Is pornography moral?

[windjammer]

Well, I should give my opinion.

Morality is socially constructed. So, according to european and american reality, yes, pornography is immoral.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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This is o/c correct but ignores one major point - I'm disavowing value judgements based on abstractions and abstract principles. Now I think it's likely that Porn may encourage in some very restricted cases sexual acts that are not, shall we say, totally kosher even to the liberal hedonists here. However, one or two examples of persons acting does not implicate something as immoral especially when such persons are a completely statistically negligible sample of the sum of total porn users.

Otherwise you are talking about ideas such as 'objectification' which may be true but can't be argued to be cause of patriarchy, sex crimes, etc.

Or Shorter, empirical Gully: If it were true that access to sexual explicit material aimed at heterosexual males which depicted women in a very passive manner caused all sorts of socio-sexual dysfunctions then we would expect that the 'west' would have the highest rate of, say, rape in the world. But, of course it doesn't and that isn't true. Indeed, there may be something of a correlation between sexual openness and lower rates of rape. And before the 'hedonists' start cheering, I'll remind them I said 'correlation' and not cause.

One of the more dominant intellectual ideas of this age - whether pomo or cognitive psychology - is that representations cause things to happen as we represent the world, not as objective 'reality' but a subjectivized structure of representation (which we get for either genetic makeup or our culture and environment depending on which sort of explanation you prefer). But this, at least in its 'pop' form, confuses perception with action and assumes that we only have one type of perception that constantly map onto reality at all times and this perception is connected to certain transendental categories (like 'women' for example). In practice the vast majority of people who watch porn are cognisicent of the fact that porn is fantasy, that women (or men for that matter) aren't like that in real life and that this has no real world implications outside of one's desires. If you ask for empirical evidence, may I suggest Atlas forum?

Anyway, I will add that I actually think - note: think - that both of these statements are probably true:

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I'm not sure I buy the repression argument though. I have stated thus before.

Anyway, I think personally a much more interesting question than is pornography moral is whether morality is pornographic?

[afleitch]

Way back in the days of web 1.0 (I'm talking about 1996-1998 here) online pornography helped settle my curious mind into understanding that I was sexually, as well as companionally (not a word but meh) attracted to men. Did I masturbate furiously every second of the day? Of course not, I was making maps you fools but it was a great help in confirming what I understood about myself. It was a safe way of finding that out about myself and I see no reason to subscribe to 'shame' for looking at it.

[Beet]

It's fascinating to see the heavy firepower brought out here in defense of porn.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Chances are most of the porn you watch involves young women (or men) masturbating in front of a webcam or having sex with their significant other.  Not professionally produced pr0ns.

What?  Really?  Is that the kind of weird stuff young people are into nowadays?  Good lord, the professional stuff is far better than that crap.  Like comparing Breaking Bad to watching a reality TV show.

Hear, hear!

Hey hey!  To each his own!  I quite enjoy watching a hottie play with herself in front of the webcam and I think you'd be hard pressed to call me a prude! 

You know Hockeydude, I'm not sure someone in this forum has ever thought you were a prude .

On the contrary, I had a theory that American society, and Disney movies in particular, tend to convince young girls that they should be putting themselves on a pedestal and wait for Mr. Super-Perfect, and that European girls put out more because they understand that sex tends to be fun for all parties involved, even if the male is not "the one".  Well, a resident Republican decided that was evidence enough that I was only displaying frustration, and proof of my profound prudeness... when in actuality it was something I always thought about and was trying to help out someone here who had displayed some sexual frustrations.  I was taken aback by the slander... but I suppose people will think what they want.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

It's fascinating to see the heavy firepower brought out here in defense of porn.

Well... if prudishness didn't have such dire consequences...

[Antonio the Sixth]

Gully, I certainly wasn't trying to argue that pornography is directly responsible for rapes (neither can I imagine it having a deterrent effect, of course). I can't deny that my argument is extremely abstract and baseless, but I think that this kind of reflection can (and should) be completed with more empirical approaches.

I realize I haven't really articulated my views in this thread, so I guess I'll do that now. I'll try not to sound too sage. Basically, there are two main issues:
- The first is the similarity with prostitution and the similar issues it raises, both theoretical (paying someone for sex is, IMO, something inherently wrong) and practical (the high likelihood that the people being paid find themselves in a situation of exploitation - despite what we'd like to think about pornstars, it probably happens very often). Of course porn isn't nearly as bad as prostitution in both these respects (mainly because the "consumer" doesn't directly interact with the "worker" and thus can't directly take advantage from the economic dependence). And while I think taking advantage from prostitution as a client or pimp is a sufficient evil to be punished by law, this certainly isn't the case for porn.
- More broadly speaking, I consider porn (at least porn in the kind of way that it is generally made - though I'm not sure there is any other way to) to be part of a value system which is deeply unjust and hurtful (toward actual people). The point is that, in porn more than everywhere else, you find the kind of sexist tropes (ie, stereotypes about what femininity and masculinity are or should be) that do cause some problems in society at large. This doesn't mean porn is responsible for the existence of these stereotypes (obviously not), but it certainly takes a part in perpetuating them. It obviously doesn't mean that one guy watching it will immediately turn into a sexist creep, or even that it happens most of the time, but it is likely to at least somewhat reinforce sexist mindsets at the aggregate level. Again, as I said before, I don't even think it's that big of an issue (the priorities in fighting sexism are certainly elsewhere).

All right, I know this is still a pretty bad post - sorry. I hope my point remains clear despite the ridiculous verbosity.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Tik: The problem with the idea that it satiates desires that would otherwise come out in other ways is that a lot of people argue, not entirely without empirical evidence (yes, I am hedging here, only because I don't have the studies that support this view in front of me right now and I'm heading out to go hiking in a few minutes), that watching a lot of it can also warp attitudes or exacerbate already unhealthy attitudes about sex and about women and about the sorts of things that it shows--in other words that it creates or at least can in some cases create the sort of desires that one might think it would satisfy.

I'm sympathetic to the line of thinking, and I'm interested in the specifics of the studies you mentioned. Nevertheless, it seems like a slippery slope. Inferring that you dislike pornography for idealistic reasons (my apologies if that's not the case),  even if pornography can bring about desires and attitudes that are, um, disagreeable or otherwise wrong, does that damn the whole thing? I think an absence of pornography would ultimately result in even worse behaviour and attitudes. I like a really solid array of evidence before I condemn something as more often harmful than not. You're the one with the studies, though, I've got nothing but my own inclinations and biases.

You're right that I believe pornography to be immoral for intrinsic, idealistic reasons, but it always helps to have some corroboration that it's also immoral in a way that does actually hurt people.

As it turns out a lot of the research on this was done in the eighties and nineties and doesn’t really take online pornography into account. I don’t know if that would change the outcomes at all. In any case here you go, with the caveat that all of these studies are controversial and some, including that done by the Reagan-era Justice Department that some of these cite, may have been politically motivated:

Pornography and sexual aggression: are there reliable effects and can we understand them?
Effects of Exposure to Pornography on Male Aggressive Behavioral Tendencies
Pornography Use and Sexual Aggression: The Impact of Frequency and Type of Pornography Use on Recidivism Among Sexual Offenders
Pornography and Rape: A Causal Model
Men’s Behavior Toward Women After Viewing Sexually-Explicit Films: Degradation Makes a Difference

(And with the additional caveat that I couldn’t find some of what I was looking for and that this isn’t really a subject in which I would claim especial academic expertise anyway. I'll try to find some critical overviews of this discourse to add in a later post, in the interests of fairness. I believe there are several.)

I’ve tried to link papers from a variety of perspectives that generally agree with mine, ranging from radical feminist views to more moderate ones (EDIT: Note in particular, as Lurker points out in the post below this one, that 'Pornography and Rape: A Causal Model' opens itself up to a lot of methodological criticism and its titular 'causal model' is most probably at least overstated somewhat, possibly actually wrong. I'm still including it because it gives a decent summary of the 1986 Justice Department report and reactions to it--I'll try to find the Justice Department report itself--and because of the interest of what Russell chooses to write about and the way she chooses to write about it as ideologically representative of her strain of feminism at the time). The general takeaway in the moderate view is that while viewing pornography doesn’t in all or even most cases lead to degraded and violent views of women, it can encourage or exacerbate preexisting tendencies in those directions rather than ‘satiating’ them or serving as ‘catharsis’, and that pornography that is itself violent or even sadomasochistic (beyond a certain point) can lead to some pretty alarming results. With some exceptions these are generally agreed that the sociological problem with pornography is not the sexual explicitness as such but rather the portrayal of violence and the sensibility that sex is some kind of commodity. This is a set of conclusions with which I’m comfortable because, again, a significant part of my moral issue with pornography is with what it is intrinsically (i.e. of course it would sometimes encourage the sensibility that sex is some kind of commodity! It itself makes sex some kind of commodity!) rather than merely its extrinsic effects. And what Antonio was saying earlier about being exposed to half-clad women in commercial contexts all the time being a significantly more major problem in that it leads to thinking of women as themselves consumer goods or possibly robots of some description (see for instance this article) is pretty heavily borne out by the evidence. The only way to deny that media representations of women effect the way people see actual women is to be completely uninformed or not want to believe it. I think we know who in this conversation has ulterior motives.

On principle I would at least hope that we can all agree that in any case it is far, far, far more important to try to ensure that people who do not want to have sex or for others to have access to their sexualities do not have to have sex or have others have access to their sexualities than that people who want access to others’ sexualities be guaranteed it. Not having to have sex or be sexualized if you don’t want to is a right. Getting to have sex or sexualize others if you want to isn’t. I would hope that we can all agree on that but I doubt it somehow.

Chances are most of the porn you watch involves young women (or men) masturbating in front of a webcam or having sex with their significant other.  Not professionally produced pr0ns.

What?  Really?  Is that the kind of weird stuff young people are into nowadays?  Good lord, the professional stuff is far better than that crap.  Like comparing Breaking Bad to watching a reality TV show.

Hear, hear!

Yeah, too bad that's the opposite of the moral difference.

It's fascinating to see the heavy firepower brought out here in defense of porn.

Well... if prudishness didn't have such dire consequences...

Cry me a river. Thinking that watching pornography is mildly to moderately morally wrong and something that people should try to avoid doing is not even close to the same territory as disowning young women for having sex with their boyfriends or raping lesbians to try to make them straight. Stop it.

[Lurker]

Nathan:

I don't want to get too involved in this discussion, but I took a look at one of your links, as I found its claims to be somewhat interesting - (though obviously I only read parts of it). Diana Russel concludes that there is most likely a causal relationship between consumption of pornography and levels of rape, not only a correlation, (p. 66). One of her pieces of "evidence" for this is one study that suposedly shows that U.S. States with the highest rates of porn consumption also have the highest numbers of rapes (It would be intereting to see these numbers, and the method used). She then says:

"If the rape rates were very low in this country, or if they were found
to have declined over the past few decades, these facts would likely be cited
to support the view that pornography does not play a causative role in rape".

(As the argument against this she uses some survey done by herself - hardly an unbiased source). As a matter of fact, U.S. rape statistics have declined for the past decades, even though there has been a obviously massive increase in porn-watching. This seems to stand in clear contrast to her hypothesis.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Nathan:

I don't want to get too involved in this discussion, but I took a look at one of your links, as I found its claims to be somewhat interesting - (though obviously I only read parts of it). Diana Russel concludes that there is most likely a causal relationship between consumption of pornography and levels of rape, not only a correlation, (p. 66). One of her pieces of "evidence" for this is one study that suposedly shows that U.S. States with the highest rates of porn consumption also have the highest numbers of rapes (It would be intereting to see these numbers, and the method used). She then says:

"If the rape rates were very low in this country, or if they were found
to have declined over the past few decades, these facts would likely be cited
to support the view that pornography does not play a causative role in rape".

(As the argument against this she uses some survey done by herself - hardly an unbiased source). As a matter of fact, U.S. rape statistics have declined for the past decades, even though there has been a obviously massive increase in porn-watching. This seems to stand in clear contrast to her hypothesis.

Yes, Russell is one of the more ideologically and conceptually interesting sources here but hardly one of the more unbiased or scientifically rigorous. Thank you for pointing this out; I think I'll have to look through Russell's paper once again in more detail to see if there are any other points on which it doesn't hold up to further scrutiny.

On the other hand, if you're using the National Crime Victimization Survey I'm pretty sure that has been criticized, including by other government surveys ('The Sexual Victimization of College Women', for example), on the grounds that it only counts crimes perceived as crimes by the victim.

There have also obviously been other social forces at play over the past several decades that almost certainly affect rates of rape or reported rape. At the least I think we may say that Russell likely overstates the causal link that she is positing. I've edited my above post to reflect this potential concern with her work.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Good posts Nathan.

I'll get back to you in a couple of days, although you do not realize that no finding is likely to change my mind here. I have, after all, already suggested that this was probably true in a very small number of cases (as a ratio of the total number of porn consumers). For now, though, this is a placeholder.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Good posts Nathan.

I'll get back to you in a couple of days, although you do not realize that no finding is likely to change my mind here. I have, after all, already suggested that this was probably true in a very small number of cases (as a ratio of the total number of porn consumers). For now, though, this is a placeholder.

I'd probably argue for a higher ratio than you would but I don't, in principle, disagree. Again, this is only part of why I hold the position that I do, but it's a part that Tik was curious about and I tried to answer him as best I could.

[morgieb]

I wouldn't call porn immoral. It is what it is, and I don't see how looking at it hurts people, as long as they aren't in a relationship.

[afleitch]

I’ve tried to link papers from a variety of perspectives that generally agree with mine

Which is where I loose you.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I’ve tried to link papers from a variety of perspectives that generally agree with mine

Which is where I loose you.

I interpreted Tik as asking for an argument (i.e. a presentation of the studies that I find convincing or conceptually interesting myself) rather than a balanced summary of views. If I'm wrong in this interpretation I'll gladly try to link some papers that take opposing standpoints.

[tik 🪀✨]

I am just giving these studies a good read when I have time, they're intriguing. And yes, I was more interested in learning about pornography's negative implications. The positives and neutrals are obvious and overplayed, especially in this forum.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I think there also are Dworkin and McKinnon's works which are a reference (whether positively or negatively) on this subject.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I haven't attempted to look for any of Dworkin's or McKinnon's work online, is the only problem there.

[Redalgo]

. . . watching a lot of it can also warp attitudes or exacerbate already unhealthy attitudes about sex and about women and about the sorts of things that it shows--in other words that it creates or at least can in some cases create the sort of desires that one might think it would satisfy.

Ya, I am inclined to agree. To me the reasonable response is to counter it with better sex education since people are going to continue consuming pornography regardless of whether it is generally considered to be moral. Pornography does not have to depict women in such a way, however, which I think raises an intriguing question as to why so many of the depictions of them currently are as they are. That is to say, perhaps it is not pornography itself that is immoral so much as it is immoral for those who produce the material to propagate degenerative ideas and perspectives - or perhaps even immoral of consumers of morally dubious material themselves for having created demand for material portraying said "unhealthy" attitudes about sex and women.

. . . even if pornography can bring about desires and attitudes that are, um, disagreeable or otherwise wrong, does that damn the whole thing? I think an absence of pornography would ultimately result in even worse behaviour and attitudes. . . .

It does not because the desires and attitudes elicited are going to depend on the content of the material. Not all porn is the same, and regardless of what the desires and attitudes promoted are there in any particular product there is still a burden of responsibility on consumers of it to handle what they get out of it (no pun intended!) in ways that are moral. That does not absolve creators of pornography from any share of the blame for bad consequences of course, nor do any of those negative outcomes detract as you said from the likely fact that there would be negative outcomes from people not consuming any pornography, as well. Meh - the haziness of efforts to predict how acts and ideas may shape future events and to what extents, for better or worse, is a serious shortcoming of consequentialism in ethics.

Well, I should give my opinion. Morality is socially constructed. So, according to european and american reality, yes, pornography is immoral.

As an answer to the question, "Is pornography moral by the standards of mainstream society?" you are absolutely correct. However, as a construct morality can also be fabricated by individuals. Indeed, the social nature of such a construct demands input from individuals - with the cumulative result being representative of a certain equilibrium of sorts (i.e. "porn is immoral" would be true of society's perspective if the sum of individuals part of society, factoring in their opinions and respective amounts of influence over capital applied to shaping perceptions of right and wrong, were more strongly in support of that statement than one of "porn is moral," "porn is amoral," or something else).

Or Shorter, empirical Gully: If it were true that access to sexual explicit material aimed at heterosexual males which depicted women in a very passive manner caused all sorts of socio-sexual dysfunctions then we would expect that the 'west' would have the highest rate of, say, rape in the world. . . .

That is not necessarily true because there may be many variables involved in determining rates of things like rape beyond the impact, if any, of pornography. There are enough cultural differences between major world civilizations that measures of sexual violence could not really be wisely compared in the way you are suggesting, no?

In practice the vast majority of people who watch porn are cognisicent of the fact that porn is fantasy, that women (or men for that matter) aren't like that in real life and that this has no real world implications outside of one's desires. . .

Ya, I completely agree with this as a caveat to one of my earlier responses to Nathan in this post!

It's fascinating to see the heavy firepower brought out here in defense of porn.

The topics of threads on the Atlas often do not lend themselves well to applying heavy firepower - especially for those of us without an intimate and highly-detailed knowledge of facts concerning electoral demographics, American political personalities, the inner workings of the Supreme Court, etc. For me at least, as a political philosopher, most subjects around here do not call for thorough responses so much as brief expressions of opinion that avoid complexity so as to avoid making ignorant statements about things I've yet to (or honestly never intend to) thoroughly research. xD

On the contrary, I had a theory that American society, and Disney movies in particular, tend to convince young girls that they should be putting themselves on a pedestal and wait for Mr. Super-Perfect, and that European girls put out more because they understand that sex tends to be fun for all parties involved, even if the male is not "the one". . .

It is only anecdotal evidence on my part, which I know is pretty flimsy, but in my experiences in the States this is true of many American gals. Some who do give in to desire to have a bit of fun instead of waiting seem reluctant to admit it (e.g. claiming to still be virgins), as if their failure to wait for "the one" is some breach of taboo. In contrast, over the past several years virtually none of  the gals from Europe I've spoken to are like this once they've reached their late teenage years, and seem just as open and liberated as men when it comes to their sexuality. I do not think it is about Disney in particular though so much as the stronger influence of traditionalist perspectives of Christianity, which in turn profoundly impact social mores and gender roles. American culture still scorns young women who are "easy" or "sluts."

I realize I haven't really articulated my views in this thread, so I guess I'll do that now. I'll try not to sound too sage. Basically, there are two main issues:

- The first is the similarity with prostitution and the similar issues it raises, both theoretical (paying someone for sex is, IMO, something inherently wrong) and practical (the high likelihood that the people being paid find themselves in a situation of exploitation - despite what we'd like to think about pornstars, it probably happens very often). Of course porn isn't nearly as bad as prostitution in both these respects (mainly because the "consumer" doesn't directly interact with the "worker" and thus can't directly take advantage from the economic dependence). And while I think taking advantage from prostitution as a client or pimp is a sufficient evil to be punished by law, this certainly isn't the case for porn.

- More broadly speaking, I consider porn (at least porn in the kind of way that it is generally made - though I'm not sure there is any other way to) to be part of a value system which is deeply unjust and hurtful (toward actual people). The point is that, in porn more than everywhere else, you find the kind of sexist tropes (ie, stereotypes about what femininity and masculinity are or should be) that do cause some problems in society at large. This doesn't mean porn is responsible for the existence of these stereotypes (obviously not), but it certainly takes a part in perpetuating them. It obviously doesn't mean that one guy watching it will immediately turn into a sexist creep, or even that it happens most of the time, but it is likely to at least somewhat reinforce sexist mindsets at the aggregate level. Again, as I said before, I don't even think it's that big of an issue (the priorities in fighting sexism are certainly elsewhere).

Antonio, I respect this perspective but am too entrenched in the liberal / hedonist perspective to agree with it.

On the first point, prostitution only seems immoral to me if the seller is (a.) not on higher footing with the buyer in terms of negotiating power, (b.) is subjected to the authoritarian business models prolific under capitalism (one forced into selling their body on account of financial desperation, accepting the inadequete pay that often ensues when a pimp is in a good position to take a ridiculously large cut without recourse for the workers, etc.), or (c.) otherwise harmed or cheated during the negotiation or provision of service without their informed, non-coerced consent. Likewise with pronography, I see the plight of the worker as more of a problem arising from capitalism than one of exploitation intrinsic to sex-related sectors of the economy in particular.

The second concern is harder for me to juggle, honestly, because it is one of those issues that really tempts me to set aside devotion to pluralism and permissivity of deviant conduct for the defense of individual rights and empowerment in favour of cracking down on activities felt to be detrimental to society for the greater good of the public – in this case detrimental in that these portrayals are often corrosively sexist, abusive, exploitative, objectifying of women, or simply anti-egalitarian in general. These are political instincts I learned to subdue a long time ago to save myself from the siren calls of cultural imperialism. It is important from my perspective to compartmentalize ones personal ethics from those applied to crafting excellent public policy for the sake of avoiding government overreach.

That is totally a liberal obsession, of course. As a social democrat you know that the state can do a lot more good if its power is brought to bear to advance the right causes in the right ways than real liberals are willing to strive for via public policy. On my side it is more of an ideal for such power to be applied only to issues of the utmost importance, leaving many social ills and controversies to the People to sort out (at least partially) on their own. There is some measure of fear that state is an instrument of darkness that must be kept stowed away under lock and key under most circumstances.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

It is the right to free speech. But making money off of it, in the manner they do is immoral.

[Deus Naturae]

Pornography cannot be immoral anymore than a rock can. Objects or categories of objects cannot be immoral (at least not without some sort of religious argument, as far as I can see). So, the immorality of "pornography" being discussed in this thread must be referring to an action(s). The main ones that come to mind in this context are the viewing of pornography (and it is the implication that this action is immoral that seems to be upsetting people here) or the numerous actions associated with the production of pornography. Which actions are being debated should be clearly defined in order to avoid misunderstanding and make everyone's arguments clearer.

[Vladimir]

Viewing pornography is immoral if the intent is for sexual gratification.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Viewing pornography is immoral if the intent is for sexual gratification.

Why else would one watch porn? To look at the McMansions they're filmed in?

[PJ]

I don't find it immoral, but I agree with what others said earlier that calling it moral seems odd.

[TJ in Oregon]

Viewing pornography is immoral if the intent is for sexual gratification.

^^^ This. Also, the results of this poll illustrate quite clearly just how much we've whitewashed the virtue of chastity in our society.