I make the distinction between “real pornography” and “virtual pornography”: technological reification in photographic or filmed capturing of real people in sexualized behaviours or engaging in sex are distinct from animation pornography which does not capture real people in sexualized behaviours or sex.
The harm of “real pornography” is manifold (and “virtual pornography” is not without its ‘costs’):
At its heart, “real pornography” is often a de-personalized voyeurism subjecting real people to sexual surveillance – for the sexual consumption of strangers. It is akin to a “reverse -panopticon” where the many surveill (neologism for subjecting someone(s) to surveillance) the few. This is a form of exploitation inherent to “real pornography”.
“Real pornography” also allows for one-way sexual gratification without emotional connection, which is arguably socially aberrant: it is a form of sexual exploitation and objectification to gain access to another’s sexualized body, without emotionally investing in their personhood especially where is no sexual reciprocity by consumers of “real pornography”. It – “real pornography” is a one-way extreme version of casual sex but with anonymous sexual surveillance (often on a mass-scale). MacKinnon (1989) sees pornography as an exploitative gendered system, wherein men objectify women by gaining access to their sexual bodies whenever they want. I think “real pornography” does harm to male participants and consumers, here, when looking at the problem from a holistic perspective. So, I find MacKinnon’s perspective too totalizing and one-sided in her gender analysis, even though I, too, adopt a form of anti-(“real”-)pornography ideology.
Whilst not intrinsic to or an essence of “real pornography” there are currently issues of inequality between participants in accrued meta-knowledge, wealth and age for example exacerbating the inherent exploitation in “real pornography”, and of course not just between participants themselves, but inequalities between participants and consumers also. MacKinnon would say there are inherently power inequalities between men and women, where women always adopt a subordinate position or at least this is the pivotal norm around which all pornography is built or referential to (the standard arrangement… from [which] which all else is defined”) (MacKinnon 1989, pp. 332-333).
This ignores the gap in payment for pornography workers between women and men, where women pornstars out-earn male pornstars. It also ignores the power dynamics in which male pornstars are subjected to sexual and emotional humiliation, and sexual splitting of the masculine gender. However, we should not ignore the underage sex trafficking of young women in the (“real”) pornography industry and the subjection many women pornstars have in BDSM and sexually humiliating acts.
Without adequate sex education, pornography in general, can socialize for sexual objectification in sex outside of pornography.
Also, particularly views/consumers of hardcore pornography, undergo sexual desensitization: in order to reach orgasm, an equivalent level or evermore hardcore and/or humiliating sexual imagination or pornography is ‘needed’. This is at the cost of a more innocent (soft-core) intimate imagination.
Consequently (of all this), should the making and/or possession of pornography be or become a criminal offence”?
I argue, that no, in libertarian socialism, emphasis should be on choice, growing out of and beyond “real” pornography, at the level of raising social-and-political-consciousness towards restoring socially just monogamous intimate integrity and relations, without the sexual surveillance indicative of and inherent to “real” pornography. This would be preferable, along with a temporally intervening unionization of (all) sex and pornography workers.
Rubin (1984) gives an extensive account of the discrimination faced by marginalized sexual minorities, so we should not add to that persecution or shaming and should actively dismantle these forms of social exclusion.
I think that raising the consciousness of everyday people about the exploitation inherent in “real pornography” is the way to one day arrive at an abstinence consensus, whilst simultaneously enriching diverse sexualities outside of “real pornography” promoting the sacrosanctity of real intimate exchange and the sexual privacy we should afford to all agents.
In saying this, I make two exceptions: sexual humiliation and BDSM, which should be illegalized (but not criminalized). Sexual cuckolding is an extreme form of sexual humiliation (and yes, women (and all people) can be victims of this form of violence, too). Sexual cuckolding is a consensual form of sexual humiliation which is an attempt at the annihilation of a victim(s)’ symbolic social reproductive strategy. Especially when captured in filmed footage to be shared for the predatory consumption of anonymous strangers, sexual cuckolding (the symbolic extension of and socially transmogrified reproductive cuckolding – the manipulation of reproductive angst where a person unwittingly invests emotional and physical resources in the bringing up of genetic offspring which is not theirs (a manipulation which causes reproductive angst and ‘capitalizing’ on another’s or anothers’ reproductive angst by the perpetrator(s)). Sexual cuckolding is camouflaged in the liberal hedonist version of ‘consent’ and is often insidiously framed as a (liberal hedonist and overly permissive) ‘kink’.
We must acknowledge the reality that people can ‘consent’ (note: see my blog post on liberal versus structural consent: https://henrywilloughbyssocialjusticeblog.com/2021/05/11/liberal-consent-versus-structural-consent/ ) to acute harm in abusive power dynamics between sexualized agents. BDSM is the eroticization of abuse in sex, it subjects a victim or victims to physical and psycho-sexual harm which should have redress in legal (non-criminal) remedy/remedies.
The interim between now and socially outgrowing BDSM and sexual humiliation in “real pornography” and “real pornography” itself, the legalization of sex work and of “real pornography” best protects those people(s) engaged in these forms of (sex) work, with the promotion and enactment/actualization of legal regulation of ‘these industries’ and unionization for these workers.
What is or should be considered “extreme pornography”?
There is a spectrum between soft-core, hard-core and extreme pornography. I think we should outgrow “real pornography” as a way to progress to a more equal and thus more mature sexually promoting “virtual pornography” over “real pornography” no matter where these sex acts lie on the continuum/spectrum. Extreme pornography, in my view, is in BDSM and sexual humiliation: BDSM and sexual humiliation merely refracts, ‘reflects’ and reproduces the highly abusive relationships we are mired with and normalised by and in the external world. Of course, this becomes more socially exploitative when technologically captured and reified when filmed and shared/diseminated (which is transformed into “real pornography”).
How do prevailing social norms around ‘good sex’ and ‘bad sex’ shape our understandings of pornography and its potential harms?
I would say that we live in a “porno culture” as a norm, which is sometimes at the expense of “true love” monogamous sexuality, which, is held to be the ideal intimate/sexual expression – this is often thought of as ‘good sex’ by conservative sexual ideology/morality (see Rubin 1984, p. 160), against the permissiveness practices inherent to the late capitalist sexual commoditization culture(s), often viewed as ‘bad sex’ by conservative sexual ideology/morality. The dominant ‘sex culture’ is at a cognitive dissonance – commoditized sexuality is taboo (‘bad sex’) yet liberally engaged in and consumed largely through internet pornography – notions of ‘good and bad sex’ are often hypocritical in today’s sexual climate. From the more conservative sexual moralities, and the norms which they attempt at making hegemonic, is that all pornography is seen as an intrinsic “sinful” evil and corruptingly deviant (against having good moral scruples) and thus is seen as acutely harmful. An unlikely alliance is found between the anti-pornography radical feminism (like MacKinnon’s position on porn) and Christian conservative morality.
Pornography has and can enrich sexual imagination, and help sate the human need for emotionally and psychologically safe sexual experimentation. The human need for sexual experimentation and the full spectrum of legitimate sexual fantasies and imagination can be sated and expanded through the creation, development and consumption of animation pornography (not virtualizing real people engaging in sexual acts), if people choose to this kind of non-exploitative pornography (single people or persons who gain consent of their partner or couples who mutually consent to consume). That way we don’t break with “real monogamy”, “real micro-monogamy within polyamory”, and break with, or a better term – socially outgrow – the sexual surveillance culture that real pornography entails. This is a “Buddhist middle-way” between the opposing camps of pro-porn and anti-porn positions.
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