The Connection Between Pornography and Violence Against Women

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Recommended: Effects of Pornography on Children

Since pornography is speech, it is protected by the First Amendment. One of the biggest obstacles the courts have is the struggle to find a middle ground between the opponents of obscenity and defenders of free speech. Since pornography is considered free speech, some view it as telling the hearers what women are worth, it ranks women as things, as objects or as prey. (http://lucian.uchicago.edu/workshops/wittgenstein/files/2008/01/langton-

speechactsunspeakableacts.pdf) Others take it as a form of entertainment and escapism storytelling. The dictionary definition of pornography is sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal. (http://dictionary.reference.com/) Theories from feminist Andrea Dworkin, Catharine A. Mackinnon, Robin Morgan, Nadine Strossen and Jennifer Saul as well as researching crime involving pornography was used to see how the degree of violence has escalated over the years in pornography. From these theories, feminist were divided into to categories; the anti- pornography feminist and the liberal/sex-positive feminists. Pornography reinforces the feminist idea of omnipresent female oppression.

Society has become increasingly sexualized since pornography became part of

free speech. Just look at the level of television programming. Years ago, family

viewing was Walt Disney and the Waltons compared to now family viewing is Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives. Some programming go too far in sexual content for the time slot allotted to them. Also, a major shift in language has led to a glorification of a sexual explicit lifestyle. The age that children are introduced to sex is lower and lower and all this has a heavy consequence for wh...

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... views even want the same end results. Those results are for an end of the violence against women and that sexuality must always be consensual. Pornography is an eight billion dollar industry. It is a lucrative source of income for women as well as men who choose this type of lifestyle. More women are also involved in the production of pornography than have ever been in the past (http://www.wendymcelroy.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.31). Making pornography illegal will further alienate and endanger women sex workers and other minorities. The main issue at stake in the pornography debate is the conflict of individual freedom and social control. The best that could be hoped for in the future is to address the violence content and to create an environment where women have greater freedoms and fewer obstacles to live the lives they want to live.

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