These interviews were conducted by SUJATHA FERNANDES, a member of Resistance and the Network of Women Students Australia. NOWSA is having its annual conference at Macquarie University from July 11 to 15. KIMBERLY O'SULLIVAN is the co-editor of Wicked Women, a lesbian sex magazine. GEORGINA ABRAHAMS is a lesbian feminist and co-convener of the lesbian space project. PIP HINMAN is a member of the Democratic Socialist Party and an active feminist.
What are the connections between erotica and power relations in society? Do sexually degrading images of women reflect a reality of male domination or do they actively create that reality?
Kimberly: We live in a profoundly sexist world where women are really oppressed, so everything in our world is going to be reflected in that sort of culture. I think that sexist or offensive pornography comes out of the fact that we live in a very sexist world.
I don't think that offensive pornography creates oppression or sexism but rather it is a reflection of that sexism which exists in society. In the same way I don't think that sexist movies create sexist feelings. I don't think that men go and see films or read books and then decide that they will treat women in a way that they wouldn't have treated them normally.
Georgina: I do believe that pornography encourages violence against all women while making it appear exciting for men to rape women and pleasurable for women to be raped. My concern is that men and boys who view pornography become desensitised to the repulsion of rape and its humiliation to women. It's the standard argument that I have just mentioned but I stand by it. Pornography legitimises the same sexual behaviour in their private lives that they see in movies, videos and magazines.
The conservative estimates are that one in four women in this country are survivors of childhood sexual assault, and in 1991 alone nearly 3000 women reported to hospital-based sexual assault centres. I think we need to look more at the reasons for this and what the connections are. I do believe very strongly that there are connections between the private use of pornography and the worldwide degradation of women.
Pip: Violent pornography reflects reality to some extent. Women are subject to violence in some relationships, in the street and elsewhere. But trying to eliminate all violent pornography is not going to mean that violence against women stops because it happens on a number of different levels. It doesn't simply happen at home in relationships, although many women are subjected to that, but also in their daily lives on a whole range of levels, from unequal pay to not getting promotions that they justly deserve.
Power relations between men and women are reflected to some extent in pornography just as they are reflected in the way clothes, cosmetics and parts of cars are sold. Feminism has and continues to have a strong critique of the way women are represented in the mass media, but I think that to single out pornography as the main cause of violence against women is wrong. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that violent pornography does not cause men to rape.
Representations of violence are different to actual violence, even though they may reflect reality at different points in peoples lives. I disagree with the argument that society should be protected from violent imagery. In that scenario we wouldn't be exposed to war and therefore wouldn't be able to understand the dynamic behind war. I think it would be dangerous to live in a world where we have to wear blinkers, where we are not allowed to see reality because that supposedly triggers off violence in ourselves.
Do you support censorship legislation against sexist and dehumanising images of women?
Kimberly: I want to see sexist and dehumanising images of women stopped, but I don't want to do that through censorship. I want to see an absence of these images because our society doesn't want to produce those images any more.
Censorship only creates an interest in what is censored. You only start an underground culture that is even harder to control. One of the problems of pornography is its illegal status. If it wasn't illegal, we could have a much more open and much more intelligent discussion about what pornography actually is and is not. I do some writing and speaking about porn, and I find it very hard to speak to women about pornography when so few women have seen any. It's very difficult for them to have an informed and intelligent discussion about what it is, what its shortcomings are, what a female-centred erotica or pornography might look like and could be in their lives.
Georgina: I believe in censorship of pornography and I know that's a risky argument, because I also believe in freedom of speech and I am very much a fighter for our freedoms; I know that they are very hard fought for. I know that people who are opposed to any type of censorship would say that losing the freedom of speech outweighs the benefits of banning pornography. To that I would say that often a man's speech can be a woman's nightmare and I don't believe, for example, that with pornography we need to defend it for liberating sexuality because the danger is the price and the complementary underside.
I would ask, "Who is endangered?". It is the women and children who are the objects of pornography in the industry and in the home that are endangered. From a lesbian feminist perspective, I believe that there is a place for censorship around pornography, and I believe that it needs to be done delicately and done with discussion.
Pip: It would be nice if we lived in such an uncomplicated world that you could just make a rule and say, "We don't like these images so they are not going to appear". But it's obvious that pornography survives with or without censorship laws. The evidence from Eastern Europe after the collapse of Stalinism showed that while they had anti-pornography laws in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union, the black market in pornography survived. And since the Stalinists were swept out of power, the pornography industry is flourishing.
Also, in this age of global communications and mass media it is impossible to have global censorship laws that are going to stop the marketing of images and sexist representations of women.
The other reason I would oppose censorship is that society would be trusting a small group of people to make a decision about what it should or shouldn't view. We are handing over, to the already largely unaccountable and powerful state, even more power. A more preferable option, from my point of view, would be for the community to say, "We accept this, but we don't accept that". More open, more public, discussion about what people find acceptable and what they don't is the key to starting to eliminate a lot of sexist imagery.
The other side of this coin is the rather subjective assessment of what is pornography. Your pornography is my erotica and vice versa. Having five people on a censorship board to decide what is pornographic is really just restricting society's input into what it finds acceptable. And there are going to be a variety of opinions, there is no question of that!
What about lesbian S and M pornography? Is this violence against women?
Kimberly: Being a lesbian S and M girl myself, I would have to say that it wasn't violence against women. S and M images are often misunderstood by people who have no experience of S and M or playing with power in their sexual relations. You almost have to look at it anthropologically, in that you have to see certain sexual practices within the context of their sexual culture.
Some of the images I find in mainstream films, books and videos are often more disturbing and offensive than the images I have seen in pornography. When we say pornography, people immediately think of violence, or they think of hideous things like kiddie porn, snuff movies and rape, whereas the reality is that most pornography is non-violent erotica that shows nudity or sexual activity between consenting adults, and what makes it pornography is that it is very explicit.
You could have a very long discussion about what is pornography and what is erotica. I've never really seen a satisfactory definition that distinguishes between the two so I tend to use the term pornography.
Georgina: I come from what I would define as a lesbian feminist position, and for me that is about demanding a world in which the integrity of all women, not just a chosen few, shall be honoured in every aspect of culture. But that's where I come from.
When I speak against pornography, I define it basically in terms of that which is produced and consumed by heterosexual men. I am aware that some lesbians consider porn as necessary for liberating sexuality and that it can be part of some women's inspiration and pleasure. At the same time, it is recognised that other porn reflects images and values of women that we would choose to fight politically. So if lesbian erotica is presented with sensitivity, then I must say that yes, it's OK.
Pip: Provided S and M is participated in by mutually consenting adults, it's no-one else's business. S and M is singled out by some as promoting violence, but I think that this is where people take the idea that images reflect reality far too seriously. Surveys indicate that the majority of people who enjoy S and M in their private lives are not at all violent people.
What is your response to the libertarian position that we shouldn't have censorship because there should be freedom of speech?
Kimberly: I suppose that I would tend to be a sexual libertarian myself and so I tend to agree with that. I think that we need to have debate out in the open. Censorship doesn't encourage intelligent thinking, it encourages reactionary thinking. In the long run it doesn't take us anywhere just to have some sort of knee-jerk reaction.
Georgina: My experience of libertarians is that they deny any connection between pornography and violence against women. They would assert that the risk of losing freedom of speech outweighs the gains of banning pornography. I would disagree with that.
I believe that we need to draw a line and pornography is where I draw my line. We need to be able to call upon censorship and I know it is a loaded word, but I also don't refer to it in a prudish sort of way. I would love to see a woman-centred anti-pornography in Australia. That would be a great gift to half of the human race.
Yet we are living in a sexist society that condones violence against women. In a poll that was done in 1990 in the United States, about 85% of 13-year-old boys thought that it was OK for a husband to rape his wife. While those views exist, there is a place for us to have censorship around pornography.
Pip: I don't think that the libertarian view is sufficient. To simply say that we should have free speech assumes that there are no power relations in society, that we all have free speech, when that's actually not the case. You and I don't have access to the mass media. We can't ring up Murdoch, Packer or Black and demand space for our views as to why there shouldn't be censorship of pornography. Those who own the media have the ability to shape opinion and therefore have much more power than you or me.
Simply protesting that censorship prevents freedom of speech is not getting at the crux of the dilemma here. The libertarian argument avoids talking about the real issues behind the whole pornography and censorship question.
Precisely because there isn't freedom of speech, the dominant images are still going to be stereotypical and degrading to women. The feminist movement continues to encourage women to be a lot more open about imagery and sexuality, to produce more of their own material where possible and to generally promote a deeper, richer discussion about women's role in society, including their sexuality. It is only with this sort of discussion that we are actually going to change minds and put pressure on those who want to continue with the stereotypical imagery we find degrading.
The way racism has been dealt with in our society, largely through community discussion and education, points a way to what's possible with regard to sexist representations of women. The widespread opinion that it's not OK to be a racist has come about largely without legislation.
It would be a retrograde step, in the discussion about how we deal with offensive material, to restrict the discussion about women's role and sexuality. Some, in their haste to ban anything they find repulsive, end up aligning themselves with the extreme right wing, who want nothing better than to take back the important gains women have won.
[If you are interested in getting involved in NOWSA, the next meeting will be held on June 1 at the University of Technology, Sydney Women's Room at 6pm.]