If feminism and pornography are naturally fellow travelers, how did they arrive at the ideological impasse that exists today?

With the economic boom of the fifties, women seemed to turn away from equality toward the contented affluence of owning a home and raising a middle class suburban family. This was the decade of poodle skirts, Pepto-Bismol colored appliances, and hula hoops. Optimism ran rampant and Father Knew Best. Only a decade later, women demanded a redefinition of who they were and what their role in society was.

What happened in between? The sexual revolution.

It wasn't long before women realized that not all voices were equal in this new utopia.

In 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded. The next year, the first radical feminist group, the New York Radical Women, was established. Although the radicals were in the minority, the loudness of their voices and the flashiness of their tactics drew the media's attention. The Miss America pageant at Atlantic City was sabotaged; bridal fairs in San Francisco and New York were disrupted; there was a mass sit-in at Ladies Home journal to protest the conventional image of women projected by that magazine. Politically, some women began to call out for a cultural revolution.

The public began to perceive the entire movement as militant and intolerant of the traditional roles of women.

Meanwhile, the more moderate and reform-minded feminists were chalking up an impressive list of political successes. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibited sexual discrimination in the private sector (1964). President Lyndon B. Johnson's Executive Order 11375 forbade sexual discrimination in the public sector (1967). The Equal Employment Opportunity Act empowered a commission to take legal action against employers who discriminated on the basis of sex (1972).

On the streets, huge numbers of women were galvanized and united by the abortion issue. Marching down streets, their rallying cry became "a woman's body, a woman's right."

Meanwhile, pornography was also undergoing a transformation, especially in its legal status. In the fifties, the courts still generally used the Hicklin test to judge whether material was pornographic. This test came from Regina v. Hicklin. [1] By this standard, anything that tended to "deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences" was considered obscene.

In 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the Hicklin test restricted freedom of speech. It was replaced as a standard by the ruling on Roth v. the United States. [2] This ruling declared that something was pornographic if the "dominant theme ... appeals to the prurient interest" of the average person.

Pornography began to come out into the open. Then, in 1966 -perhaps as a reflection of society's growing tolerance-the standards loosened again. According to the ruling on Memoirs v. Massachusetts, material was pornographic if: "(a) the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to a prurient interest in sex; (b) the material is patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description or representation of sexual matters; and (c) the material is utterly without redeeming social value." [3]

It is difficult to establish that anything is "utterly without redeeming social value." This qualification provided a legal loophole that pornographers quickly exploited. The late sixties saw a flowering of adult films and books. Many of them included a tagged-on social message or a discussion of hygiene, as a way to skirt prosecution.

As pornography flourished, it became part of the changing view of sexuality. Sex was no longer tied, with a nooselike knot, to procreation, marriage, or romance. Pornography presented a kaleidoscope of sexual possibilities: as pleasure, with a stranger, as self-exploration, as power, with groups or with another woman...

The old stereotypes of pornography began to fade away. The caricature of the type of person who enjoyed pornography e.g., dirty old men and nervous perverts-was superseded by the sight of millions of people subscribing to Playboy. Couples viewed pornography together; explicit sex manuals, such as The Joy of Sex, became best sellers, which were prominently stocked by mainstream bookstores.

This was the democratization of pornography, by which sexual information became available to everyone-not just to the wealthy or to those willing to live on the sexual fringe. Even politically aware periodicals like the Berkeley Barb took up the cause of open sexuality. Founded to promote freedom of speech, the ad section of the Barb soon became dominated by sexually oriented businesses like massage parlors, and by individuals who placed ads to contact others with similar sexual preferences. Ordinary people seemed to have an insatiable demand for information about sex.

Feminists benefited immeasurably from the opening up of sex. They held rape "speak-outs" and destroyed the myth that only "bad" women were raped. With the moral connection between sex and motherhood severed, feminists could argue effectively for abortion rights. Lesbians came out of the closet. Sexual pleasure became a right-not only for men, but for women as well. And if men did not provide it-well, Germaine Greer's famous photograph with a banana held conspicuously in one hand reminded men that sexual fulfillment was not a request; it was a demand.

But a strange backlash was already underway. Simone de Beauvoir's pivotal book, The Second Sex (1953, reissued in 1961), claimed that lesbianism was the embodiment of sexual freedom. Radical feminists tended to agree. They believed that nothing short of a total sexual revolution could free women. In 1970, the organization Radicalesbians was founded; three years later, the first national conference of feminist lesbians took place in Los Angeles, amid media flashbulbs.

More moderate feminists, who wanted to reform the system by gaining access to abortion, for example, became alarmed.

A schism was opening between moderate heterosexual feminists and their more radical lesbian sisters. Betty Friedan horrified that her work was being used by radicals to attack marriage and the family-warned against the "lavender menace" (lesbianism). Between 1969 and 1971, NOW-the largest feminist organization and a voice for reform, not revolution virtually purged its gay and lesbian members.

As radical feminists continued to create their own organizations, such as the Redstockings, lesbianism began to resemble a political choice, rather than a sexual one.

In 1973, feminism won a tremendous victory when the Supreme Court's decision on Roe v. Wade [4] ensured legal access to abortion. For years, mainstream feminists had focused on the abortion crusade with a single-minded determination. Now, this goal was achieved. The movement needed another issue around which to organize, through which to be galvanized. They found it: a renewed effort to pass a federal Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).

In 1972, forty-nine years after its introduction in Congress, the ERA had passed the House of Representatives and the Senate. But before it could become law, the ERA needed to be ratified by two-thirds of the states. This seemed so easy that some considered it to be a technicality. The deadline of 1979 was seen as ample time.

In March 1978, one hundred thousand demonstrators marched on Washington, D.C., to express their determined support for ratification. A year later, on the streets of Chicago, ninety thousand women marched in support. The ERA began to dominate NOW and the other mainstream vehicles of feminism. But the votes necessary to ratify remained elusive. 1979 came and went; the ERA obtained an extension to June 30, 1982. After another extension, the measure was again brought to Congress. It was 1984.

The defeat of the ERA crushed the spirit of mainstream feminists. They felt discouraged, tired, and betrayed. Women seemed to turn inward and away from politics. They focused on their careers and personal lives. A flood of self-help books told women how to dress for success, how to keep their men, and how to listen to their inner voices. Politically, mainstream feminism faltered.

Radical feminism had never rushed to embrace the ERA. It had viewed the measure as a Band-Aid remedy for the terminal disease of sexual injustice. Moreover, radical feminists had been shunned by NOW, which had been the main engine behind the ERA drive.

Instead, radical feminists had been busy evolving a new political theory based on gender oppression. This is the contention that men as a class oppress women as a class: All men oppress all women. Collectively, male dominance is known as patriarchy, which is a combination of white male culture and capitalism. Only through revolution, only by destroying the present political, social, and cultural structures, can women become free.

Radical feminism presented an integrated philosophy of gender-including a reinterpretation of history, politics, and science. Gradually, the ideology of gender began to dominate the movement. It filled the vacuum left by the ERA debacle.

Perhaps the pivotal book in the development of radical feminism was Kate Millett's Sexual Politics (1970), which argued that women had been "confined to the cultural level of animal life" by men who used them as sexual objects and breeding stock.

A series of works expanded upon Millett's theories. In Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1974), Juliet Mitchell dovetailed feminism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis. Linda Gordon's anthology, Woman's Body, Woman's Right (1976), provided a history of birth control and placed this issue within a radical, socialist context. Through her tremendously influential book, Against Our Will, Susan Brownmiller "gave rape its history"-a history that portrayed men as natural rapists. Throughout the seventies radical feminists did the backbreaking labor of creating a new political philosophy.

Elsewhere within feminism, discontent grew. As the eighties dragged on, women became disillusioned with the movement, which they felt no longer addressed their needs. Affirmative action had promised to remedy the twin economic evils: sex segregation in the workplace, and the wage gap, by which women earned far less than men. Both problems remained. No-fault divorce had failed to rescue women from living below the poverty line. Women had not even been liberated from domesticity. Studies showed that modern men did no more housework than their fathers had before them.

The ERA had been a dismal failure. Even abortion was no longer safe under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who was openly hostile to the procedure. As one of his last acts before leaving office, Reagan filed a "friend of the court" brief that encouraged the Supreme Court to review a challenge to Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court complied.

To many women, it looked as though equality had not worked. The apparent rise of domestic violence seemed to prove this. Although FBI crime records (as indicated by the murder rate) did not indicate that violence against women was increasing more than the population growth or the general crime rate, women felt less safe.

Suddenly, reports of sexual terror were everywhere in the media: sexual harassment, coercion into pornography, domestic violence, date rape, wife abuse, and child abuse. The euphoria of freedom was overshadowed by the paranoia of failure.

Women had fought so hard and had progressed so little. No achievements seemed to endure, and feminists were not in the mood to celebrate past glories. The politics of liberation had failed; it was time for politics of rage.

To discouraged women, radical feminists offered an analysis of the movement's failure. More importantly, they offered a solution: Reform can never produce justice for women, they maintained. The problems are rooted too deeply for halfway measures to address them adequately. Salvation lay in revolution-a revolution so profound that it extended beyond politics into human sexuality itself.

According to radical feminists, only a fundamental difference between the sexes could explain the perpetual oppression of women. Only an unbreachable schism between the sexes could explain why men constantly victimize women.

As to how the gender oppression was maintained-pornography became the primary culprit for radical feminists, who pointed to graphic depictions of bound or abused women in order to explain the incredible staying power of the male power structure.

Pornography offered radical feminists a clear target for their rage, complete with clear moral categories: Men were villains, women were victims. There was a brotherhood of oppressors, a sisterhood of victims. Pornography became the symbol of man's supposedly unquenchable hatred of women.

Meanwhile, in mainstream society, pornography had already fallen on hard times. Without the freewheeling spirit of the sixties, sexual liberation had come under attack. In its 1973 ruling on Miller v. California, the Supreme Court found:

This became the new standard for judging what was pornography.

Taking advantage of today's growing intolerance and sexual paranoia, radical feminism is using pornography to revive the battle of the sexes. This time it is all-out war, with no prisoners taken.

The rallying point of pornography came at a fortunate moment for radical feminists. They desperately needed a cause to galvanize the movement in much the same manner as abortion had in the sixties. Radical feminists needed a holy crusade around which to rally alienated and angry women. And pornography was perfectly suited. It provided a clear target. It commanded the instant attention of the media, who love to use sex to boost their ratings or circulation. Attacking pornography allowed the media to titillate viewers while remaining socially responsible.

Pornography fits in perfectly with the politics of revenge and the ideology of rage.

A basic tenet of radical feminism's theory of gender oppression is the idea that sex is a social construct. Radical feminists reject what they call "sexual essentialism"-the notion that sex is a natural force. They reject the idea that sex is based on biology or that women have certain natural tendencies.

Even deeply felt sexual preferences, such as heterosexuality, are not matters of biology. They spring from ideology. To argue otherwise, they insist, is to take the side of conservative antifeminists. It is to accept that biology makes women weaker than men, and slates them for domesticity. Anyone who claims women's sexuality comes from biology is blaming the victims for their own oppression.

The "nature or nurture" argument may be intrinsically interesting, but the most important political question for this debate is rarely voiced. That question is: What difference does it make?

To feminists who advocate "a woman's body, a woman's right," there are no political implications to taking a nature or a nurture stand. Whether a woman's sexuality is formed by genetics, by culture, or by some combination of the two, it is still her body and the political significance of this remains unchanged. She is free to do with it whatever she chooses.

Consider a parallel: Everyone's intellect is formed by a combination of biology and cultural influences-including parents, school, books, television, and peer pressure. Yet few people would argue that a woman should not be allowed to think for herself and reach her own conclusions, simply because she has been influenced by her environment. Indeed, a woman's ability to reason and to control her own actions may be her only defense against hostile surroundings. But, to anti-pornography feminists, the idea that sex is a social construct is good news. If sex has been constructed, it also can be deconstructed and put back together correctly.

The key to deconstructing women's sexuality lies in rejecting all of the male institutions that have defined and oppressed women for centuries. The institutions of marriage and the family are prime targets. Marriage is seen as domestic servitude, designed to ensure that men are fed and pampered, and have a steady supply of sex. Families are the training grounds of patriarchy, which produce the next generation of oppressors and victims-otherwise known as sons and daughters.

Critics of radical feminism point out that there is no need to deconstruct marriage and the family, since these institutions are breaking down on their own. In the fifties, a typical family consisted of a husband who worked nine-to-five and a wife who stayed at home to raise two or, three children. Today, there seem to be no typical families left. Divorce, single motherhood, homosexual adoptions, lesbian couples and cohabitation have rewritten all the rules.

Yet radical feminists claim to see a common denominator: namely, the oppression of all female members. This is said to be true even of a family made up entirely of females. Why? Because their relationships are formed by external patriarchal pressures.

How she acquired this amazing knowledge of prehistoric sexual customs is not known.

Heterosexuality as gender oppression is a continuing theme of anti-pornography feminists. From Dworkin's book Intercourse (1987) to MacKinnon's statement "Heterosexuality ... institutionalizes male sexual dominance and female sexual submission" in Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989), [7] one thing is clear: The male sex drive is a political yoke imposed on women.

Having established to their satisfaction the horrors of heterosexuality, radical feminists turn their intellectual guns on another aspect of patriarchy: capitalism. After all, pornography can almost be defined as commercialized sex. Their attack on capitalism lays the final groundwork for a full-out assault on porn. As Catharine MacKinnon observes in Only Words: "The sex is not chosen for the sex. Money is the medium of force and provides the cover of consent." [8]

Women's oppression is considered to stem from the twin evils of patriarchy and capitalism: sex and commercialism.

Armed with the battering ram of rage, radical feminists are making a frontal assault on the very symbol of heterosexuality and capitalism: pornography.

The seventies were the heydays of pornography, which flourished in an atmosphere of legal tolerance. In the early eighties, however, a parade of proposed legislation, based on radical feminist assumptions, aimed at suppressing pornography.

The first significant proposed legislation was the Minneapolis Anti-Pornography Ordinance. Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon were hired as consultants by the conservative city legislators who wished to shut down the pornography shops. Previous attempts to close the shops under zoning laws had failed. Dworkin and MacKinnon prepared an ordinance that redefined pornography as sex discrimination.

Drafted as a civil rights law, the ordinance would have given individual women, or groups of women, the right to take producers or distributors of pornography to civil court for damages. The charge would have been "coercing the plaintiff(s) into pornography"-that is, forcing a woman to participate in pornography without her consent.

The ordinance listed thirteen conditions that were not considered to be evidence of a woman's consent. Under the ordinance, a woman who had posed for pornographic pictures could have subsequently sued a magazine for publishing them even though she was of age, she had full knowledge of the purpose of the pictures, she signed a contract and a release, she was under no threat, there were witnesses to her cooperation, she showed no resistance, and she was fully paid. None of these factors were considered legal evidence of consent. In essence, the ordinance prohibited the possibility of consent.

Then, Dworkin and MacKinnon orchestrated the public hearings at which the ordinance was aired. They called only the witnesses they wished to hear from. Sex-abuse victims and social scientists gave long testimonies about the horrors of pornography. Civil rights advocates, gay activists, and the city attorney's office were excluded from the hearings. The ordinance passed with a speed that precluded any real examination of its implications. The mayor vetoed it.

The next target for an anti-pornography ordinance was Indianapolis. There, conservative anti-porn groups had been active, but not successful. The Republican mayor of Indianapolis, William Hudnut III, was also a Presbyterian minister. He saw the Minneapolis Ordinance as a prototype, and the perfect means to rid his city of pornography. Again, MacKinnon was hired as a consultant. Again, the ordinance passed.

Publishers and booksellers challenged the law in Federal District Court; they won. The case was appealed. In 1984, the court ruling American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut [9] overthrew the ordinance as unconstitutional. The court was particularly concerned about prohibiting such vaguely defined images as the "sexually explicit subordination of women"; indeed, the ordinance's descriptions were so vague as to constitute prior restraint. That is, pornographers and vendors would have to censor themselves for fear of crossing some unknown line. Attempts to introduce similar ordinances in Los Angeles, Suffolk County, Long Island, and both Cambridge and Brookline, Massachusetts, proved unsuccessful.

Recently, however, courts have begun to look more favorably on anti-pornography arguments. For example, in its 1991 ruling on Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc. [10] the U.S. Supreme Court held that nude dancing constitutes expression under the First Amendment and recognized that such dancing has been an important part of cultures throughout history. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court upheld a complete ban on nude dancing within a certain community, because the majority of that community found it morally offensive.

In February 1992, the Canadian Supreme Court embodied the MacKinnon/Dworkin perspective on pornography into law through its decision on Butler v. Regina. [11] It restricted the importation of material that "degrades" or "dehumanizes" women. The Court recognized pornography to be an aspect of free expression, but ruled that the prevention of harm to women was more important than freedom of speech.

Ironically, this obscenity law has been used almost exclusively against gay, lesbian, and feminist material.

Also in 1992, Senate Bill 1521-the Victims of Pornography Compensation Act-was being considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee. To its credit, one of the most influential voices against the censorship of pornography came from another faction within the feminist movement: liberal feminism. A news release from the liberal organization Feminists for Free Expression [FFE] described S.1521:

Largely because of FFE's concerted and vocal opposition, S.1521 was dropped from the Senate agenda.

The criticism of liberal feminists has posed something of a dilemma for radical feminists. They have been able to contemptuously dismiss women who are sex workers, because these women have so little status within society that few people listen to them anyway. It is more difficult to ignore liberal feminists, many of whom have been prominent within the movement for years. When the pornography actress Marilyn Chambers defends pornography, she can be written off as a brainwashed victim who has fallen in love with her own oppression. When the President of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Nadine Strossen, argues against censorship in her book Defending Pornography (1995), a different line of dismissal must be taken.

Radical feminists disown their liberal counterparts and accuse them of working for the interests of patriarchy.

In the anthology Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism (1990), editor Dorchen Leidholdt claims that feminists who believe women make their own choices about pornography are, in fact, spreading "a felicitous lie" (p. 131). Wendy Stock accuses free speech feminists of identifying with their oppressors "much like ... concentration camp prisoners with their jailors"-(p 150). Valerie Heller proclaims that sexual liberals "create myths to disguise and distort the effect of exploitative, abusive behavior ... placing the responsibility for the continued oppression of the victim on the victim herself" (p. 157). Andrea Dworkin accuses her feminist critics of running a "sex protection racket," and maintains that no one who defends pornography can be a feminist (p. 136)." [13]

Liberal feminists who dare to speak up meet with abuse and dismissal. Anti-pornography feminists deal with the liberal threat of sexual tolerance by simply defining liberals out of the movement. That's one way to eliminate dissent.

If radical feminist attacks against pornography spill over onto liberal feminists or women in the industry, so be it. These women can be redefined as traitors or as "victims" who require saving, whether or not they want salvation.

Women who actively enjoy pornography, or who speak out for the rights of pornographers, are treated with special contempt. At a National Woman and the Law Conference in 1985, for example, Catharine MacKinnon debated Nan Hunter, of Feminists Against Censorship Taskforce. MacKinnon accused Hunter of being there "to speak for the pornographers, although that will not be what she says she is doing." She left no doubt that long-time activist Hunter was no longer a sister feminist.

Radical feminists have been distanced from their liberal counterparts. Ironically, however, they have become allied with another group of women: conservatives. Conservative women have been the bete noire of the feminist movement, because they oppose the full slate of feminist goals, from abortion to comparable worth. But these same women are willing to join hands with radical feminists on pornography. They are willing to march side-by-side in order to "take back the night." Why? Because they can co-opt the radical feminist agenda and use it for their own gains.

In Indianapolis, for example, the anti-pornography ordinance was backed by the religious right wing and the radical feminists. Local feminist groups gave it no support whatsoever. They spoke out against it. In Suffolk County, New York, the ordinance was put forward by an anti-ERA male legislator who claimed to be restoring to "ladies ... what they used to be."

Radical feminists have not only allied with conservatives; they have also called for help from their arch enemy, the patriarchal state. They have asked the state to provide legislation to restrict sexual expression. They have asked the patriarchal state for protection. It is a bewildering sight to see radical feminists appealing to a system that they themselves condemn as irredeemably corrupt. Yet, in Only Words, MacKinnon applauds the court system, whenever she perceives an advantage in its rulings. It is to the state that radical feminists now appeal for protection against pornography. Do they truly believe that women, not men, will pass and enforce the laws that result?

Even more frightening: Some liberal feminists-feminists like Ellie Smeal, president of the Fund for a Feminist Majority -are pushing aside their free speech principles and campaigning for anti-pornography laws. In the March 12, 1993, issue of The New York Times, Smeal declared of pornography, "I am not going to just sit here and ignore it any longer. The violence toward women is there, everywhere.... I don't want a police state.... But to do nothing, to not enter out of fear is wrong. We have to get beyond, `We can't do anything,' and do something." [14]

That "something" is the quick fix of censorship.

Let's turn to the specific accusations being hurled at pornography. Porn is being attacked on three basic levels:

1. Pornography is morally wrong.

2. Pornography leads directly to violence against women.

3. Pornography, in and of itself, is violence against women. It is violence in several ways:

Do these accusations stand up under examination?

It is said that pornography is the way men subjugate women, in order to maintain their own position of power. It is the way men degrade and objectify women. Radical feminists avoid words like good or evil. They prefer to use more politically/sexually correct terms like oppression and exploitation.

Let's examine the second accusation first: the idea that pornography is degrading to women. Degrading is a subjective term. Personally, I find detergent commercials in which women become orgasmic over soapsuds to be tremendously degrading to women. I find movies in which prostitutes are treated like ignorant drug addicts to be slander against women. Every woman has the right-the need!-to define degradation for herself.

Next it is charged that pornography objectifies women: It converts them into sexual objects. Again, what does this mean? If taken literally, it means nothing at all because objects don't have sexuality; only human beings do. But the charge that pornography portrays women as "sexual beings" would not inspire rage and, so, it has no place in the anti-porn rhetoric.

Usually, the term sex objects means that women are shown as "body parts"; they are reduced to being physical objects. What is wrong with this? Women are as much their bodies as they are their minds or souls. No one gets upset if you present a women as a brain or as a spiritual being. Yet those portrayals ignore women as physical beings. To get upset by an image that focuses on the human body is merely to demonstrate a bad attitude toward what is physical. If I concentrated on a woman's sense of humor to the exclusion of her other characteristics, would this be degrading? Why is it degrading to focus on her sexuality? Underlying this attitude is the view that sex must be somehow ennobled to be proper.

And, for that matter, why is a naked female body more of an "object" than a clothed one?

Pornography, it is said, presents false images about women. Pornography is a lie, because it presents women as large-breasted nymphomanics. If this accusation is true, the remedy is not to ban pornography, but to recruit a wider variety of women into the industry.

Moreover, if accuracy is the hallmark of whether or not images should be banned, then much more than pornography should be censored. For example, women in the ads in Working Woman tend to be underweight, casually sophisticated, young businesswomen. Doesn't accuracy demand that they be a little overweight, with a strand of hair out of place, perhaps even a bit frumpy? Do housewives feel degraded when they see the Working Woman caricature of a politically aware woman?

If society is to regulate depictions because they disturb some people, then we are reduced to the level of Andrea Dworkin, who castigates the painter Goya for exploiting women in his nude studies. Freedom means self-fulfillment. It also means putting up with other people's irritating pursuit of the same. It means being confronted by disturbing images and ideas.

Yet the charge lingers: Pornography is immoral. And, by some standard not my own, I'm sure it could be judged so. I find pornography to be morally acceptable and desirable, but I admit this is an open debate. The significant legal question, however, is, What does it matter? Why should the law concern itself with whether or not pornography is moral?

Underlying the anti-porn assault is an assumption regarding the purpose of law in society. And, since legal sanctions are being suggested, it is useful to examine this assumption.

There are two basic and fundamentally antagonistic views regarding the purpose of law in society. The first one, to which individualist feminists subscribe, is that the law should protect rights. It should protect self-ownership. "A woman's body, a woman's right" applies not only to abortion, but to every peaceful activity a woman engages in. The law should come into play only when a woman initiates force or has force initiated against her.

The second view of the purpose of law is shared by both conservatives and anti-porn feminists. It is that the law should protect virtue. Law should enforce proper moral behavior.

From this perspective, certain acts (or images or words) are wrong. They ought to be suppressed whether or not they constitute peaceful behavior. Classic examples are laws against blasphemy, pornography, and homosexuality. Because men should not regard women as "body parts," the law should discourage this tendency. By this standard, laws come into play whenever there has been a breach of public morality-read, breach of "women's class interests."

Liberal feminists have tried to bridge these two positions. They have tried to produce the best of both worlds by mixing a commitment to "a woman's body, a woman's right" with a demand for respecting women.

Their efforts are doomed, for one simple reason: the sticky issue of a woman's consent. What will liberal feminists say to women who choose to put themselves in situations where they are not respected-at least, by feminist standards? What will they say to the women who rush to pose for S/M pornography? To women who compete for the privilege?

If liberal feminists say that participation in pornography should be tolerated, they are conceding that the morality of it is irrelevant to whether it should be legal. If they say it should be prohibited, they are denying that a woman has a right to control her own body. A confrontation between these two views is inevitable. When you enforce virtue, you deny a woman's right to make an unacceptable choice with her own body.

This conflict is old wine in new bottles; it is nothing less than the age-old battle between freedom and control.

The second basic accusation hurled against pornography is that it causes violence against women. Radical feminists claim there is a cause-and-effect relationship between men viewing pornography and men attacking women, especially in the form of rape.

But studies and experts disagree as to whether there is any relationship between pornography and violence. Or, more broadly stated, between images and behavior. Even the procensorship Meese Commission Report admitted that much of the data connecting pornography to violence was unreliable.

This Commission was the last national effort to define and suppress pornography. It was a circus of public hearings, conducted by the U.S. Attorney General's Commission on Pornography a.k.a. the Meese Commission. Established in May 1984, this eleven-person body received a mandate from President Ronald Reagan to investigate what he called "new evidence linking pornography to anti-social behavior." Reagan obviously wanted to overturn the findings of the 1970 Federal Commission on Pornography and Obscenity, which had been set up by then president Richard Nixon. The earlier commission not only found no link between violence and pornography; it also urged the repeal of most obscenity laws. Its findings were dismissed.

The Meese Commission carefully avoided a repetition of this embarrassing liberalism. For example, the first Meese hearing allowed testimony from forty-two anti-porn advocates as opposed and only three pro-freedom of speech people. Many anticensorship groups, including major writers' organizations, were denied the chance to speak. The reason given: lack of time.

But when radical feminist Dorchen Leidholt, who had already testified, rushed the microphone along with a group of other women, she was given extra time. The microphones stayed switched on. And the chairman requested a written copy of her remarks.

Is it any wonder that the Meese Commission found there to be a relationship between pornography and violence? In the Virginia Law Review, Nadine Strossen commented on the shaky ground beneath this finding: "The Meese Commission ... relied on Professor Murray Straus' correlational studies ... to `justify' their conclusions that exposure to `pornography' leads to sexual assaults. But, as Professor Straus wrote the Commission, `I do not believe that [my] research demonstrates that pornography causes rape.' " [15]

Other studies, such as the one prepared by feminist Thelma McCormick (1983) for the Metropolitan Toronto Task Force on Violence Against Women, found no pattern to indicate a connection between pornography and sex crimes. Incredibly, the Task Force suppressed the study and re-assigned the project to a procensorship male, who returned the "correct" results. His study was published.

Moving away from studies, what of real world feedback? In West Germany, rape rates have slightly declined since 1973, when pornography became widely available; meanwhile, other violent crime has increased. In Japan, where pornography depicting violence is widely available, rape is much lower per capita than in the United States, where violence in porn is restricted.

It can be argued that all forms of violence are lower in these countries. The low rate of violence against women may be nothing more than a reflection of this. Nevertheless, if pornography were intimately connected to violence against women, you would expect to see that connection to be manifested in some manner. It is up to radical feminists to explain why it is not.

Those researchers who draw a relationship between pornography and violence tend to hold one of two contradictory views on what that connection might be. The first view is that porn is a form of catharsis. That is, the more pornography we see, the less likely we are to act out our sexual urges. The second view is that porn inspires imitation. That is, the more pornography we see, the more likely we are to imitate the sexual behavior it represents.

Researchers who favor the catharsis theory point to studies, such as the one conducted by Berl Kutchinsky, which found that an increased availability of pornography in Denmark correlated with a decrease in the sex offenses committed there.

Radical feminists advocate the imitation theory, the idea that men will try to recreate the situations they see on a screen. The first comment to make about this claim is how insulting it is to men. Radical feminists seem to believe that men are soulless lumps of plasticine on which pornographers can leave any imprint they wish.

Although anti-porn feminists cry out against viewing pornography, they must admit that there is at least one group of people who can survive such exposure without harm-namely, themselves. In their zeal, radical feminists view more pornography than the general population. Moreover, they dwell upon the small percentage of pornography that depicts violence. Either they are wonder women or they are human beings who have a normal response to brutal pornography: They are repelled by it.

Radical feminists are well aware of how disturbing most people find brutal pornography. This is precisely the reaction they count on when they show pornographic slides and films at lectures and debates. They count on the fact that most people are revolted by graphic violence and brutality. Ironically, this revulsion has sometimes worked against the anti-porn cause. Several years ago in New York City, the group Feminists Fighting Pornography was ordered to remove a display of pornography that it had set up in Grand Central Terminal. Commuters were upset by the sight of it. The New York Civil Liberties Union successfully defended the feminists' right to display pornography.

Despite the evidence that most people are repelled by pornography that depicts violence, radical feminists parade anecdotal studies that draw the connections they desire. For example, interviews in which rapists confess they consumed violent pornography before committing their crime. Even if these stories are credible, they indicate nothing more than that men who rape may also tend to enjoy brutal images of sex. They say nothing about the reactions of men in general.

There is no reason to believe that pornography causes violence. There is a growing body of evidence that indicates that pornography either acts as a catharsis or has little impact at all.

The third accusation anti-porn feminists hurl is that pornography, in and of itself, is an act of violence. It is violence committed against every woman, whether or not she is personally exposed to it.

The type of violence done to the woman changes, however, depending on her relationship to pornography. The most direct harm is said to be inflicted on the women most directly involved. Women who participate in the production of pornography are said to be victimized in one of several ways: They are physically coerced into pornography; they are so psychologically damaged that they are rendered incapable of giving informed or "real" consent; they have been forced by capitalism to sell their bodies for the camera.

Women outside the industry are also considered to be victims because if they consume it, they reinforce their own oppression; and, even if they do not consume it, they must live in the atmosphere of terror that pornography creates throughout society. Let's consider these accusations one by one:

My research indicates the contrary. But I would never deny the possibility that coercion exists. Every industry has its abuses.

Nevertheless, the claim of "coercion into pornography" generally rests on a few horrifying and well-publicized accounts by women who had worked in the industry. After leaving, they claimed they had been coerced into performing pornographic acts. These accounts must not be cavalierly dismissed.

Nor should they be given a rubber stamp of acceptance. If the specific charges are found to be true, this truth should not be allowed to drown out the voices of women who have benefited from pornography.

If a specific charge of "coercion into pornography" is proven true, those who used force or threats to make a woman perform should be charged with kidnapping, assault, and/or rape. Any pictures or films that result from the coercion should be confiscated and burned, because no one has the right to benefit from the proceeds of a crime.

What radical feminists propose, however, offers women less protection than they already have. Radical feminists insist that "coercion into pornography" is a civil rights violation, a form of discrimination against women. According to them, a man who kidnaps a woman, imprisons her, and forces her to pose at gunpoint has not committed a criminal act, but a civil one. Instead, feminists should be calling for the full enforcement of criminal laws.

This is the second way in which women in the industry are said to be victims of violence. They are said to be so brainwashed by white male culture that they cannot render consent. Thus, they are de facto coerced.

Consider how arrogant this statement is.

Although women in pornography appear to be willing, anti-porn feminists see through this charade. They know that no psychologically healthy woman would agree to the humiliation and degradation of pornography. If agreement seems to be present, it is only because the women have been so emotionally beaten down they have fallen in love with their own oppression. In order to restore real choice to these victims, feminists must rescue them from themselves. In other words, any woman who poses for pornography is psychologically damaged, by definition, and her avowed wishes need not be respected. Like a mentally ill patient, she is incapable of acting in her own interests because she is incapable of knowing what they are.

If a woman enjoys performing sex acts in front of a camera, it is not because she is a unique human being who reasons and reacts from a different background or personality. No. It is because she is psychologically damaged and no longer responsible for her actions. She must, in effect, become a political ward of radical feminists, who will make the correct choices for her.

This is more than an attack on the right to pose for pornography. It is a denial of a woman's right to choose anything outside the narrow corridor of choices offered by political/sexual correctness.

The right to choose hinges on the right to make a "wrong" choice. Freedom of religion entails the right to be an atheist. Freedom of speech involves the right to be silent. Freedom of choice requires the right to make bad choices-that is, a decision society considers to be wrong. After all, society is not going to stop a woman from doing what it wants her to do.

But radical feminists are going one step farther than simply denying that women have the right to make wrong choices; they deny that women have the ability to choose.

How do radical feminists explain away the abundant and clear evidence of consent-contracts, witnesses, personal testimony, releases, etc. provided by these women? They handle this sticky issue by redefining consent so as to make it unrecognizable. According to the Minneapolis ordinance drafted by MacKinnon and Dworkin, for example, the following factors do not indicate the presence of consent: that the woman is of age; that she showed no resistance; that a contract was signed and witnessed; that payment was received.

According to radical feminists, even if a woman in pornography signed a contract with full knowledge, she can sue on the grounds of coercion. What legal implications does this have for a woman's right to contract? What legal weight will future negotiators give to a woman's signature? Women's contracts will be legally unenforceable; their signature will become a legal triviality.

For centuries, women have struggled against tremendous odds to have their contracts taken seriously. At great personal expense, they stood up and demanded the right to own land, to control their own wages, to retain custody of their children-in other words, to become legally responsible for themselves and for their property. A woman's consent must never again become legally irrelevant.

Yet this is what radical feminists propose to do. They claim that women are so weak-willed and feeble-minded that cultural pressures easily overwhelm their free will and make them into the playthings of patriarchy. Consider one fact: Everyone is formed by his or her culture. The very language with which we speak and formulate thought comes from our culture. And certainly there are times when cultural pressures lead people to make bad choices. But to say that any woman who poses nude does so only because she has been indoctrinated by patriarchy, is to eliminate the possibility of her ever choosing anything.

In other words, if one choice is invalidated because of cultural influences, all choices are invalidated. Why? Because all choices are culturally influenced if only because the people making them have been shaped by experience. Every decision is made in the presence of cultural pressures. To invalidate a woman's choices is to deny her the one protection she has against an unhealthy culture: namely, the right to decide for herself.

Yet this is what radical feminists propose. And they do so under the guise of protecting psychologically damaged women. Pause for a moment. Think of what is being said.

Anti-porn feminists want us to accept their sexual preferences as gospel. Presumably, their theories are based on solid fact and deep insight. Although they have been born and raised in the same patriarchal culture that has warped other women, radical feminists have somehow escaped unscathed. Just as they have escaped being damaged by the pornography they view. Somehow these women have scaled the pinnacle, from which they now look down and make pronouncements on the lifestyle of those beneath them.

Perhaps radical feminists are superwomen. Perhaps they are merely fanatics unwilling to respect any position other than their own.

If women's choices are to be trashed, why should radical feminists fare better than other women? Are they the elite? If the choices of pornographic models are not to be taken seriously, radical feminists cannot claim respect for their choices either. If culture negates the free will of women, anti-porn feminists are in the same boat as the rest of us.

This is part and parcel of the accusation that pornography exploits women. Exploitation means getting something from someone in a manner that is hurtful, deceptive, or otherwise unfair.

This charge arises because pornography is a commercial activity. The anti-porn argument runs: Because in general women are paid less than men and have fewer opportunities, they are forced to enter unsavory professions in order to make a living.

Radical feminists such as Catharine MacKinnon, who calls herself a "post-Marxist," erase the line most people draw between a voluntary exchange and a forced one: This is the line between consent and coercion. They reject a woman's right to contract.

Contracts are records of voluntary exchanges. Labor contracts are voluntary exchanges of work for wages. Most people enter labor contracts-that is, get a job-because they need money. But, to radical feminists, this is "economic coercion." Because they believe the free market forces people to take jobs, they view it as a form of violence.

When radical feminists deny the validity of porn contracts, they are not attacking pornography, so much as they are attacking contracts themselves. If they reject porn contracts because the woman needs money, then they are logically constrained to reject almost every other labor contract as well.

A question should be asked: Do anti-porn feminists see any difference between offering a woman money for her services and putting a gun to her head to obtain the same thing? Politically, their theory claims there is no difference.

People's alternatives are always limited. This is not an indictment of the free market. It is a statement about reality and human nature. Consent is the application of free will to whatever choices are possible to you at a given moment. One of those choices is pornography.

Anti-porn feminists refuse to acknowledge the free will of women who make this choice. Instead, they construct an elaborate theory to explain how the women have been exploited by capitalism.

Only by understanding the deep and unmovable antipathy that radical feminists harbor toward free exchange and traditional sex is it possible to sound the near bottomless depths of their hatred for pornography, which combines both.

It is true that pornography repels many women; and this is an excellent reason for those women to avoid it. For others, however, pornography offers a wide range of pleasurable fantasies including sex with a stranger, sex for the fun of it, with another woman, as a dominatrix, with a group, or with someone who is otherwise inaccessible. The majority of women lead conventional monogamous lives. Pornography allows them to vicariously enjoy a cornucopia of sex, without having to bear the consequences of actually doing anything.

But what of pornography that depicts mock violence? Doesn't sadomasochism express and promote the subjugation of women? In her essay "The Art of Discipline," Susan Farr explains that the show of violence in sadomasochism cannot be judged by conventional standards. The behavior signifies something entirely different to those involved in it than it does to those on the outside. Farr explains that there is no one correct interpretation of the slaps and posturing that characterizes this form of sex play.

It is a purely personal response. And the personal is not political.

An assumption underlies this claim: namely, that women are not individuals, but members of a class with collective interests. Radical feminists claim to have discovered the correct collective class will of women. They have uncovered the sexually correct choice that every woman should make. They have also revealed the enemy: men as a class.

If men object to being lumped together as oppressors, they are ignored. They are seen as simply defending their collective class interests. If individual women object to being denied access to pornography, they are ignored. Obviously, such women have been psychologically damaged by patriarchy and no longer know their own minds. They no longer perceive their own class interest.

To radical feminists, individual freedom creates a natural disharmony of interests among women. After all, if a woman can make her own sexual choice without infringing on the equal right of another woman to choose, then there are no collective interests -just individuals peacefully pursuing their own visions. Such a possibility would destroy the structure of class rights.

To condemn pornography, radical feminists must condemn the concept of individuality. They must deny that personal choices are personal.

This is the message behind phrases like the "collective rights" and "the class interests" of woman: The choices of individuals must be subordinated. The correct class choice must be enforced. And this correct choice can be discerned only by the politically enlightened, the politically elite. The arrogance of this attitude is astounding.

Denying sexual choice to women is an accusation commonly hurled at patriarchy. Now radical feminists are doing the same thing. They clothe their actions by claiming that wrong decisions are not real ones, but merely the reflection of patriarchy.

What is really being reflected is anti-porn feminism's contempt for anyone-even women-who disagree.

As vigorously as radical feminists attack pro-sex arguments, they seem strangely blind to flaws in their own position. It is difficult to imagine how any woman with intellectual honesty could miss the contradictions and inconsistencies of the anti-porn position. These contradictions include:

• Radical feminists claim that pornography is a civil rights violation, and therefore not protected under the First Amendment. It is not political or social speech; it is an abuse of speech. Yet they also argue that pornography is one of the main expressions of patriarchy, which is a political system. The more they rail against pornography as a prop of patriarchy, the more it resembles precisely the type of political expression meant to be protected by the First Amendment.
• Radical feminists are committed to "validating" the experiences of women who have been silenced by patriarchy. They are determined to rediscover women's history, or "herstory," through which the voices of real women will finally be heard. Yet they vigorously dismiss the voices of women who choose to participate in pornography.
• Pornography-is said to be a bastion of patriarchy and, thus, the enemy of women's rights. Conservatives, who are said to support patriarchy, also oppose women's rights. If both statements are true, why do conservatives crusade against pornography?
• On the other hand, pornography is anti-family in that it breaks the traditional ties between sex and motherhood, sex and marriage. Since radical feminists consider the family to be a building block of patriarchy, why aren't they pleased to see it under attack? How can pornography attack family values and support patriarchy at the same time?
• Anti-porn feminism touts the natural power of women, but it seems to have political interest in women as "victims." Even powerful women, like porn producer Candida Royalle, who is also on the board of Feminists for Free Expression, are seen as pathetic pawns of men. Which is true: Are women powerful beings or are they natural victims?
• Censorship is used by those who have power against those who do not. By radical feminists' own standards, censorship will be used by men who control the state against women who do not. If the patriarchal state is the problem, how can it intervene on women's behalf? Nevertheless, radical feminists must use the state. They wish to force their code of conduct on others. They do not wish to persuade or educate, because it is unlikely that either of these peaceful tactics would completely eliminate pornography. Only force can do this. Only the state can provide it.
• If pornography disappeared tomorrow, our culture would still be flooded with images of women that many would consider degrading and humiliating. To be consistent, radical feminists have to call for banning sexually incorrect TV, literature, art, and advertising. The fact that they have been fairly quiet on this point may well be a matter of strategy. Pornography is an easy target compared to the evening news.
• Radical feminists draw a distinction between pornography (which is anti-woman) and erotica (which is pro-woman). They glowingly describe what constitutes erotica. Yet, by their own standards, they can have no idea of what erotica would look like. By their own admission, it would be created by a postcapitalist, postpatriarchal society, which does not exist. Nor can they claim to know what women will want sexually once patriarchy has been swept away. Of course, this does not prevent radical feminists from describing in detail how women would sexually react without patriarchy. They seem to have a vision of the future that is denied to the rest of us.

CRITIQUE OF ANTI-PORNOGRAPHY RESEARCH

For example, the huge tome entitled Sourcebook on Pornography purports to give a balanced overview of the issue, complete with chapters on "civil libertarians" and other advocates of sexual freedom. Nevertheless, Chapter One opens: "Pornography is an $8 billion a year business that legitimizes and encourages rape, torture, and degradation of women. It is created by filming real or simulated sexually explicit acts of sexual torture, abuse, degradation or terrorism against real people." [16]

Radical feminism is an ideology in search of supporting facts. And to their credit, anti-pornography feminists usually make no pretense of fairness.

An example of their open prejudice occurred at a purportedly "unbiased" conference on prostitution held in fall 1992 at the University of Michigan Law School, where Catharine MacKinnon teaches. All of the conference speakers opposed legalizing prostitution. Nevertheless, the students who had organized the conference set up an exhibit which presented a range of views on prostitution-some favorable. The students were forced to dismantle the exhibit. Dissenting views-even on the sidelines, even from the feminist organizers of the conference-were not to be permitted.

From the large pool of research and perspectives, radical feminists draw only upon those sources that support their conclusions. They are fond of validating the Reagan-sponsored Meese Commission Report, while totally ignoring the 1970 Presidential Commission on Pornography assembled by Nixon to condemn porn. This despite the fact that the 1970 Commission was far more thorough than the Meese Commission.

The 1970 Commission funded a survey of 2,486 adults and 769 young people to determine the extent to which pornography was damaging them. To the question, Would you please tell me what you think are the two or three most serious problems facing the country today? only two percent of respondents expressed a concern over pornography. Twenty-four percent said porn gave them "information about sex." Ten percent said it improved their sexual relations. Those who reported recent exposure to pornography tended to report positive effects. Moreover, the vast majority of experts consulted did not draw a connection between pornography and social harm.

The 1970 Commission also studied crime rates. It found that although sexual material became seven times more available between 1960 to 1969, sexual crimes by juveniles decreased during that period. Nevertheless-perhaps sensitive to the fact that their official raison d'être was to condemn porn-the Commission backed away from saying there was no connection between pornography and violence. It stated instead:

This vindication of pornography led then President Richard Nixon to declare, "So long as I am in the White House, there will be no relaxation of the national effort to control and eliminate smut from our national life.... I totally reject this report." [18] Radical feminists agree with Nixon.

The growing intolerance within feminism is not a sign of intellectual confidence, which invites open discussion. It is a sign of dogmatic hostility toward anyone who disagrees. It is coupled with bad science and poor research.

In general, most studies of pornography follow one of two methodologies, both of which try to draw connections between images and behavior:

The first type of research has many possible shortcomings. Any one of them could invalidate its findings. The possible shortcomings include: The lab study may not reflect behavior in the real world; the subject or the researcher might introduce unknown factors (e.g., the emotional response of the researcher); the subjects-often criminals or students-may not be representative of the general population, or even representative of most criminals or students; the artificial situation in and of itself may induce aggression (e.g., no punishment is attached to behavior); the pornography viewed is selective; the impact of pornography is short-lived and easily overridden by the next stimulus; most studies rely on immediate responses and do not indicate what behavior, if any, would follow in the real world; the extent to which pornography causes harm by, for example, changing morality, is impossible to scientifically measure.

The second research methodology suffers from similar pitfalls. Added to this is the credibility problem of having to believe whatever the subject says. This is a particularly sticky problem when the subjects are rapists who wish to blame their crime on some external force.

Moreover, the researcher typically brings assumptions to the experiment, which shape the results. This is true of the most scrupulously honest study. For example, if a researcher believes that sex is biologically based rather than a social construct, this assumption will influence what questions are asked and how the data is interpreted.

Whichever method is used, many researchers are openly skeptical that the results prove anything.

Research on the possible connection between images and actions, pornography and violence, is in its infancy. Anti-porn feminism is not allowing it to mature. Political/sexual correctness is the single greatest force blocking real investigation into violence against women.

Consider the issue of rape. In the sixties, researchers approached rape as a complex crime that had as many motives as any other violent act did. Consider murder: People murder for money, out of passion, as a part of war, for the thrill, out of jealousy, from peer pressure, for revenge, because they are on drugs or drunk ... The list goes on. The Kinsey study classified no less than seven types of rapists.

Rape used to be considered in such complex, sophisticated terms. Today, political correctness-especially on the campus has narrowed the range of permissible research that can be conducted. Rape now has only one cause: patriarchy. It is an act of power committed by men against women.

When political interests become mixed with methodology, reports and studies become virtually worthless.

So does analysis.