The European Union recently voted down an ill-advised ban on pornography (but maintained the rest of the bill (to improve the portrayal of women in media); here in the United States, the question has been raised quite a few times, most recently by Rick Santorum. Banning pornography is popular with some feminists on the left and fringe fundamentalists on the right, but it would be terrible public policy.
The arguments for banning pornography center around a few key premises: 1) that pornography is inherently addictive 2) that pornography harmfully portrays women 3) that pornography leads to lascivious men.
Is pornography addictive? There’s a pretty heated debate among experts on whether or not excessive use of pornography can be described as “addiction.” Those who caution against the word argue that calling pornography “addictive” could also describe doughnuts as addictive. Unlike desiring heroin, desiring orgasms and food is natural. Glenn Wilson argues:
The original idea of addiction was that you had a chemical hijacking of the circuits of the brain built to give you pleasure as reward for doing things of a survival value, such as eating or having sex. But to turn round and argue that one is addicted to chocolate or sex, which are activities you would expect to be rewarded in survival terms, strikes me as hijacking the concept of addiction.
Still, pornography can make men anti-social (to what extent I’ll explore later), however, many men and women view pornography responsibly and using an “addiction” framework to deal with pornography could do more harm than good. There’s another claim that anti-pornography crusaders will use (Santorum recently did): that pornography somehow rewires the brain. First, everything rewires your brain – synapses are constantly making new connections, further, the brain hardly needs significant rewiring to enjoy sexual stimulation. So does this particular re-wiring produce negative effects? Rory Reid of UCLA argues no, and in a letter with Bruce N. Carpenter and Timothy W. Fong to the National Institute of Health writes,
Watching the NCAA basketball play-offs will likely lead to similar neurochemical processes for many individuals [as watching porn]. Some of us may even experience negative consequences in relation to viewing the play-offs and we may be willing to sacrifice important tasks in exchange for TV time. A few may even feel unable to resist the urge to view information online about the play-offs while at work despite possible violations of corporate policies about appropriate Internet use in the workplace. Are we to conclude that such patterns of behavior constitute an addictive disorder, given their potential relationship to activating dopaminergic transmission in the mesolimbic pathways?
In response to the assertion that, “there is strong and convincing evidence based on neuroscientific research that excessive pornography problems constitute an addictive disorder causing brain abnormalities and cortical atrophy paralleling those found in substance abuse the authors respond,”
Such assertions are speculative and unsupported… Even if future research substantiates such claims, it is highly unlikely that such results will be generalized to all patients with excessive pornography problems given the consistent finding of heterogeneity in the characteristics of this population.
The nail in the coffin for those who hoped pornography would be categorized as an addiction occurred when the Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders decided against including sex addiction as a disorder.
Does pornography hurt women? There are really two questions here, whether pornography hurts the women involved in making it, and whether pornography affects the way men see women. I’ll address the first question later, when I look at the implications of a pornography ban, so let’s look at the second claim. I find the argument dubious, for the same reason I find it dubious to argue that violent video games turn children into killers. Pornography is a fantasy and it exists in a fantasy world, where any encounter, no matter how banal, can quickly morph into orgiastic chaos. Few men live their lives this way; few men go to work and expect fellatio from their secretary (the possible exception being Mr. Clinton). If you are looking at negative portrayals of women, look no further than the socially-sanctioned movies and television shows. According to bechdeltest.com, of some 3,500 movies reviewed, only about half passed a simple test, having two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. Further, since pornography takes place in fantasy sex land, it hardly portrays males as two dimensional role models, rather they are hungry for power and domination, who consider women to be a prize – as do many (if not all) action movies.
So do men become more lascivious because of pornography viewing? Let’s take the most common (and easily measured) heuristic. Does pornography increase rape? Here the answer is categorically, no. A 2009 meta-analysis by Christopher Furguson and Richard Hartly finds,
Victimization rates for rape in the United States demonstrate an inverse relationship between pornography consumption and rape rates. Data from other nations have suggested similar relationships… combined with the weak evidence in support of a negative casual hypotheses from the scientific literature, it is conclude that it is time to discard the hypothesis that pornography contributes to increase sexual assault behaviour.
The problem for those who argue for a casual connection between pornography and rape have a two-fold problem. First, explaining away the fact that rape and sexual harassment rates are declining. Second, that even if men who consumed pornography were more likely to commit sexual crimes (they aren’t) there is the reverse correlation problem: isn’t it likely that the type of man who has violent sexual proclivities will consume pornography? Furgeson and Hartly argue that neither question has been sufficiently answered. Another study by Todd Kendall of Clemson University exploited a natural experiment: different states got internet access at different times. He finds that access to the internet decreases the rate of rape (and no other crime), showing that the correlation is actually the opposite, and suggests that men tempted to rape might find it preferable to view pornography.
The typical arguments in favor of banning pornography have proved dubious to say the least. But it gets worse: there are significant negative consequences from banning pornography. First, as a nation, we need to stop treating socio-economic issues as moral ones. There’s nothing morally wrong about filming sex, nor, I would argue is there anything morally wrong with “paying” for it (as Woody Allen quipped, “The most expensive sex is free sex”). The problem is a socio-economic system that gives women no other choice. By making the problem a “moral” one and crusading against it, the larger issue becomes obscured and we can never get to the root of the problem.
Further, the best way to help women in pornography is to do what we do for men in other unwanted industries, like coal mining and garbage collection – unionize and heavily regulate. Women in pornography shouldn’t be considered “victims” in need of “rescue” but rather employees in need of common sense workplace safety regulation. That means condoms in every film, regular STD tests, good wages, rest periods, etc. Banning pornography will only drive the industry underground (and outside of regulation).
Third, banning all pornography would hamper the fight against objectively harmful practices, like child pornography, rape pornography and animal abuse. Further, it would create added stigma for the women involved and perpetuate a negative paternalistic mindset.
Banning pornography is a horrible idea (and I didn’t even broach free speech issues). Conservatives used to be the party who fought against government intrusion, fought for individual autonomy and feared unintended consequences. As Fredrick Hayek noted, “The conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes… like the socialist he regards himself as entitled to force the values he holds onto other people.”