Fifty-Five

PORNOGRAPHY, DIGNITY, AND POLYSE- MICITY: COMMENTS ON ALAN SOBLE’S PORNOGRAPHY, SEX, AND FEMINISM

Linda Williams

Alan Soble’s book, Pornography, Sex, and Feminism (2002), should come with the subtitle: “Or Why No God-Damned Feminist Is Going to Stop Me from Enjoying Pornography in Any or All of Its Forms.” Basically, it is a dia- tribe against attempts by some feminists, most notably Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, to prohibit or at least control pornographic material. Soble’s main thesis makes two interrelated points. The first is that pornogra- phy is not inherently offensive. Soble appeals to the notion of polysemicity, the assertion that any text or visual image is, in actuality, devoid of any one meaning, to support his point. Meaning is supplied by the reader or viewer, and because of this, the text or picture can have various meanings—as many meanings as beholders. When feminists declare pornographic material offen- sive, they mistakenly imply that there is only one meaning of the text or pic- tures. According to Soble, they are merely reflecting their own tastes and val- ues. In other words, the text and pictures are inherently meaningless; offense is generated in the beholder and directed to the material, not the other way around. Something cannot offend me if I refuse to take offense. The second point of Soble’s thesis is that human beings, as well, have no inherent meaning or value. Unlike Immanual Kant, who viewed rational beings as priceless and inherently dignified, Soble sees human beings as simply animals; anything more smacks of speciesism. As animals, our sexual impulses, instincts, and desires are a natural part of us. Pornography chooses to focus on this part, and so what if it does? If Soble’s thesis is correct, then his text is also polysemicitous and any- thing I say about it is a reflection of me rather than of the content of the book, which in a post modern, post-deconstructionist kind of way relentlessly res- ists any attempt to give it a meaning. So perhaps I should provide a bit of biography before I go on. I first started reading about pornography as a moral issue when I was a philosophy major in college during the early 1970s. I was surfing the crest of second wave feminism and pictured the pornography in- dustry pretty much as Linda Lovelace’s Ordeal (1987) depicted it: a sordid industry of drugs, exploitation, and purely economic motivations. Porn was a business of women run by males for males. The first issue of Playgirl hadn’t even hit the stands. No one was making the now popular distinction between 472 LINDA WILLIAMS pornography and erotica. I was outraged at the industry–exploiting women for men’s own sexual gratification, objectifying women to the status of mere things—and mere sexual things at that. At that time, the articles I read on pornography argued that it was im- moral because it harmed women. The perception was that pornography caused males to then go out and seek women to bind in leather, rape, and tor- ture. But was this perception true? Statistics were being compiled. The data showed a very strong correlation between pornography and criminal sexual offenses. A large percentage of rapists and perpetrators of other sexual assaults owned pornographic material. What everyone wanted to know was whether the correlation was a causal one. The hunt for the smoking penis had begun. I was struck by the correlation of data. But we all know how tricky it is to prove that correlations are causal. We cannot get inside the perpetrators’ heads and follow their thinking. Further analysis was inconclusive. While sexual assault perpetrators had usually amassed a pile of pornographic ma- terial, in many cases the pornography owned did not coincide perfectly with the type of sexual assault. When asked whether viewing pornography made the assaulters go out and commit their assault, most answered “no,” although they could not deny that it might have contributed to their state of mind. None of this secured a causal link from viewing pornography to committing sexual crimes against women. Without the definite causal connection, however, it was difficult to assert that pornography physically harmed women. The harm principle seemed the best way to argue that pornography was immoral, yet proving that pornography was harmful via the causal connection between pornography and crime seemed impossible. That is why some of us women were impressed with Catherine MacK- innon and Andrea Dworkin’s creative argument that pornography harmed women, not in the direct physical sense, but in a more indeterminate yet per- vasive way of contributing to their second-class citizenship. Pornography harmed women’s moral and legal status as full participants in American so- ciety. Evidence of indirect psychological and status harm, however, proved as elusive as direct physical harm. Trying to define pornography in legal terms was equally as tricky. The Supreme Court had been unsuccessful in earlier attempts, ending with the rather unsatisfactory “I know it when I see it” stan- dard. As we found out in The Brethern (1979), the only sure criterion for the Court during the1970s to determine a work pornographic was an erect penis. This criterion seemed further confirmation that pornography was a deeply sexist enterprise–any and all parts of women were fair game, but erect penises were off limits. What were they afraid of–that women would get out their measuring tapes? Too late to stop that! Now with Soble’s Pornography, Sex, and Feminism (2002) we learn that this sexist element of pornography is no longer present. Instead of the traditional images of women servicing men, being raped by men, being tor- tured by men, or being sodomized by whatever men wanted to fantasize to