Pornography and Ethics - Essay Example

Pornography and Ethics One does sometimes wonder whether the protection afforded to pornography under many jurisdictions could someday extend to other areas which are today thought be in the realm of immorality. With the social zeitgeist moving in a direction that seeks to defy the existence of God, is it foreseeable that publication of pornographic material defended by ‘free speech’ would someday not only exemplify political correctness and liberalism but would form a standard expected of the legislature; which when denied might give way to legitimate public criticism? This may perhaps be achieved when the remnants of the customary values set by our ancestors have completely disappeared from society whereby they would cease to exist as an active source of prevalent law; when we are successfully able to abandon old values to replace them with new ones before we realize whether we did this for better or worse. While the First Amendment itself seems to be the product of such deeply embedded democratic values, some areas it covers might not be exactly what these values were seeking to legalize. As such, pornography is one of those areas and though the merits of this area have been doubted by Mackinnon, the merits of her own approach to advance such arguments must themselves be examined. In short Mackinnon seeks to assert1 that that the protection afforded to pornography under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States must be revoked on grounds that pornography is immoral. While this may sound like an old moot point it is really here that Mackinnon would differ from the traditional ‘pornography is immoral’ argument; for she takes a purely feminist approach to the whole idea of pornography. This discussion will seek to examine the approach and reasons of Mackinnon as advanced in light of the notion of ‘Ecological Feminism’ while at the same time inspecting the notion itself as propagated by Karen J Warren. It may perhaps be best to deal with the latter first so as to establish clearly the basis for Mackinnon’s arguments. In her work2 with reference to feminism, Warren talks about and criticizes the idea of ‘logic of domination’, stating that our religion and culture have given way to a global or at least Western mind frame plagued with the vileness of patriarchy. She seeks to elucidate the notion of a social zeitgeist that programs us to think of a degree of inequality between-among other things-the humans and the nature and the male and female gender. She further goes on to assert that such an inequality is taken for granted and has become part of our society because of a lack of dissent. Justification for such domination is provided by patriarchy, giving way to the concept of such domination being valid where there is disparity between two humans due to gender, age etc. Similarly, such domination is justified by reason of this disparity since the ones ‘higher up’ can look down on the ones ‘down’ below by reason of their higher position. It is this disparity that-according to Warren-gives way to the inequality between, and the subordination by the female of the male gender. The position that this discussion will seek to take is that while superiority often times has a lot to with disparity it may be wrong to identify this as the cause of the difference between male and female genders when speaking of the subordination of one to the other. It is for this reason that the notion as understood by Mackinnon may not be a good reason for arguing that the First Amendment wrongly affords protection to pornography. To begin with it should be noted that arguably all of what the first and second waves of the Feminist Movement contested for can today be seen to have been achieved. Women today have equal rights in terms of voting, marriage, divorce, employment, the recognition of their special needs due to their gender (such as maternity leave with full pay), taxes, property ownership etc. We no longer live in the 18th century and we do not live in the East where radical groups prevent their women from remaining outdoors without male supervision. However, what we seek to achieve any further than this would be an attempt to flirt with the distinction between being equal and being similar-for to be one does not necessarily mean to be the other. Women would certainly not be equal to men if they were to wear beards but to insist upon such equality would be to look for similarity. On the same note men cannot seek to obtain the physical and emotional qualities of women in an attempt to prove everyone is equal. Equality must be seen as an absence of disparity in the benefits that the society today confers upon both genders. Any prevalent law which challenges such an idea must be the subject of legitimate criticism by feminist groups. The same would be true of any duties that would bind both genders today as equality must be seen in similar obligations on both. In short, equality is equal treatment of both men and women under the law. In light of such an approach it is hard to see where the difference would lie by way of superiority. In fact, ‘superiority’ then would only remain a state of mind which would disappear once equal treatment is obtained. Such an air of superiority has been rather thin ever since women have begun to outshine men in various professions and it is hard to imagine why disparity would result from superiority then, unless women and men engaged in a wrestling contest; whereby men would be expected to triumph due to different physical attributes. The disparity would also be visible-on the opposite scale-if the two were to engage in a child bearing contest where men would not know how to compete unless adoption was an option. It is therefore asserted in light of the foregoing that superiority is the result of difference and not the other way round as Warren seems to assert; equal treatment has removed the difference along with the superiority and any exceptions are precisely that, and not the rule. Whether or not Mackinnon actually drew influence from Warren’s writings is not the subject of this discussion but that the ideas of the former seem to be based on those of the latter. Mackinnon in trying to refute the protection afforded to pornography did not pick up moral or religious grounds but feminist ones, seeking to use them to unveil the immorality that stems from pornography. It is submitted that such an approach may be found wanting in the capacity of an idea that seeks to challenge established law. However, where other traditional arguments have failed it may be worth a try to advance a convoluted one such as this which might enable our lawmakers to ban pornography in pursuit of political correctness-seeking to declare men and women equal. The idea of the law being altered by such reasoning itself seems ridiculous. Mackinnon apparently turns a blind eye to the number of women flocking towards the porn industry in pursuit of pleasure and money when she asserts that women are objectified by way of porn. She paints a picture which would better describe the feelings of a woman in the harems of a sheikh in the Middle-East, but which must fail miserably when matched with the aspirations of a porn actress in the U.S-many of which are business entrepreneurs and ‘do porn for the thrill of it’. No, if the protection afforded to pornography by the first amendment must be challenged, it must be done on moral, cultural and religious grounds. If anything, it would not be a feminist approach that would unleash such a blasting light of ethics and morals so as to cause one to disregard $13.33 Billion in revenue for 2006 alone3. As difficult as it is, such monetary value could only be set aside by public criticism based on high morals values, all of which seems to be past us at this stage. However, the world is not without examples of such an approach being successful and one might wish to consider the example of the UK which-arguably-is the parent system for that in the U.S. The UK having a largely unwritten constitution never went so far as to afford pornography constitutional protection but instead chose to circumvent the propagation of the industry by relative measures4, not only on statutory footing but also under the normal case law as decided by the courts. In a sweeping judgment as early as 1965, in the case of R v Stanley, Lord made law by saying that indecency was ‘something that ordinary modesty of the average man…offending against recognized standards of propriety at the lower end of the scale’5. Why is not possible today to sever the ties between convoluted arguments and the inherent immorality and indecency that stems from pornography? In light of the foregoing it is submitted with conviction that Mackinnon’s argument to unhinge pornography as an area under statutory protection, while based on a feminist approach rests on a faulty premise. No one feels the that the porn actresses today are the subject of humiliation and domination so much as to give way to a three quarter majority within the Congress to change the law. Instead-as argued-other pragmatic routes must be taken if pornography is to be removed from the wing of constitutional protection and when this is achieved it would no doubt, also serve to cause the objectives of the feminist wing to be achieved. Read More