![]() |
![]() | |||||
A Feminist/Human Rights View of PornographyA philosophical approach to pornography could be created by joining some feminists' ideas about pornography to the human rights approach to ethics. The Indianapolis ordinance struck down in the American Booksellers case was supported by antipornography feminists such as Catherine MacKinnon, but the court did not accept their view of pornography. The feminists seem to have argued that pornography is a kind of conduct, not speech. Pornography is not speech about sex, it is a form of forced sex. It is sexual reality that eroticizes inequality, hierarchy, dominance, and submission. MacKinnon claims that,
Pornography is a means through which sexuality is socially constructed, a site of construction, a domain of exercise. It constructs women as things for sexual use and constructs its consumers to desperately want women to desperately want possession and cruelty and dehumanization.She adds that, "If sex is a social construct of sexism, men have sex with their image of a woman." ![]() I agree with MacKinnon that sexuality is socially constructed, and that pornography is an aspect of the sexual reality that constructs the contemporary view of women.
[ If pornography is sexual conduct, then the court's view that it is political speech is misguided. As conduct, it might be claimed that it should be protected by the right to liberty. Feminists, however, have argued that pornography harms women. Three types of harms are often identified:
The crucial issue for regulating pornography
on the Internet then becomes
| ||||||
![]() |
|