Pornography Perpetuates Sexual Violence

Author: Gillian Wood

We live in a culture in which being raped and murdered is women's biggest fear and every four days a woman is beaten to death by a man she knows. The celebration of the sexual exploitation of women is the biggest entertainment industry in the nation.
"The very heartbeat of violence against women is pornography," claimed feminist scholar Gail Dines last Wednesday in a packed Dana Auditorium. Pornography represents the text of a social construction of a hegemonic masculinity. It presents images of women that many men, average men, devour sexually. Pornography is more than just images: it is a rhetoric that fuels a prevailing, dominant ideology in our American culture.
The ideology is hatred towards women. The rhetoric is violenced sex and sexualized violence. Words and images do more than just exist. They reflect, teach, reinforce, demean and degrade and normalize. "Pornography causes attitudes and behaviors of violence and discrimination that define the treatment and status of half of the population," stated feminist and legal scholar Catherine A. MacKinnon. Pornography subordinates women in many ways: overtly, covertly, directly, indirectly, individually collectively, physically, and psychologically.
Whether by force, coercion, threat, violence, poverty, abuse or any other power dynamic that disadvantages women, a pro-pornography argument based on the concept of consent of women in the industry immediately loses merit. "The illusion of freedom coming together with the reality of force is central to pornography's working," said MacKinnon. Dines discussed how "capitalism and free speech are mutually exclusive." Freedom of speech means the freedom to be heard, which means access to the media. Pornography constructs an illusion of consent because we are only given one side of the story-the man's.
Here is the woman's story, as presented by MacKinnon's statistics. Forty-four percent of American women will be raped or will experience attempted rape at some point in their lives. Eighty-five-percent of all women will experience sexual harassment by men in workplaces and educational institutions. Between 25 and 50 percent of women are battered in their homes by men. Thirty-eight percent of girls are sexually molested inside or outside of their families.
Violence against women cannot be denied in our society. Its overwhelming presence reminds us that we are all affected, whether it occurs to us or to someone we care about. Pornography is not the direct cause of all acts of violence against women, but there is overwhelming evidence to show that it can and does influence many acts of them.
The number of women raped in America is increasing rapidly, and according to the FBI one in three women is raped. Dines warned, "What kind of world are we going to bring our daughters into? One in which each girl will get raped maybe only once or twice or one in which enough is enough! ... Your time is over."
It's time for a new world order. Dines encouraged women and men, survivors and supporters. "If you have a voice that was not taken from you, you have an obligation to speak for those of us who cannot. But you must speak with dignity, kindness and fairness. Go out there and scream as loud as you can." Enough is enough.

Gillian Wood is a joint
psychology and women's and gender studies major from Tacoma, Wash.