Is Pornography Ethical - Assignment Example

Is Pornography ethical? Introduction This is the question that has bothered and troubled people from different ranks of society over the years. One has to go deep into the matter and analyse several causes before coming to the conclusion whether pornography is ethical or not. There is no specific standard for measuring what is ethical and what is not. Whether Pornography is morally ethical or not differs from person to person and here I take the stand that Pornography is ethical from particular viewpoints. Arguments in Favor of Ethical Pornography “Pornography can be defined as the explicit depiction of men, women, and/or children in degrading sexual contexts.” (Ingram and Parks, 2002, p.304) - Pornography is related to sex and sexual desires of men and women. It is made with the purpose of providing them with sexual pleasure. And anything that is joyful and pleasurable comes under the category of ‘Art and Aesthetics’, sexual or otherwise. Since primitive times, art has been allotted a distinct position in our society, always with the sacred aim of entertaining people. But many social thinkers, activists, and feminists will raise their brows in anger and disgust if pornography is considered as an art. Only because it deals with the inhibited and secret sexual desires of men, pornography cannot be considered as art? Obviously the answer lies in the question itself. From childhood, a person is taught to look upon sex as a thing to abhor and not to talk about explicitly. Whatever question or doubt arise in his mind about this primal man-woman relationship, he learns to suppress them out of fear of being marked as ‘perverted’ in his social surroundings. Most of us sometimes grow up with the notion that “pornography, or any directly arousing material is somehow bad and wrong and that we shouldnt even want to look at it.” (Scarleteen, ‘Looking, Lusting and Learning: A Straightforward Look at Pornography’, n.d.). The Indian culture is very discouraging about sex and anything related to it. The habit of feeling guilty if talked or thought about sex is inculcated from childhood. But if the society teaches a person to develop a healthy attitude towards sex from the early days of his life then sex and pornography will appear to him in a totally different light than what he is made to see. Whether pornography is morally ethical or not depends a lot on the level of sexual behavior of a particular society and age. For example it may be said, that the books of sex education used in many schools nowadays might have been considered as being ‘pornographic’ or ‘obscene’ decades ago. (Scarleteen, ‘Looking, Lusting and Learning: A Straightforward Look at Pornography’, n.d.) Along with lifestyle, food habit and dressing, the mentality and behavior of people also changes with time. With more and more development in every sphere of knowledge, people have learnt to look into matters with a broadened outlook. But that does not mean that the outlook towards pornography and sexuality has completely changed. It is still considered a taboo in most of the countries. Feminists argue that pornography is yet another way to deprive women of their rights. According to Regard (2001) “Pornographers are the enemies of women only because our contemporary ideology of pornography does not encompass the possibility of change as if we were the slaves of history and not its makers,..” (Regard, 2001, p. 267). They consider it as a weapon in the hands of men to show patriarchy on women. “The most opinionated and conservative of the authors included is Catherine MacKinnon, who touches on the thought that there is a great deal of similarity between pornography and black slavery. In her article ‘Pornography, Civil Rights and Speech’ she observes, "the harm of pornography does not lie in the fact that it is offensive but that, at least in developed societies, it is an industry that mass produces sexual intrusion, access to, possession and use of women by men for profit".” (The Pros and Cons of Pornography, n.d.) But how can porn films produce sexual intrusion and offence when it is a film and everything is acted out? Just like commercial movies, in porn films also the actors and actresses are engaged in the business willingly and are paid in return of the labor they put in acting. They see the whole matter from a strictly professional point of view, though their work is to make it appear real and actually involving a lot of passion play. Even they undergo surgeries to tone their body to suit the demands of their profession. Every profession, whether engineering or acting, has its own set of standards and essential qualifications which one has to match in order to be in that profession. Pornography is an industry having a huge market all over the world, and the porn actors, whether male or female, accept this as part of their profession. Just like many professions, pornography is also a sphere where men and women work together and possibly are paid equally, unlike many other professions. So there lies no concrete base of the protestations done by the female activists. A section of the feminists casts a favorable light on pornography. They look upon it as medium for women to air their sexual desires and fantasies. They argue, “...the participation of women in the porn industry is not an expression of sexism and hatred of women; it can also be seen as women reveling in sex and sexuality, and as the chance (finally) foe women to reject repressive ideas about sexuality.” (Ingram and Parks, 2002, p.305) Since early times, women have been forced to suppress their every desires, emotions, likes and dislikes and only live in accordance to the standard already set by the male-dominated society. But active and bold participation of women in pornography symbolizes liberation of women from the clutches of primitive, orthodox, and repressive customs and ideals. In the largest democracy called India, where every citizen is supposed to enjoy freedom of speech, pornography helps to bring out the real picture. The moment someone speaks about sex in public, scores of feminists, social activists and political parties rise up together to criticize and demean that person. Questions of modesty and morality are raised on that issue. But can modesty and morality be defined by a political party or an organization? The answer, once again, is hidden in the question. The moral ideals and sense of modesty and immodesty are very much limited to an individual. What may seem immoral to one may not necessarily seem the same for another. According to Copp and Wendell (1983) “It could happen that two people share a single conception of pornography as, say, sexually explicit depictions that violate the proper canons of modesty; yet, because of different beliefs about the canons of modesty, they differ on whether a particular depiction is pornographic.” (Copp and Wendell, 1983, p.16.) Only because pornography explicitly portrays sexual acts and a section of society think it a violation of moral standards, pornography cannot appear immoral to every social being. There are both merits and demerits in every field, and pornography is no exception. There are several factors which make a negative impact on the minds of the viewers. For example, porn films arouse sexual fantasies and unreal expectations in a person about the sexual relation with his/her partner. The way in which things are shown in porn films is unreal for most of the time and never matches with reality. The perfect-looking man making love to the perfect-looking woman often foils up the reality for the viewers. They start fantasizing and expecting sexual partners as perfect as they see in porn.  In a study it was revealed that “six out of 10 women believe pornography affects how men expect them to look and how sexually adventurous they expect them to be.” (‘The pros and cons of porn’, n.d.) People get hallucinated and tend to accept reel for real. But then art is supposed to reflect and concretize real life. And pornography can be considered art for reasons already discussed above. Often we find in the newspaper that a child had died trying to copy the stunts of his favorite super hero or a teenager had committed suicide in a fashion commonly shown in movies or television. So pornography cannot be blamed only for creating an unhealthy and unrealistic impression on its viewer. Every interesting thing shown on television or print media leaves an impact on the human mind, but whether to keep it temporarily or make it permanent depends solely on the discretion of an individual. Conclusion As the common saying goes, ‘Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder’, morality and ethics also lie in the mind of a person. There cannot be any standard to measure morality and what is moral or immoral. Pornography may seem degrading, cheap and perverted sexuality. But then there are people who find it infteresting, refreshing and a thing of beauty. So it cannot be said that pornography in immoral or unethical simply because it deals with sex. According to some critics, “pornography is a matter of taste, and, as the saying goes, “There’s no accounting for taste.””(Ingram and Parks, 2002, p.306) References 1. Copp, D. and Wendell, S. (1983) Pornography and Censorship. Buffalo: Prometheus Books 2. Ingram, D., Parks, J. A. (2002). Beyond the Personal; The ethics of social justice. The Complete Idiots Guide to Understanding Ethics. New York: Alpha Books. 3. Looking, Lusting and Learning; A Straightforward Look at Pornography. (n.d). available at: http://www.scarleteen.com/article/boyfriend/looking_lusting_and_learning_a_straightforward_look_at_pornography (accessed on 5.3.2010) 4. Regard, F. (2001) ‘Moral pornography or Ethical Rhetoric?’ Journal of English Studies, Volume 3, pp.265-274 5. The pros and cons of Pornography.(n.d). available at : http://www.getfrank.co.nz/the-pros-and-cons-of-porn/. (accessed on March 12, 2010) Read More