The Porn-Loving People vs. Noam Chomsky
Michael C. Moynihan | July 24, 2008, 5:00pm
Trawling YouTube's daily list of top "activism" videos, I found this wonderful, horrible clip of Noam Chomsky pontificating on the evils of pornography. Chomsky first defends himself against the charge that he himself is complicit in promoting pornography because, back in 2004, he was interviewed by Hustler magazine. But, he tells his interrogator, he "had never heard of The Hustler" until someone told him "what The Hustler was." Chomsky, a prolific emailer, apparently didn't know that The Google could have provided him with much information on The Hustler and its filthy contents.
Pornography, says the sage of MIT, is "disgraceful," "a humiliation and degradation of women." Does it matter, the interviewer wonders, that most porn performers "choose to do the job and get paid?" Chomsky offers this labored analogy in response: "The fact that women agreed to it and are paid is about as convincing as the fact that we should be in favor of sweatshops in China where woman are locked into the factory and work fifteen hours a day and then the factory burns down and they all die. They were paid and they consented, but it doesn't make me in favor of it." And for all of you porn consumers out there, Chomsky wants you to know that if you get "pleasure out of the humiliation of women [you] have a problem." So how do we improve the lot of porn performers? By banning "the degradation of woman" and "eliminating the conditions in which woman cannot get decent jobs; not permit abusive and destructive behavior."
For those of you who speak a Scandinavian language, you can find out just what Noam Chomsky thinks of me here, and just what I think of him here.
mariko | July 24, 2008, 7:37pm | #
I think everything he said is right on.
Anti-pornography and anti-sex and are NOT the same thing. So quit it with the lame accusations of prudery, or (and I can't believe this was even written by a commenter here) "pussy."
"Banning the degradation of women," indeed; will Sex in the City get the axe? I'd love to see him provide the details of how this will all be enforced and to what it will apply.
For starters? How about ending human trafficking, alleviating poverty (which always disproportionately hurts women), eliminating legislation that restricts women's reproductive freedom and endangers their reproductive health, the replacement of marriage with civil unions (in this country), or in some countries, eliminating
the conditions that render a wife essentially the property of her husband, and
actually enforcing rape laws? Oh, and
so much more.
Aside from these political changes, we can start personally by trying to change a culture that sees women as nothing more than objects to titillate men and/or embryo receptacles. We can start this (right now!) by ending our consumption of pornography, cosmetic plastic surgery, fashion, celebrity culture, pretty much anything on E! and Axe body spray.
Finally, and this has always been a peeve of mine with people who attack Chomsky, why can't someone who happens to do their professional work in linguistics (or any field) also write about politics, culture and other issues, provided the arguments are valid and well-supported? All you really need to do that is the ability to read, write, and think critically. So enough attacks on his purported lack of credentials to talk about anything other than universal grammar and A-movement. Actually address his arguments instead.
mariko | July 24, 2008, 8:59pm | #
You are confusing the arguments. It's not that people around here are (generally) all about the degradation of women. I think the point of disconnect is that nearly nobody here thinks that porn, ipso facto, is degradation.
I see what you're saying, but I'm not confusing the arguments. I was writing in response to how we'd go about ending degradation. This is a separate point from the one you raise, namely, if pornography is always degradation.
I don't think many of us can argue that the production side of porn, in the large number of cases, there is abuse and exploitation going on. Let's assume for the moment that everyone participating in porn was not physically coerced, well-paid, disease free, etc. Let's also set aside dealing with the whole question of what should and shouldn't be legal.
The fact remains that what's being sold in pornography is not sex, it's domination. It's dangerous because it conflates sex with at best humiliation and at worst, violence (ever heard of Max Hardcore?).
Here's an analogy: imagine if an industry existed that thrived off of the production and distribution of videos that depicted whites shouting racial epithets and generally humiliating non-whites. Even if everyone involved in the production of these videos was complicit, well-paid, and safe, would it still be acceptable? And should I be considered some crazy uptight bitch for not wanting to have anything to do with people who get off on watching that kind of thing?
There is a discussion to be had about whether, in some weird alternate universe where women and their desires are actually valued and respected, some version of erotica could exist. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world, and these discussions will remain hypothetical.
If my arguments are phrased too flimsily for you (they may well be, I'm just killing time while traffic clears out) I urge you to do a quick Google search for some peer-reviewed feminist philosophy. Perhaps Chomsky's colleague at the MIT Ling/Phil department, Judith Jarvis Thompson? Or hell, even Wikipedia.
a girl:
I used to feel the same way, until I realized it's not my job to fufill some porn addict's crazed vision of what sex should be and how women should act. I have better things to do! Like sloppily paraphrasing basic feminist philosophy on a libertarian blog!
Oh, Paul:
Where to begin. I can't really do anything other than laugh at your assertion that men face just as much pressure to look HAWT as women do, and that the penalties for non-compliance are just as steep.
BG:
Some people just like racist jokes. Why do others get so uptight about it?
Elemenope | July 24, 2008, 9:30pm | #
I see what you're saying, but I'm not confusing the arguments. I was writing in response to how we'd go about ending degradation. This is a separate point from the one you raise, namely, if pornography is always degradation.
Fair enough.
I don't think many of us can argue that the production side of porn, in the large number of cases, there is abuse and exploitation going on. Let's assume for the moment that everyone participating in porn was not physically coerced, well-paid, disease free, etc. Let's also set aside dealing with the whole question of what should and shouldn't be legal.
I'm fairly certain that on the supply side of the Fresh Produce, Automobile, Footware, and Narcotics industries, there is a great deal of abuse and exploitation going on. Violations of personal dignity and/or violence and implied violence are really rather industry agnostic. If the production is going on in a nasty place, there will be nasty conditions.
The fact remains that what's being sold in pornography is not sex, it's domination. It's dangerous because it conflates sex with at best humiliation and at worst, violence (ever heard of Max Hardcore?).
When I was in Women's Studies 135, I tore a feminist blog a new asshole in an assignment for making precisely this mistake. There are, quite literally, billions of porn productions in existence, and they range in quality and comportment very widely. Some are about domination ,some about beauty, some are even about art. Some are about pain, and some are about *feet*.
Some, *gasp* even have the women on top. ;)
They do all, however, involve regard of one or several acts of sexual intercourse. How that is not at least at the most literal level *about sex* is quite beyond me.
Here's an analogy: imagine if an industry existed that thrived off of the production and distribution of videos that depicted whites shouting racial epithets and generally humiliating non-whites. Even if everyone involved in the production of these videos was complicit, well-paid, and safe, would it still be acceptable? And should I be considered some crazy uptight bitch for not wanting to have anything to do with people who get off on watching that kind of thing?
There are all sorts of reasons, artistic and otherwise, how this might be acceptable as a product. People consume media for a variety of reasons, ranging from search for catharsis to titillation to entertainment, education, edification of curiosity, aesthetic pleasure, and background noise.
No, you are not a crazy bitch for wanting to choose with whom you want to associate. The jury would perpetually be out on "uptight", however.
There is a discussion to be had about whether, in some weird alternate universe where women and their desires are actually valued and respected, some version of erotica could exist. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world, and these discussions will remain hypothetical.
As I understand it, they have porn in Sweden and a majority-female legislature.
If my arguments are phrased too flimsily for you (they may well be, I'm just killing time while traffic clears out) I urge you to do a quick Google search for some peer-reviewed feminist philosophy. Perhaps Chomsky's colleague at the MIT Ling/Phil department, Judith Jarvis Thompson? Or hell, even Wikipedia.
I'm quite familiar with 1st and 2nd wave feminist criticism and philosophy. Occupational hazard. I think that taking gender into account when judging and constructing frames of reference has a great deal to speak for it, but it is as yet a young, incomplete method of analysis.
Elemenope | July 24, 2008, 11:06pm | #
And, of course, gay men are really outside of the bounds of the topic of feminism, so I guess they don't count.
Mediageek, not even *close* to correct. Gay men are very much in the bounds of the topic of feminist critique and philosophy; in my opinion (and actually many others), it suffers merely from a poor name. What we call "feminism" is really "gender studies" and has been that for close to a century.
This is why labor rights is also a feminist issue. Although I'd like to point out that in contrast to these examples, the abuse associated with the production of porn is often sexual in nature, making it a completely different beast. But I'm not going to get bent out of shape about that at the moment.
I have minor quibbles with defining sexual violence as different in *nature* from other types of non-consensual force. But none significant enough to provide some real oomph to my argument. Suffice it to say that getting beaten up by thugs every day is as degrading as being raped by said thugs. The same powerlessness and pain is present, as well as mockery and domination. The only thing that differs is physical penetration which has some psychosomatic factors peculiar to it, but no different in degree than the PTSD that develops in any comparable case.
Yet the majority of porn continues to be of the variety of Mr. Hardcore, Joe Francis and their ilk. In fact, this stuff is so pervasive, that I'd be willing to wager most people would not regard the things you describe as porn at all.
This would not surprise me at all, and does not really address the argument. In every media industry, Sturgeon's Law applies: 90% of everything is crap. This is true regardless of format, content, or genre. However, people generally seek to watch higher quality when available (excluding voyeuristic aesthetic and/or psycho-historical explorations, i.e. art-house films) to better inform whatever purpose they seek to fulfill. I would hazard to say that 10% of the films in any genre get 90% of the viewers in that genre. So, the mere production or presence of inartful crap does not by itself lead inexorably to the conclusion that inartful crap is what people are/want to watch(ing).
In other words, when you take away the degradation and humiliation, it's no longer porn. It becomes "art" or "erotica" or something else entirely.
This is the Potter Stewart standard for defining porn. It's not a good one. To define genre, one must look to patterns and similarities. "If it's good, it's not porn" is a fairly self-serving as well as circular definition.
Let's not pretend, though, that the number one reason for the existence of porn (and the reason it's a gazillion dollar industry and the reason it's 99.99999 percent of the freakin' Internet), yesterday, today, and forever, isn't to get guys off.
Of course. Thrash metal does not exist for the purpose of lullabies, and hip-hop is not the preferred medium for race relations. Mediums and genres are distinguishable precisely because they fulfill some need or desire apart from the others. Pornography, or if you like, "erotica" exists primarily to influence/stimulate/satisfy the sexual urges of its viewers. Because sex in the human animal is tightly bound up with issues of power and violence, it is no surprise that the genre serving that desire is as well.
What i have a problem with is deriving a normative principle from this observation, that because sex is complicated by power and violence, this somehow leads to visual exploration or aid of such is dangerous and/or dirty.
While this is awesome, having affluent women in positions of power in the developed world doesn't magically eradicate male privilege from the planet.
But it does indicate something about Sweden. Your original claim revolved around a speculation about the existence of and nature of pornography in a society that is not dominated by male power. Sweden comes close to being such a society. Hence, it is useful for exploring your hypothetical.
BG | July 25, 2008, 12:12pm | #
There are 2 general arguments against "expolitative" consensual employment arrangments.
One is the paternalistic argument: "We have to protect people from their own decisions to work in these situations even if they are consenting adults."
The other is the "unfair circumstances" argument: "They only consented because they have no good options and this was the least bad option. People deserve to have better alternatives than either starving to death or working for low wages under bad conditions."
I reject the first one, but I think there is something to the second one.
The question for me is "What is the best way to ensure that people will have the option to keep themselves alive with an "acceptable" standard of living, without having to enter into any kind of very bad situation or employment arrangement?". There are 2 things that come to mind, particularly or the 3rd world:
1 - Have societies operate with a strong rule of law and a high degree of individual freedom.
2 - Have some kind of poverty alleviatoin program, though I'm not sure exactly what form it would take. One idea would be to have some public land set aside, such that anyone who wants to is free to go there and engage in subsistence farming in common with others who are doing the same. One wouldn't obtain a very affluent lifestyle this way. But if the options available to workers get
really bad, or if one has no job options and is facing starvation, this would at least provide some alternative. Another idea is to have a garunteed minimum income available to everyone (whether you have no job, or only a very low-paying job). This would probably have to be funded through taxes paid by those who can afford it. (Hence I part ways with libertarians in thinking this might ne desirable, to some extent).
On a global level, it is probably not practical to have such a program bring everyone up to the standard of living xpected in first world countries through such a program. But at least the very worst situations of poverty and "no good options" could be eliminated. And this would not require restricting trade or freedom of contract between consenting adults.
Postfeminist | July 25, 2008, 1:03pm | #
Mariko, men watch "lesbian" porn, porn produced by men, starring women, for men. The esthetics are very different from the genuinely lesbian porn produced by, starring, and marketed to women. Are there
some male watchers of genuine lesbian porn? Oh, sure. Just like there are
some female watchers of gay porn by, starring, and marketed to men.
The point is, porn that is made by one sex, starring that same sex, and marketed to that same sex
cannot be reasonably claimed to be designed to humiliate or denigrate women for the pleasure of men. Therefore, theories that claim porn is about the humiliation of women for the pleasure of men are incorrect in their fundamental assessment of pornography.
There are two possibilities as to why feminists are so blind to this error. The first is an unconscious personal heteronormative bias, where male-male and female-female relationships are dismissed by the feminist as abnormal or unreal, and thus irrelevant. The second is the structural heteronormative bias of feminism, which refuses to admit there are any male-male or female-female interactions which are not "really" about a male-female dynamic, and thus the evidence of single-sex interactions is irrelevant.
(You want to see the consequences of that structural heteronormative bias of feminism? Look at the LUGs on your local college campuses. Never had a crush on a girl in high school; "discover" they're lesbians upon taking a Women's Studies class; then come to their senses when removed from college and its feminist professors.)
(Well, a few of them, since they go to graduate school and then into academia, never figure out that they're ideology-blinded heterosexuals. Getting into a relationship with one of them is hell; they never stop resenting the fact that you don't have a penis, even though the only reason they're willing to be in the relationship is that you don't have one.)
Gram Ponante | July 25, 2008, 5:55pm | #
As someone who works in the porn business and who knows the "stars" as well as the people who work once and whose aliases are never heard from again, I can say firsthand that most of the corporate porn from the larger companies is only degrading to the audience.
The viewer is asked to sit through tired (if any) plotlines, five sex scenes per movie containing the same three positions and partner configurations, and pay for the privilege of seeing his/her favorite performers' names spelled differently on the box than in the credits. He is asked by directors who think they're cutting edge to submit to bad dialogue and poor production just to have 30 uninterrupted seconds with the body part(s) for which he bought the video.
The performers, meanwhile, have indeed consented and have indeed been paid, and they know that whatever fantastical depredations they've endured on film have nothing to do with who they are, what they do in "real life," or, if they do, do not scar or torment them, because they know they are performing in service to someone else's fantasy.
Sure there are scenarios and services they wouldn't perform if it weren't for the money, but a better analogy than Professor Chomsky's is to compare this to why I choose to no longer write for "The Real World" or Hallmark Greetings; the porn that people not familiar with it call "degrading" is really just another hack job, nothing more.
Every struggling actor in Hollywood waiting tables and buying new headshots every two months undergoes far more degradation than your average porn performer, who can at least put money away for nursing school.*
*top post-porn career, BTW
kyle foley | July 26, 2008, 11:19am | #
on first looking into chomsky's understanding power
much have i traveled in libraries of wonder,
and many ideas of immenso-jazz encountered,
within many countries had i visited
and there met the angels of surprise,
and there discoursed with the lions of wisdom,
oft had i read our culture's history,
and considered myself its master,
accounted myself astute, robust,
up to date on all the latest thought,
abreast of movements, traffic, conspiracy,
yet never did i feel closer to the truth
till i heard chomsky speak loud and bold.
when i first read understanding power
my whole being convulsed!
the san andreas fault of my soul shook!
my imprisoned mind electro-warped!
how delectolicious was it then to realize
that all my life the monster of fallacy
myself attacked and barred!
that my whole existence was deeply
married to the razor-error and the ignored tragedy!
what shimmeradise to have the veil removed!
the wool from one's eyes extracted!
one's corpus from plato's cave exiled!
to realize that things are radically different
from what one has been told again and again!
to see the whole panorama of history
painted not as delacroix would have it,
but as picasso's morbid fascino would!
when i first read understanding power
i quickly understood that a ravenous bezerkum
pervaded, lecherized and prowled!
i rapidly grasped that halo-souls
were needed a dread-scarred status quo to heal!
that it was incumbent on activists
to rouse themselves from the oil-fen of apathy,
the sewer-sloth of indifference,
energize, and labor ceaselessly suffering to lessen!
ante chomsky i had been rummaging
through arcane poems, esoteric elucidation,
researching proust, joyce's mind-twist,
the nearly impossible syntax of ancient greek,
my heart in fang by the lorelei lacerated,
but post chomsky i joyously
confronted challenge in all its shimmerating halluco!
i wildly encountered dilemma
equipped with its paratroopers of blade!
i cheerfully took on the mantle of purpose,
i eagerly affixed my eyes on the mangle of corruption
and resolved its junk-jaws to curtail!
ante chomsky i was much like that mythical hobbit,
forever contenting himself in his home,
continually smoking his pipe, purposeless,
but post chomsky the gandalf of wisdom
violently invaded my home,
roused myself from complacency's antarticum,
and urged me to come join him
in his quest the smaug of corruption to combat,
the plutocratic warlocks' cabal to unveil,
the self-absorbed hydras of finance to waylay.
and now two years thence
a disturbing question remains:
if one veil from my mind has been removed,
what other veils presently my intellect hinder?
what other illusions dictate my routes and excursions?
if i have been brought out of one of plato's caves
how am i to know that
there are not more caves that remain.
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