christian groups, it enjoyed a great deal of growth and support under the guidance of left wing feminist organizations. My analysis of the anti-pornography movement will focus on this shift in movement activity, from radical feminists to conservative women. However, I suggest that throughout the span of the movement, conservative men have played an important role in legislation and enforcement. I believe the anti-pornography movement can be greatly elucidated in the context of the Political Process Model theory of social movement. In particular, two technological innovations, the VCR and the Internet, are responsible for the growth of the pornography industry, and concurrently, the growth of the anti-pornography movement. Opportunities for anti-pornography legislation have also arisen as conservative men have been appointed to different positions in government. The anti-pornography movement cannot be understood without also taking into account the “framing” of grievances, and I will demonstrate how the shift in movement activity from the radical feminist sector to the conservative Christian sector was accompanied by a shift in framing. Though this shift may at first appear to be a complete transformation, I will argue that it was, in fact, not absolute. Rather, the contemporary anti-pornography movement has succeeded in bridging itself to various concerns, and the result is a broader frame. ³³³ The 1970s were characterized by an extraordinarily high level of social movement activity (Baumgartner 2002). In Social Movements, the Rise of New Issues, and the Public Agenda, Frank Baumgartner suggests that several of these movements were interconnected and simultaneously enjoyed a great increase in congressional attention. In particular, the feminist movement gained strength from the Civil Rights Movement, which preceded it. Data shows that, “the timing of the increase of attention to civil rights is somewhat earlier to that of women’s issues […] but the correspondence between the growth of the size of the interest-group population active in the area and the amount of congressional attention to the issue is just as striking,” (Baumgartner 2002: 7).
Figure 1. Women’s Groups and Congressional Attention The first feminist anti-pornography movements arose in the early 1980s, shortly after the advent of the VCR. Feminist writers and theorists took advantage of this political opportunity by redefining pornography in terms of its impact on women (Cavalier, 1996: 1). As shown in Figure 1, the feminist movement had already seen a great deal of success before it began to address the issue of pornography. In fact, the rise of the anti-pornography movement appears to be related to an overall decrease in feminist social movement organizations. Although women’s issues saw a continued increase in congressional attention throughout the 1970s, 80s, and into the 90s, there was already a great deal of confusion within the feminist movement itself in the late 70s. I would like to suggest that this confusion was in fact a result of the movement’s success, because many feminists harbored a great deal of resentment towards men, and woman’s significant gains were not enough to exhaust the deep well of passion that remained within the movement. The anti-pornography movement was an outlet for those who felt oppressed by pornographic media that pleased men by depicting women as subordinate. A statement made by Christina Sommers – a “dissident feminist” – in an interview with Think Tank, makes the connection between the success of the feminist movement and the rise in frustration in the radical sector. She says, “No women have ever had more opportunities, more freedom, and more equality than contemporary American women. And at that moment the movement becomes more bitter and more angry (Wattenberg 1995: 1).” One feminist theorist in particular, Catharine MacKinnon, helped direct this anger against what she interpreted as the “institutionalization of violence” against women: pornography. MacKinnon can be credited with framing the movement in a way that captured the hearts and minds of women on all sides of the political spectrum. She borrowed a great deal from the Civil Rights Movement; yet the anti-pornography movement was heavily criticized by racial minority women. At a conference of the social movement organization known as Women Against Pornography (WAP), many were not shy about voicing their complaints:
To these women their sexual orientation was just as important as their race, and indeed many lesbians have been vocal about their belief that pornography is not just a heterosexual issue. Yet many feminists continue to ignore a lesbian or homosexual perspective on pornography when they speak out against it. Instead, they remain convinced that pornography is an issue of men and women. Diana Russell, in her speech at the Women’s Worlds 99 convention allies herself with the Civil Rights movement while opposing women against men, “Just as African Americans in the United States were the primary force in the struggle against racism, it is women who must initiate and sustain an organized movement to combat pornography. Hence, it is vital that women are educated about the contents of porn and the causal role it plays in promoting misogyny as well as primarily male crimes such as rape, child sexual abuse, woman battering, sexual harassment, and femicide,” (Russell 1999: 18). Furthermore, the anti-pornography organization, Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM) went so far as to say that the proliferation of pornography in media, which arose due to new technologies such as the VCR and color TV, was in fact a response to the feminist movement: “We see this proliferation of pornography, particularly violent pornography and child pornography, as part of the male backlash to the women’s liberation movement. Enough women have been rejecting the traditional role of subordination to men to cause a crisis in the collective male ego,” (Califia 1994: 10). In response to these claims, lesbians asked whether violence could be monopolized by men. One lesbian feminist named Pat Califia embraced sadomasochism when practiced between two women, and extended that right to heterosexual and homosexual couples. In a letter to Off Our Backs, she declared, pornographically, “S/M is not ‘conforming to sex roles,’ nor is it true that role-switching is ‘rare in S/M.’ My ‘slave’ regularly ties me up, torments me, fucks my brains out, and I love it,” (Califia 1980: 2).
Figure 2. Lesbian Violence It is clear that the anti-pornography movement of the 70s and 80s was always fraught with dissent from within. Yet images of violent pornography and MacKinnon’s claim that these images were linked to rape and battery truly struck a chord in the hearts of those who worked with battered women. One activist confesses, “Most of us had firsthand experience with women abuse. Many of us had been sexually assaulted or battered; many of us worked in transition houses or rape crisis centers. We saw pornography as yet another form of women abuse,” (Ridington 1994: 1) However, as the movement progressed, this activist came to see different sides of the issue, asking, “Are there different standards of tolerance when violence in pornography is depicted by women [against] other women? […] Yet when I see pictures of people in bondage, or subjected to pain, whether male or female or heterosexual or gay or lesbian context, it is pain I see and feel,” (Ridington 1994:6) She makes no attempts to hide her own confusion, which reflects the confusion that many women, on both sides of the pornography debate, felt deeply. Intimately related to the question of whether anti-porn equals anti-gay and lesbian is the question, did the very act of lobbying for anti-porn legislation place feminists in an unholy alliance with the religious right? To answer this question, we must consider the political context in which feminist lobbyists like Cathryn MacKinnon were working. Ronald Reagan was elected president for two consecutive terms in the early 1980s, and he “won reelection in 1984 by a landslide, owing a very large indebtedness to the Religious Right,” (DeWitt 2003: 3). Furthermore, both Reagan and his attorney general, Edwin Meese, took sexual morality very seriously. Indeed, one of Reagan’s favorite causes was against “children having children” and “welfare queens” (Cocca 2002: 4). The concern over teen sexuality that burgeoned during the Reagan Administration signals an important shift in the framing of the anti-pornography movement, from the rights of women to the rights of children, i.e. minors under the age of 18. However, religious conservatives did not reject MacKinnon’s suggestion that pornography violated the civil rights of women. When MacKinnon arrived on the scene, there existed no legal definition of “pornography.” The word that has always been used is “obscenity,” which is rather vague, as Jonathan Elmer points out in The Exciting Conflict, “Rather than defining obscenity, the Court’s standard simply reasserts the possibility of defining obscenity, a possibility assured by the assumed coherence of a community and a self able to judge,” (Elmer 1988: 49). The emphasis here is on community standards, which are dependent on the location of the community in space and time. But in the context of MacKinnon’s definition of pornography, “Abstract notions of obscenity become irrelevant when pornography is thus conceived as a discriminatory practice which constitutes an infringement of the civil rights of women,” (Elmer 1988: 52). Furthermore, her definition invokes John Stuart Mill’s “harm principle” as a valid excuse for circumventing the First Amendment (Cavalier 1996: 1). This newly evolved weapon in the fight against obscenity or pornography was welcomed by moralists. It seems clear that MacKinnon was aware that she was allying herself with the right wing, when she said, “the media has been conducting a campaign out of whole cloth about our relationship to conservatives […] We thought someday that would pay off,” (Douglas 1986: 2). However, within organizations like WAP, many women were concerned about this alliance. One woman is quoted as saying that she didn’t want to align herself with “the folks in my hometown who think sex is evil. I don’t want government censorship because the boys won’t censor themselves, they will censor us,” (Brooke 1979: 3). Other issues of concern were that WAP make clear that it supported prostitutes, and “differentiate itself from the right-wing on this issue,” (Brooke 1979: 4). However, the overwhelming climate of the organization appeared to be anti-prostitution (Brooke 1979: 5). Furthermore, WAP was quite willing to accept money from the right wing, considering that they had few options. (Brooke 1979: 7). Concerns about right wing influence were not unfounded, and though legislation was passed due to feminist lobbying, wording was often corrupted or simply insufficient in the eyes of feminists (Ridington 1994). Perhaps it is no surprise that they were not satisfied, considering their apparent confusion over the issue themselves. Some issues that were never addressed were, “a legal definition of pornography that would replace the definition of obscenity and distinguish it from erotica and limit violent pornography and child pornography” and, “obscenity provisions moved out of the ‘Offences Tending to Corrupt Morals’ section of the Criminal Code,” (Ridington 1994: 3). The lack of a clear definition of pornography versus the more woman-friendly “erotica” was also a cause of confusion within the WAP (Brooke 1979: 6, 7). Often legislation simply seemed to be gained at too high a price for some feminists. In particular, enforcement of laws that anti-pornography feminists had lobbied for was often directed at the gay and lesbian community. Canada was one of the first places to embrace the definition of pornography as violence. After the law was passed, one lobbyist named Kathleen Mahoney proudly proclaimed the key to her movement’s success, “We made the point that among the seized videos were some horrifically violent and degrading gay movies. We made the point that the abused men in these films were being treated like whores and the judges got it. Otherwise, men can’t put themselves in our shoes,” (Ridington 1994: 7). Soon enough, gays and lesbians were targeted. Specifically, gays were targeted in the search for child pornography. Pat Califia claims that, “Gay men who have sexual relationships with boys (and the boys themselves) are the real victims of the kiddy-porn crusade” (Califia 1994: 1). She buttresses this statement by citing an incidence of the New York City police raiding the Athletic Models Guild in response to “an alleged complaint from a fourteen-year-old whom police say was photographed at the studio,” (Califia 1994: 3). Though no child pornography was found on the premises, mailing lists were seized, containing the names of “some three thousand” homosexuals.
Figure 3. Caged Homosexual Even MacKinnon acknowledged the difficulties of her task when the Indianapolis Supreme Court overturned legislation that she had helped construct in 1984: “MacKinnon said the decision will make it more difficult to find communities willing to enact ordinances like the one she drafted,” (Douglas 1986: 3). Anti-pornography feminists began to differentiate between activism and legislation, and sometimes even opposed legislation. The Feminist Anti Censorship Taskforce, a countermovevement that arose in response to MacKinnon’s ideas, was extremely effective in opposing anti-pornography legislation (Rich 1985). Legislation was thus passed and later overturned, and the feminist anti-pornography movement began to wind down. A look at the feminist movement as a whole shows that “disputes over sexuality, class, and race contributed to the decline of the radical feminist branch of the movement” and “radical feminism gave way to a new cycle of feminist activism sustained by lesbian feminist communities,” (Taylor 1992: 174).
Figure 4. Lesbians Unite It is my belief that MacKinnon’s definition of pornography, while not perfect, would have worked just as well as any other if it weren’t for dissent within the movement itself. Fear of being co-opted by the right wing and a desire to form stronger alliances with the burgeoning gay and lesbian movements were a couple important concerns leading to the decline of activity in the radical feminist anti-pornography movement. Yet despite the decline of the movement, MacKinnon’s framing of pornography in terms of “violence” and bridging that frame to the Civil Rights Movement had a great deal of resonance even beyond the feminist community. Today her definitions live on as the debate over violent and child pornography continues, and to some extent her words have been appropriated by the right wing in their own fight against pornography. ³³³ The popularity of the Civil Rights Movement did indeed provide a political opportunity to discuss pornography within the framing of “violence.” But the Civil Rights Movement declined as the feminist anti-pornography also began to wane, as is shown in the graph below.
Figure 4. Congressional Hearings and SMOs on Civil Rights and Minority Issues The Christian Right followed closely on the heels of the Feminist movement. A comparision of the two movements reveals similarities, specifically in the importance of framing and identity. “The collective identities of sectarian evangelical Protestants were crucial to the origins of the Christian Right in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. In this sense, the movement closely resembles the origins of ‘new social movements’ on the left, such as feminism,” (Green 1999: 155). The primary difference between the two movements is that feminists sought to change what they believed were outdated concepts, and the Christian Right was invested in maintaining what they defined as “traditional values,” (Green 1999: 155). Thus, the feminists perceived pornography as a manifestation of ancient misogynistic attitudes towards women, whereas the Christian Right saw pornography as a challenge to the stability of the nuclear family and the Biblically defined sexual roles to which men and women must adhere. The Christian movement’s framing of issues within the “pro family” context “captured the most popular part of the Christian Right’s moral agenda,” (Green 1999: 159). The Christian Right distinguished itself from the feminist anti-pornography movement by framing the movement more squarely within the context of family values. Thus, pornography was centered on the violation of children’s rights, rather than those of women. One group that exemplifies this attitude and its truly oppositional role towards feminism is the Concerned Women for America (CWA), founded by Beverly LaHaye in 1979 (Gardiner 2000: 1). LaHaye is quoted as having formed the social movement organization in response to the leader of the National Organization for Women (NOW), Betty Friedan, having said that her views represented those of many American women. Upon hearing this, LaHaye “Jumped up and said, ‘Betty Friedan doesn’t speak for me and I bet she doesn’t speak for the majority of women in this country,’” (Gardiner 2000: 1). The context of Friedan’s statement is not given, but it is quite possible that what she said was in fact, “I want to express my view, on behalf of a great many women in this country, feminists and believers in human rights, that this current move to introduce censorship in the United States in the guise of suppressing pornography is extremely dangerous to woman,” (Cavalier 1996: 2). |
