America, the ideal place for freedom, is home to a vast amount of liberties and rights that many countries do not acquire. In this country, citizens have the freedom to practice any religion they desire, live wherever they want to live, and love whoever they want to love. In this country, citizens have the right to choose any career, ranging from school teacher to politician and the liberty to reproduce as many children as they would like and speak their minds freely. In this country, with one click of a button, citizens have the ability to view explicit, videotaped, sexual activity for no cost at all. Pornography or the pornographic industry is one of America’s most profitable industries, making billions of dollars annually. Despite pornography’s …show more content…
Kristol’s article writes that pornography and the pornographic industry has always been dominated by men (491). Throughout the history of the United States, men have taken precedence over women in many aspects. Men were considered the workers of the family while women stayed home and acted as housewives or catered to the men. The idea of feminism and women’s equality, however, is growing throughout the nation. With feminism and women’s equality at large, society must progress toward eliminating male domination and allowing the extension for women's opportunities; therefore, pornography and the male-dominated industry should be limited by the government. Aside from men and the power statuses they hold in pornography, Gail Dines in her article “Facts and Figures” discloses information about the male tendencies after watching pornography. Men have been reported to support female rape, have aggressive behavior toward women, have a decreased sex drive toward wives or girlfriends, and desire forced sexual acts after viewing pornography (1). Despite America’s best effort to protect all citizens, in reality, females are typically victims of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and pornography is a cause of such violence. Although it is a key factor that plays a role in causing violence and aggressive behavior toward women, Americans are able to easily access videos or films instantly because of modern technology and the lack of pornography censoring. Because of the tendency to cause abuse in the real world, pornography must be censored in order to ensure that women are granted equal amounts of safety and
Wendy McElroy in “A Feminist Defense of Pornography” argues that degrading is subjective to each women and it’s up to them to define it. As much as that is true, does it mean that there shouldn’t be a standard to the word “degrading”? Take for example, pain is subjective, the same papercut can feel painful to me yet not to another person. There are even people who suffer from congenital analgesia (the inability to feel physical pain), But does this mean that it is right to inflict physical pain on those people? The law is the standard for defining physical pain and so the term “degrading” should also has its standard as it will cause harm to others.
Today, “60 percent of children who use the Internet regularly come into contact with pornography” (Hanes 1). In Stephanie Hanes’ article, “Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect”, she provides undeniable evidence to suggest that the culture of today’s world causes sexualization of children, specifically of females, at an alarmingly young age. This sexualization has become increasingly invasive in the past decade, so much so that parents, educators, and even more recently politicians have decided to try to counteract some these negative effects. In this article, Stephanie Hanes uses strong research with logical arguments that support this
An analysis of the relationship between pornography and the American culture reveals that the industry is blamed for dozens of social ills for the men of our society. Those ills also work to damage the women in several irreparable ways. Some of the damages to men include: illegal sexual behavior, illegal non-sexual behavior, callousness, sexual harassment, casual sex, and multiple sexual partners. The problems for the women directly involved in the industry are long term and long lasting, creating overall issues that affect women’s economic and social status. But what are there damages caused by the type of movies most women love, the type of movies they drag their boyfriends and husbands to, the type of movies millions watch unashamedly in public-the romantic comedy?
Pornography is considered by many to be an unwelcome and distasteful part of our society. However, I argue that it is necessary to voice the unpopular viewpoints, under the Constitution. This paper is a defense of pornography as a constitutional right of free expression, under the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. In illustrating this argument, I will first define pornography as a concept, and then address central arguments in favor of pornography remaining legal and relatively unregulated – such as the development of the pornography debate throughout modern US law, and how activist groups address the censorship of adult entertainment.
In her essay “Let’s Put Pornography Back in the Closet,” Susan Brownmiller, a prominent feminist activist, argues that pornography should not be protected under the First Amendment (59). Her position is based on the belief that pornography is degrading and abusive towards women (Brownmiller 59). She introduces the reader to the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, and explains how it relates to her beliefs on censoring pornographic material (Brownmiller 58). In addition, she provides examples of First Amendment controversies such as Miller v. California and James Joyce’s Ulysses to explain how the law created a system to define pornographic material (Brownmiller 58). She described the system that used a three-part test as confusing (Brownmiller 58). Regardless of whether or not the First Amendment was intended to protect obscenities, she and many others believe that the legislatures should have the final say in the decision of creating and publishing pornography (Brownmiller 60).
When deliberating over whether access to pornography should be prohibited, four areas of contention must be elaborated upon and evaluated critically to provide a sensible basis on which a judgement can be made. Firstly, it must be concluded whether pornography can be classed as a form of speech, and whether it enjoys the same protections as art and literature under the principle. Secondly, works such as those of Catherine MacKinnon can be drawn upon to offer a feminist perspective of the effects of pornography on the treatment of women within modern democratic society. Moreover, the principles of Devlin and Feinberg offer relevant acumen regarding the criminalisation of pornographic media. Overall, this essay will argue that whilst access to pornography should not be entirely prohibited; publications that depict ‘extreme’ situations should be subject to regulation and restriction.
Accordingly, “pornography can be considered mainstream” (page 460, paragraph 1, line 5), said the author. However, there were problems brought up since the pornography glorify the violence and crimes, and it had no difficulties in being shown in mass media. Jean Kilbourne, though, did not place all the blame on advertising when she pointed out: “Ads don’t directly cause violence, of course. But the violent images contribute to the state of terror” (page 466, paragraph 2, line 1). Such erroneous attitudes are known to be existed as: “women are valuable only as objects of men’s desire, that real men are always aggressive, that violence is erotic, and that women who are the victims of sexual assault “ask for it”” (page 478, paragraph 5, line 2). The impact it made on women well-being is dreadful when it comes with them along their journey through life starting from being misbelieved as young to ending up with self
Sexual videos, magazines, movies and websites set unrealistic expectations for both women and men, and contribute to rape culture. Most porn videos are set up with a male-domination power theme, with the woman being controlled, sometimes even violently. Since men, and even young boys, are viewing women in these scenarios over and over, they start to believe that that’s how sex really should be, and that women are just sexual objects to look at and be played with. This has real life repercussions on how men treat and view women, affecting relationships and potentially even creating criminals, by putting the idea in some men’s heads that assaulting or raping women is perfectly fine.
Instead, women are being discriminated and treated as inferior due to the stereotypes that are portrayed in the media. The media creates and reproduces ways of seeing that at a minimum reflect and shape our culture. We can look at the media to understand more about a culture’s values and norms, if we realize the limitations of looking at the media. For example, one may ask, does the news based in the United Sates represent what the American culture is like, or only what stands out from everyday American culture? The answer to that is no. Instead, the media represents what it thinks it will be able to sell and is supported by advertisements. This includes violent acts, the sensationally and inappropriate. Jhally reminds us that “it is this male, heterosexual, pornographic imagination based on the degradation and control of women that has colonized commercial culture in general, although it is more clearly articulated in music videos” (Jhally 2007). Therefore, “media content is a symbolic rather than a literal representation of society and that to be represented in the media is in itself a form of power—social groups that are powerless can be relatively easily ignored, allowing the media to focus on the social groups that ‘really matter’” (Gerbner,
...gument against pornography is claiming that intercourse is an act of rape, the argument immediately seems outlandish and almost laughable, and it surely seems that way to the average person. People see these examples of radical feminism and attribute those isolated incidents as representative of the entire feminist movement as a whole. Therefore through complexity, the feminist movement lost a substantial amount of its genuine credibility due to perceived extremist views on female sexuality. This, among many other incidents, seems to be the cause of this great reversal in female sexuality in our current day society. Instead of putting an end to pornography, it flourishes. Instead of bringing an end to female objectification, it is often nowadays encouraged. This reversal of feminist ideals is the main cause for the damage to female gender roles in the 21st century.
As most people would know, pornography is just another form of prostitution. "Pornography is a form of prostitution. Its producers and distributors can be defined as pimps as they are living off the earnings of prostitutes." (Kathleen Barry, PhD). Just as a pornographer is be paid for sex, so is a prostitute. Just as a director gets some of the pornographers pay as do the John get some of the prostitutes earning. Illegalization of prostitution on the bases that it isn’t on film and that its doesn’t consent to the first amendment is in many ways discriminating. If you pay someone to kill another person, is it not illegal? If you are paid for drugs is it still illegal? Legalizing pornography defeats the moral and physical purposes that are government used for illegalizing
Many feminist theories believe that pornography is part of male culture and the patriarchy in which women are exploited and abused. In fact, one of radical feminism philosophy’s primary concerns is pornography as they believe porn degrades women and that women involved in the industry are physically damaged by patriarchy, as pornography as often directed by male pornographers (McElroy 2016). Renowned radical feminist Andrea Dworkin explored issues like misogyny and pornography. Dworkin spoke out for several causes, primarily in ending violence against women. Her famous work Pornography: men possessing women (1981) argues that porn teaches men to rape and violently abuse women. However, studies show that watching pornography its self does not cause any considerable social harm. Despite this, it is true that the adult industry itself can be torturous and
In recent years, pornography has established itself as perhaps the most controversial topic arising out of the use of the Internet. The easy availability of this type of sexually explicit material has caused a panic among government officials, family groups, religious groups and law enforcement bodies and this panic has been perpetuated in the media.
To conclude this report pornographic material is hurting America but not in a big way and it is bringing us down as a society and not really being great role Models to our kids. Its might be a good thing to have and to some people might be A bad thing to someone. Thank you for reading my report.