By Tracy Sorenson
In the months after the revolutionary events in Czechoslovakia in 1989, dozens of small newspapers began hitting Prague's streets. One of these was the official publication of the New Erotic Initiative, a group that campaigned to liberate sexuality from the "censorship that remains in our minds", and even ran candidates in parliamentary elections to further its aims.
The NEI Report liked to run photographs sent in by its readers, giving the publication an accessible, domestic look. One of the oddest was of a naked man standing beside a photocopier with an erect penis and an undefinable look on his face. Erotic? No. Silly? Yes.
But in the context of those transforming months after the Velvet Revolution, the photograph could be seen as more than just silliness.
For a society emerging from the deadening effects of censorship, the photocopier still represented a powerful symbol of freedom. These machines, just a short time before, were closely monitored: they were the means by which thousands furtively and illegally reprinted banned or unavailable books, plays, essays, novels.
For those emerging from a puritanical society in which sex education was virtually unheard of, in which the one locally produced text directed at high-school students had been withdrawn at the last minute by anxious bureaucrats, an aura of freedom still surrounded published explicit photographs.
Put the two — machine and naked body — together, and you have a potent symbolic mix. But then, the intention might just have been silliness.
The other side to NEI Report was a dreary, gratuitous, unoriginal, tits-and-bums objectification of women: photographs of topless barmaids in male-filled pubs, lacy underwear being peeled off in stylised poses and so on.
Meanwhile, there was the onslaught of the market. The international porn industry had a new buyer. Prague was suddenly awash with the glossy, professional stuff from abroad, making local publications like NEI Reportseem positively quaint.
NEI Report, while definitely sexist, had been a forum for discussion that came from a more-or-less grassroots organisation, a discussion participated in by both men and women. The glossy stuff was a no-woman's-land of distorted, spread-eagled, passive female flesh.
The message in all this, to an unconfident population unused to social discussion and looking westward for ideas, was simple: "Look no further. Here you have liberated human sexuality."
Marketing sex
In classic style, the market had discovered a need and sold it back: in a form that was distorted, dishonest and very expensive.
Eastern Europe's abrupt reintroduction to capitalism — or more precisely, in this case, to the effluent of other capitalist societies — reminds us again of what is going on in our own society, in which sex, eating, playing, running and just about every other everyday activity, are converted into commodities and sold back to us.
What comes back in the market of ideas about sex? Some literature, art and photography which is informative and/or exciting, non-oppressive and life-affirming. And beside that, a mountain of degradation.
The porn industry in the United States is apparently bigger than the record and film industries combined. An idea of the character of its productions can be gained by reading a few pages of any of Andrea Dworkin's books.1 Or by reading "Lunch with Bethany", one of the chilling chapters in Bret Easton Ellis' examination of the misogynist imagination in American Psycho, an experience which will leave you mentally numbed and physically sick.2
For Dworkin, pornography is, in the words of the Australian lesbian feminist author Denise Thompson, "the paradigmatic example of male supremacist self-representation".3 That is: it says everything significant about how men see themselves and how they see women.
In stark contrast to Dworkin's dark ruminations, and light years away from the world of Psycho, the Australian author Beatrice Faust, who has written widely on sex, gender and pornography,4 insists that pornography is trivial and ephemeral. Its popularity is based on the "male sexual style", which is stimulated by visual images, and its most widespread function is as an aid to masturbation. For Faust, pornography is simply about taste and preference.
Just how oppressive is pornography, if at all?
The answer probably lies somewhere between the extravagant pessimism of Dworkin and the determined cheerfulness of Faust. Pornography (leaving aside the vexed question of how this word is to be defined,5 and focussing on the mainstream of offerings from the porn industry) is one of the most distressing features of sexism in this society. At best, it paints women as air-headed bimbos waiting to be used. At worst, it's a nightmare universe.
Censorship
What can we do?
In analysing existing approaches, it's worth noting that most of the various shadings of feminist opinion would agree that misogynist pornography is not an isolated phenomenon; that it has her forms of discrimination and oppression in society.
Most feminist arguments for censorship of pornography (or some form of legal/administrative control over what representations can and can't be produced and consumed) are couched in terms of reforms which (a) go some way towards making women's lives more bearable under existing conditions while (b) being themselves part of a strategy for wider social change.
But such an approach to the question could backfire on the women's movement. As a strategy for wider social change, state intervention in the realm of ideas (representations can influence action but they are not the same as action) is not only problematic, but, in and of itself, ineffective.
First, a quick run-down on some existing legislation as it might relate to pornography. In NSW, if a woman is forced to look at porn in the workplace, she can complain of sexual harassment under sex discrimination laws; the use of children in pornography is illegal; if violence is used against women in the production of pornography, this is illegal (the finished product could be used as evidence); existing censorship laws are supposed to eliminate from the Australian market child porn and violent pornography.
Leaving aside the problems surrounding implementation of these laws (and whether or not they are "good"), the debate is not about introducing censorship/controls in the first instance, but about whether it is useful to campaign for the extension of existing censorship and/or controls.
The danger of backfire comes with the effects of pro-censorship strategies on the feminist struggle with the family system.
Central to the feminist project are demands for women's right to economic independence and control over their own bodies.
Family ideology
The family system in capitalist society, which privatises (burdens women with) the tasks of care of the young and sick, and the reproduction and maintenance of workers (among other functions), is explained and propped up by a sexist ideology which has drawn on pre-existing sexist ideology (e.g. feudal ideas about the lowly status of women in the "great chain of being") and evolved under new circumstances.
The dominant ideology under capitalism today can be summarised by the title of Anne Summers' book Damned Whores and God's Police.6 Nice girls live in the family and deserve to be protected by it; bad girls are whores and sluts and deserve what they get. Thus, sexual freedom for men can be had at the same time as "virtue" and monogamy for wives ensures that there is no confusion when it comes to paternity and inheritance.
Misogynist representation of women, then, is a manifestation of the "dark side" of pro-family ideology. The Meadow Lea margarine ad is a manifestation of the shiny side of the coin. rated in this dichotomy, from Fatal Attraction, to Playboy to Mills and Boon.
Public defenders of the family system don't, of course, share this analysis. Marriage is good and pornography (and an awful lot of other things) evil, says Fred Nile. Evil7 should be remonstrated with, hidden, censored, kept from view. But it can't be expected to go away.
Right-wing ideology worked well in the 1950s, when the double standard ruled and young women gave up their careers for marriage.
Since then, the right has struggled to reassert the power of the Damned Whores/God's Police dichotomy by reassigning the "dark side" to the underworld (where Queensland cops, their wives at home baking scones, go and get their cut from the local brothel).
The underworld's leering rise to the surface of social life, spurred on by billion-dollar profits, has sent the white knights of the moral majority out to protect women of virtue. Some of these have even proposed an alliance with the feminist movement in the fight against porn.8
We underestimate the real strength of the New Right back-to-the-family brigade at our peril, despite the social changes that have given women greater latitude and choice. While Fred Nile continues to languish on the fringe of public life, attacks on social services, women's services, health and education by Liberal and Labor governments are all pushing the burden back on individual women.
In this sense, "back to the family" is real, even though, in the wake of the women's movement, the ideology surrounding it is in tatters. With the women's and progressive movements relatively quiescent, the right is looking for opportunities to stitch things up again.
Fighting for our "own" censorship/control agenda (even if feminists could agree on what this might be) under these circumstances would be dangerous indeed. Do we want, once again, to become society's moral guardians?
How effective?
Meanwhile, the situation in Czechoslovakia is evidence against the efficacy of administrative controls in the struggle to change consciousness.
Under the Stalinist regime, women were declared emancipated. Porn was declared an example of bourgeois decadence, and no-one was allowed to see it.
Stalinism relied on the conservatising influence of the private family in creating a passive, uncritical population. A variation of the "mother hero" mythology was offered to women in the place of a deep-going social discussion and new understanding.
When the porn flowed in from the West, there was no feminist who didn't like it didn't know what to say. This was freedom, wasn't it?
Forty years of censorship did not significantly change consciousness in this area. The "dark side" of pro-family ideology had been lurking beneath the surface all that time.
Now, at last, there might be a public discussion about it.
Here in Australia, Jocelynne Scutt's proposal could begin a new round of discussion about the objectification and degradation of women in popular culture. Under her proposal, examples would be taken to an anti-discrimination board after they had appeared in the public domain; in this sense, she argues, she is not advocating censorship.
But would this really avoid the pitfalls of an unwanted alliance with the right? Who would sit on the tribunal? What sorts of examples would be taken to the court, considering the problem of getting agreement around what is and isn't oppressive to women?
(Rosemary Sorensen, feminist and editor of Australian Book Review, describes American Psycho as a "sophisticated cry of anguish";9 for Scutt, it is "a form of emotional and psychological assault to which no woman ought to be subjected".10)
What would the board do once it had made a decision? Order that cinemas withdraw films? Who would fund the legal cases? Do we want to prioritise this area to the extent that we throw ourselves into a whirlwind of fundraising? If, after six or seven years we got tired, and the government appointed more reactionary tribunal members, would the right start getting some victories?
In 20 years or so of campaigning, the "second wave" feminist movement has marched, picketed, demanded legal reforms, set up its own health clinics, sat in on television talk-shows. Enormous changes have been won: think of the options open to a young woman in 1961 compared to those open now, in terms of sex, abortion, marriage, career, education.
The women's movement has even had some impact on the intransigent problem of sexist representation, although this is admittedly small: some advertisements have taken feminism on board, for instance. Feminist cultural production over 20 years is still a small and struggling strand in the brutal "free market in ideas", but impressive considering the odds.
It's a hard row to hoe, but perhaps we just have to continue along these lines — minus, in this case, appeals for state intervention.
1. Pornography: Men Possessing Women (Women's Press, 1981), for example.
2. Picador, 1991.
3. Reading Between the Lines: A Lesbian Feminist Critique of Feminist Accounts of Sexuality (Gorgon's Head Press,
4. Faust's latest book is Apprenticeship for Liberty (Angus and Robertson, 1991).
5. For some, porn equals the objectification of another human being equals bad. For others, showing rude bits is bad and so is talking about them. Others deny the possibility of non-oppressive art, literature or photography designed to "excite sexual desire" (Macquarie Dictionary) in a society which is sexist, racist and homophobic.
Some try to get around the problem by using the word "erotica" instead of "pornography" when they are talking about representations they think are okay. But even if we agreed that pornography necessarily involved something oppressive, and erotica didn't, it still doesn't help us agree about which category a given example falls into. One person's "degradation" is another person's liberating breaking of the boundaries of repression.
6. Penguin, 1970.
7. See Robert Manne's use of the word in his analysis of pornography in The Australian June 8-9, 1991.
8. Robert Manne makes such a proposal in the same article.
9. The Australian, June 8-9.
10. The Bulletin, June 18.