How Muslim Veils Are Like Porn
April 7, 2010 14 Comments
On one hand you have a naked woman being filmed having explicit sex.
On the other you have a Muslim woman wearing a face veil shopping in Paris.
What do they have in common? They are both participating in the degradation of women, at least in theory.
The French President has said that the burqa should be banned in public because it “runs counter to woman’s dignity.” In his defense of Sarkozy, Peter Berkowitz raised some interesting points about why the rationale for banning the Muslim face veil is similar to the classic feminist rationale for banning pornography.
In a free society, prohibiting the veil because it symbolizes or enacts the oppression of women is a more perilous step than seeking to ban it on educational or national security grounds. It’s akin to the view advanced by radical feminists in America such as law professor Catharine MacKinnon—and eagerly embraced by many progressive law professors—that pornography should be banned because it degrades women by portraying them as sexual objects.
He said that normally the balance between individual rights and the protection of society means that such a ban would be unacceptable. While the government can intervene to “maintain freedom’s preconditions”, such as ensuring children get an education, otherwise it should give as much freedom to individuals as possible.
In ordinary circumstances, the response to both bans would be the same. Whether the veil and pornography degrade women, freedom—of women and men—is unacceptably imperiled when government is invited to determine which clothes and photographs, films and books, and eventually words and gestures respect the dignity of women.
But ordinary circumstances may not obtain today in France. Freedom is in special jeopardy when a substantial segment of the population embraces a way of life that fails to cultivate the virtues of freedom while teaching disdain for freedom’s practices and principles. In France as throughout Western Europe, the full veil, along with cousin-marriage, polygamy and sexual violence contribute to a culture that secludes women and creates sizable barriers to assimilation.
It is an interesting theory but I don’t buy his rationale for why one should be banned and not the other. Pornography has been shown to contribute to the normalization of violence against women and to contribute to a culture which views women as objects, and thus inhibits their assimilation into the professional fields.
If we are willing to fight for the right to pornography, logically we should also be raising our voices in defense of the veil. But many of us do not.
Is the veil that much more harmful for women than pornography, or is Berkowitz just trying to rationalise his own cultural biases?
if burqa makes a lot of money as pornograhic industries, European countries will make it legal. lol
“Pornography has been shown to contribute to the normalization of violence against women.”
Total bullshit. Where’s your evidence?
The report entitled “Harms of Pornography Exposure Among Children and Young People” by the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society found that with exposure to porn boys are more likely to believe there is nothing wrong with sexually harassing a girl and more likely to believe that it is ok to pin a girl down.
Ok Class, The Last Subject Of The Day Will Be Porn, So Take Notes
(Mick)
Also a study by Jennings Bryant in 1979 from the University of Alabama found that men who consumed large amounts of pornography were more forgiving of criminal rape.
Now you could argue that the study is old, but if you read What We Don’t Know About Pornography Could Fill The Internet you’ll get an explanation about why studies into pornography are so rare.
Basically if you can’t guarantee that your research subjects won’t be harmed permanently then you aren’t allowed to do the study. The results of Bryant’s study were so overwhelmingly negative that it disallows most studies of pornography.
Is this a problem? Yep a big one. I would love it if there were more data out there to play with. (Mick)
You really need me to pick that apart?
1) The first study is talking about potential harm in children, not consenting adults who have formed their ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality. That’s why we have laws prohibiting access to porn for people under 18. Sexually explicit content shouldn’t be made available to people before they have the emotional and psychological capacity to handle it. No argument from me there. But I bet if I had enough time I could poke holes in the methodology of that study.
2) The absense of quality research doesn’t prove the presence of harm.
3) You’re cherry picking your studies. You’re dismissing the Montreal study on the quality of its research but choosing a study from 1979 and calling it definitive.
It should also be noted that despite the increasing ease of access to images of sexual violence and pornography, actual incidents of rape and violent crime have been on the steady decline in North America for decades. Of course, correlation doesn’t equal causation. But a lot of the studies claiming irrevocable harm for porn watchers have the same politicized witch-hunt air that people have been using to demonise violent video games.
Absence of research does not prove the presence of harm, but all the studies conducted on individuals that I could find showed that porn use contributed to the normalization of violence against women.
Other than the Montreal study which was flawed. It was men who had viewed pornography from prepubescence self-reporting on whether it had changed the way they interact with women. If the way they view women hasn’t changed from before puberty, then they need some professional guidance. If it has changed, there are so many factors involved that it is impossible to determine the cause of that change.
Here are some studies about pornography:
Silbert, M. and Pines, A., in “Pornography and Sexual Abuse of Women,” published their study involving prostitutes in the international journal Sex Roles, “The comments followed the same pattern: the assailant referred to pornographic materials he had seen or read and then insisted that the victims not only enjoyed rape but also extreme violence.”
“Effects of Prolonged Consumption of Pornography” was review of controlled studies which found that extensive viewing of the type of pornographic material commonly sold at adult bookstores was positively correlated with leniency in the sentencing of a person convicted of rape in a mock trial setting, decreased satisfaction of participants with their sex lives and partners, and an increased self-reported willingness to commit rape or other forced sexual acts.
Melissa Farley’s 2007 study of prostitution, “Renting an Organ for Ten Minutes: What Tricks Tell Us About Prostitution, Pornography, and Trafficking,” found that 49% of the prostitutes surveyed worked as performers in the production of pornography, and that 47% experienced discomfort as a result of their customers’ requests to perform sexual acts of which the customers had learned through the viewing of pornography.
Neil Malamuth found among a diverse sample of Canadian men that the more exposure to pornography led to higher acceptance of rape myths, violence against women, and general sexual callousness.
Now it is true that the increase in pornography use from 1975 to 1995 occurred at the same time there was a decrease in sexual assault cases in the United States and in Denmark the legalization of pornography had no effect at all on sexual assault cases. However correlation is not causation and there are many factors that determine whether a sexual assault case is reported.
As human endeavours, all studies have flaws in them. Instead of picking them apart can you find some with different results?
I’d love to read them because, personally, I find it hard to believe pornography is as damaging as these studies imply. (Mick)
On the eve of his execution, Ted Bundy, a man who was notorious for raping and killing women gave an interview to psychologist James Dobson. In it, he explained how his obsession with pornography overtook him and eventually led to the terrible and violent acts he committed. Compelling stuff. I’ve quoted a few passages below:
“As a young boy of 12 or 13, I encountered, outside the home, in the local grocery and drug stores, softcore pornography. Young boys explore the sideways and byways of their neighborhoods, and in our neighborhood, people would dump the garbage. From time to time, we would come across books of a harder nature – more graphic. This also included detective magazines, etc., and I want to emphasize this. The most damaging kind of pornography – and I’m talking from hard, real, personal experience – is that that involves violence and sexual violence. The wedding of those two forces – as I know only too well – brings about behavior that is too terrible to describe…
“Once you become addicted to it, and I look at this as a kind of addiction, you look for more potent, more explicit, more graphic kinds of material. Like an addiction, you keep craving something which is harder and gives you a greater sense of excitement, until you reach the point where the pornography only goes so far – that jumping off point where you begin to think maybe actually doing it will give you that which is just beyond reading about it and looking at it.”
Do you honestly believe that the porn made Bundy do it? Bullshit.
The rationalizations of rapists and misogynists don’t replace the need for hard data.
We don’t blame pornography for the violent acts that Bundy committed. Bundy himself didn’t, either. We don’t blame the invisible voices for the actions of the unibomber, nor the coffee pot for deaths caused by the rifle-toting postal worker. Just as we don’t blame alcohol for the acts of an alcoholic. If Bundy had never been exposed to a dirty magazine, maybe he would have become a mild-mannered dentist. Maybe a lack of outlet for his sexual obsessions would have caused him to kill even more women. The truth is, we just don’t know.
There are no studies that can definitively prove a lack of real-world harm by pornography viewers who choose never to commit a crime. Logically, it’s impossible to prove an absence. So it’s the responsibility of the people trying to prohibit pornography to prove the potential for harm.
You said that porn use: “showed that porn use contributed to the normalization of violence against women.” But what does “normalization of violence against women” mean? Does it mean that men are more likely to actually commit violence? None of the studies you’ve quoted go so far as to make that claim. Does it mean that the men studied are more likely to have negative attitudes towards women? Maybe.
But even here, the evidence is sketchy.
You rightly criticize my earlier point that the data showing a real-world decline in sexual violence concurrent with an increase in pornographic images is correlative. However, the studies you’ve provided are equally correlative. And they have the added drawback of being deeply policiticized and inconclusive.
Farley’s study for example points out that johns were likely to request pornographic acts when requesting services from prostitutes. This is no more compelling an argument for proving the harm of pornography than unearthing the sexual positions advertised on the walls in the brothels of Pompeii.
Let’s be pointed here: Rape is not a feeling of entitlement. A crime is not a subjective notion of callousness, or objectification of women. Rape is an act of violence and aggression. Porn is as equivalent to rape as a first-person shooter video game is to war. One is about fantasy. The other is about real-world aggression. Adults can tell the difference.
For more than thirty years, feminists (a moniker I take for myself) have made the hatred of pornography a keystone of their philosophy. Yet in those decades, thousands of studies, hundreds of hours of research, entire courses, degrees and PhDs devoted to the topic, not a single study has managed to provide any meaningful evidence proving that porn causes women to be harmed. And by evidence, I mean facts. Real, cold, hard facts proving statistically significant numbers of men who do something wrong do it because of the pornography. All we have are a bunch of studies saying that some men who choose to watch porn report having politically unpalatable views towards women after the fact. Well guess what, male sexuality is politically unpalatable quite a lot of the time. Nothing here warrants significant changes to public policy.
I’ll also point out that your narrow definition of porn is deeply telling of the underlying political philosophy that is behind its attack. Last I checked, the porn aisles were stocked with more than just rape and torture fantasy. They’re filled with gay and lesbian fuck-fests, orgies, foot-fetishes, bestiality, bondage, laytex, leather and gender-bending. An entire world on second life is devoted to play acting the sex lives of animals. As animals. Where are the studies on the correlation between carnivores and horse-fuckers? Surely our furry playacting is indicative of a belief that humans are superior to animals, thus justifying our barbaric BBQ Sunday customs.
These sexual fantasies don’t fit into the narrow narrative of porn being an enemy to the agency of women, so they are ignored. My point is just that humans possess remarkable imaginations and are capable of finding pleasure in the twisted, perverse and just plain weird. We also tend to be attracted to the things that are “wrong,” the acts that grate against our real-life moralities and political sensibilities (like rape, for example.) We eroticize the things that we fear. This is not something to be penalized or judged. We should celebrate our creepy inner worlds and revel in our complex, fucked up sexuality.
PS – You wanted some research to counter your research. Here:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/200904/does-pornography-cause-social-harm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDYZOaTaK2A Find parts one and three on Youtube if you can. I love those guys.
JG, when was the last time you checked for porn?
Paperboy: Two and a half years ago.
It is always unnerving when scientific studies butt up against our long-held beliefs. You asked for evidence and I provided it. As with all evidence it is up to the individuals to decide how they wish to weigh it.
I shouldn’t have to tell you that articles written by journalists on websites are often not as reliable as peer reviewed studies. However it is disturbing if the only thing you could find to counter my point is a piece in Psychology Today. That’s the best proof yet for the need for more research in the area.
My point, which I stand by, is that pornography causes about as much harm to women as the burqa does. In both cases it is not the thing itself, but the social attitudes surrounding it which harm women. The black piece of cloth is innocent of the polygamy, cousin marriage and sexual violence that Peter Berkowitz accuses it of promoting.
My question is whether it is fair to take one piece of the culture and hold it accountable for all the sins of the society. On the face of it the answer would be no, but perhaps the burqa is the lynch-pin and if it was gone everything else would fall into place. That is certainly what Catherine McKinnon believes of pornography.
So the question remains, if this is true, is there anything which differentiates the burqa from pornography other than our cultural biases?
My gut says yes, but I have no evidence to back it up. This is a position you should be sympathetic with JG. (Mick)
And FYI, the theory about the normalization of violence is basically that pornography turns women into sexual objects and therefore they are no longer people and do not have to be treated as such.
In theory this applies to all pornography: straight or gay, couples or orgies, blue movies or torture flicks. So it is more than just rape fantasies that apply. I would argue that this theory does not logically hold with porn with an all male cast, but McKinnon would.
If you are going to attack the hard-line feminists for their theories, I suggest you acquaint yourself with them first. (Mick)
Your last comment is petty. I won’t address it. I also don’t feel the need to reiterate any of my previous comments. We both require different standards of evidence in order to condemn something as harmful. That’s fine.
As for the burqa = pornography question, it’s an interesting one to consider. My understanding of the rationale behind the burqa is that according to Islamic thought, men objectify and sexualize women. It’s an aspect of their nature. The burqa is intended to protect women from this malign male sexuality and allow them to function in public as people.
We, I believe, both agree that this ‘solution’ is total bunk and often has the opposite of the intended effect. However, what I think your argument doesn’t take into consideration is the context in which both of these so called ‘Tools of Oppression’ are used.
Pornography is a private pleasure intended for consenting adults in the use of their own homes. People can choose to use it, or not.
The burqa is a requirement enforced by rule of law in many countries. Where it is not mandated by law, it is often required of women who were born into conservative families and social circles. Head and face coverings do more than just change how men perceive or objectify women, they actually affect the everyday lives of every single woman who wears them.
To call these two items morally equivalent is the dumbest argument I’ve ever heard.
I’m sure Peter Berkowitz will be sad to hear that. (Mick)
am1am2,
Do you not realise how you’re attempting to avoid confrontation at times?
In a previous comment you stated “As human endeavours, all studies have flaws in them. Instead of picking them apart can you find some with different results?
I’d love to read them because, personally, I find it hard to believe pornography is as damaging as these studies imply.”
Although you continue to argue the point that their correct.
You also criticize ‘JG’ for picking them apart but did’nt you do so yourself?
You also stated that studies have flaws in them but criticize him again for using Psychology Today.
I fail to see how you can admit that the topic of ‘rape’ has little evidence to counter your arguments.
You’ll believe what you want I suppose.