It’s a funny thing, when the subject of pornography comes up, it generally seems to be discussed within the framework of two competing rights: the right of the seller and the right of the buyer. That’s like discussing drunk driving only in terms of the right of the tavern to sell alcohol and the right of the drinker to buy it.
Unfortunately, there is a third party to the equation: the victim. Just as the rights of victims of drunk drivers need to be considered, so also we must consider pornography’s victims.
Identification of this third party was one of the major achievements of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography. Its 3,000 pages of hearings in 1985-86 for the first time gave pornography’s victims the opportunity to present their side of the story.
Unfortunately, no one has yet published the hearings, so few have heard what the victims had to say. The 2,000-page Report of the Commission included a few excerpts, but that book is not carried by bookstores, is not widely available, and is too formidable for many to tackle.
Anyone who takes the time to read the 3,000 pages of hearings will acquire a view of pornography quite different from that circulated by the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, and other advocates of the right to sell and buy porn.
The eyewitness testimonies of those who spoke at the Commission hearings prove that pornography is an addictive and corrosive element in our society today. Those who are raped, tortured, and killed by pornography’s users are only a small percentage of pornography’s victims.
It is self-evident that the victims of hard drugs are not limited to those who kill and are killed under the influence. Drugs also destroy the lives, health, and relationships of all who use them.
Likewise with pornography. The first-hand testimonies of the witnesses show how pornography starts with playful experimentation, then becomes addictive, then changes men’s attitudes toward women and sex, and finally destroys their personal and sexual relationships.
With some men, their addiction leads them from the risqué to the perverted and bizarre. With some men, their addiction leads them into physical abuse of their wives and other women, and into seduction and sexual abuse of children.
With most of pornography’s addicts, however, probably the biggest effect is their change of attitudes toward women. Until the 1986 Commission on Pornography, that harm was unseen because the wives were silent, too embarrassed to go public, too hurt to share their grief.
The hard-core and violent porn convinces violence-prone men that violence is part of the normal male-female sexual relations, that women desire and enjoy rape, and that rape is only the exuberance of an oversexed man.
The soft-core erotica convinces nonviolent men that women (and often children, too) are inanimate toys for men to play with and use for their own satisfaction. That’s the way women’s bodies are presented in the “men’s entertainment” magazines.
Through the vivid color pictures of television, video, and slick magazines, pornography teaches the falsehood that women enjoy being sexually used; despite the obvious pain and degradation, there is always that smile on their faces. Logic and reason cannot erase those pictures in the man’s consciousness.
The pornography addict loses all personal relationship with his sex partner. The porn pictures have convinced his subconscious that the woman probably enjoys whatever he does, and in any event he doesn’t have to be concerned about her response because she’s just an object.
The law of obscenity tries to distinguish between hard-core and soft-core pornography, and many people try to distinguish between violent pornography and erotica. But to the wife-victim of the porn addict, that’s a distinction without a difference.
Witness after witness told how this change in men’s attitudes took place primarily as a result of the magazines easily available at local newsstands and convenience stores, now massively reinforced by television, porn channels on cable, and videos for rent. The $8 billion pornography industry is now so pervasive that men no longer have to go across town to adult bookstores or movie houses to feed their addiction.
All Americans enjoy a freedom-of-speech right to express racist attitudes, but they are clearly socially unacceptable today. The time has come to recognize that pornography, even when it’s not legally prosecutable, is socially unacceptable because it victimizes women and children.
