I'm getting in early with my tutorial presentation. I've tacked on a few discussion questions at the end- more to come when I think of them.
The Ethics of Porn on the Net
It's a Woman's Prerogative to Change Her Mind, and I have changed my mind so many times when it comes to my stance on pornography; I’ve loathed it, loved it, and been everywhere in between. However, I was distinctly uncomfortable with some of Kath Albury’s arguments.
She structured her essay by first giving a poor summery of the Judeo-Christian view of the problematic aspects of pornography, then presented a slightly better take on the problems of pornography, from a Marxists view. Albury then puts forward the following question: “if pornography is immoral, does that make it unethical?” Her answer was at first a definite NO, however, she later qualifies this by saying ‘the answer depends on what definition of ‘ethics’ on chooses’.
Albury spends a large portion of her essay discussing amateur porn (I couldn’t help but think of Paris Hilton). But it got me thinking, there is such a big difference between making home videos (which I think is perfectly fine, and fun!) and putting those home videos up on the web. Albury cited that perhaps up to 70% of online porn is produced or modelled by non-professionals. I wonder how much of this percentage has been leaked/put on the net without the consent of all contributing parties.
Overall, Kath Albury gave me a lot to think about. I agree that amateur are a completely different kettle of fish when compared to commercial porn, but the issue confuses me. I find the idea that regular people want to pretend to be strippers/porn starts, i.e. people who are paid to imitate sexual arousal (I’d bet everything I own that at least 80% of the ‘supposed female orgasms you see in commercial porn are faked) problematic. Albury, on the other hand, views it as ‘’an ‘everyday experiment’, a form of new sexuality that is both a part of, and separate from, mundane domesticity”. Albury’s work, published in 2002, has become a little outdated, as she claimed that people viewed the attraction to women over 40 as ‘unusual’ and ‘kinky’, however, in this day and age, with a little help from popular culture (think American Pie), MILF has become normalised and mainstream.
Albury claims that “this proliferation of [unusual, deviant and kinky] sexual imagery is a perfect example of Internet porn’s ethical sensibility”. This is where I seriously differ from Albury. From my limited experience of internet porn, it seems to be full of (mostly) strangers having sex. Sure, some of them are from different ethnicities, some are larger/taller/hairier/more dwarf like than others, but the formula is the same; they all love rooting strangers (ok, and sometimes their teacher or boss). I find this the most problematic part of pornography. It rarely explores any of the mental, emotional, spiritual or psychological aspects of sex and instead presents a very simplistic, purely physical view of sexual desire.
Other questions to consider:
· Do you agree with Andrea Dworkin, that women who participate in porn are practicing prostitution?
· If porn is immoral, does that mean its unethical?
· Are ethical systems medium-specific? Should they be?
· If one of your close friends/ family members told you they had decided to become a porn star, would you be supportive of them? Would it make a difference to you if they were entering the commercial or amateur industry?
· Given that a digital culture is interconnecting via a global World Wide Web, is a global system of ethics required? How do the existing legal boundaries of nations complicate such a goal?
· Does digitisation challenge the ethical underpinnings of a capitalist culture? Do we need a new ethics of consumption in the era of mass and ‘illegal’ peer-to-peer movie downloading?
· Check out these statistics on pornography. Do they concern you? Shock you? Or are they exactly as you expected?
1 comment:
...it got me thinking, there is such a big difference between making home videos (which I think is perfectly fine, and fun!) and putting those home videos up on the web. Albury cited that perhaps up to 70% of online porn is produced or modelled by non-professionals. I wonder how much of this percentage has been leaked/put on the net without the consent of all contributing parties.
Albury does say near the end of her article that she believes distributing porn without the permission of all participants "cannot be considered ethical, since an ethical sensibility implies consideration of others' feelings and wishes as well as one's own." I'm not sure that this follows from her (Foucault's) definition of ethicality, however. Albury offers this definition of ethics: "the way our various beliefs and value systems are put into practice in response to everyday situations and circumstances." But what about, for instance, someone who took utilitarianism as his/her moral system? Since distributing this porn without the permission of all the participants is likely to give more pleasure than pain to people (particularly if the participant who didn't give permission never finds out about it), this person might very well decide that this is an ethical action. While many of us would disagree, this person's decision process seems to fit with Albury's/Foucault's definition of ethicality.
I also wonder whether it is even possible, taking this definition of ethics, for any community to be unethical. My understanding of Albury's/Foucault's "morality"/"ethics" distinction is that "morality" is rigid and imposed from outside; "ethics" are flexible (though not necessarily fluid) and developed by their subjects. By these criteria, I think humans are (fundamentally?) ethical creatures. We like rules; we make them all the time, even when it is clearly completely unnecessary. For instance, games are simply rule-systems designed to bring pleasure, and we talk about "honour among thieves". And while an individual may utterly defy ethics, I think any community will tend to develop ethics of some sort - guidelines as to what sort of behaviour is acceptable and what is not. In this case, is it useful to ask whether porn is "ethical"?
If you accept Albury's/Foucault's definition of "ethics", I would say yes, ethics probably are medium-specific. People will tend to modify their behaviour based on context. But I find it hard to accept that the right-thing-to-do (I'm avoiding the word "morality", since Albury's/Foucault's definition gives it some inconvenient baggage) is medium-specific. If posting an explicit photo of your partner on the Internet without his/her permission is wrong, then photocopying that photo and giving copies of it to random people in the local adult shop is also wrong.
Post a Comment