During the Reagan Administration in the 1980’s, both Christians and feminists began to react strongly to the proliferation of pornography. I will be stepping through the lead-up to both movements, their differing approaches and the psychology of why they so strenuously oppose access and use of pornography.
Let’s step through the legal side of pornography. Federal law prohibits the possession and use of obscene materials. The law is fairly old as it bans “filthy pamphlets” and “filthy phonograph recordings.”
Dude’s just hanging out and listening to lewd and meretricious recordings of 1890’s women.
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Generally speaking, pornography is not considered a protected from of speech under the 1st Amendment, as it is obscene. A case in the late 1960’s altered the legal standard that defines what obscene – it is a controversial three-prong test referred to as the Miller test. Breaking it down is beyond the scope of these writeup, just understand that one of the prongs judges obscenity based on the community it was used in – i.e. at trial, the juries perceptions of obscenity would be used. Local standards could be articulated by researchers on the stand. Given the ubiquity of pornography and the fact a number of men will be on the jury, it is hard to conceive most pornography (obviously child porn will always be obscene) being found to be obscene – unless you are in the heart of Utah. A conservative Christian group called “Concerned Women Of America” contacted all the federal prosecutor’s offices in the 2000’s to ask if they will go forward prosecuting obscenity cases – most didn’t respond and the ones that did said they had no plans to prosecute pornography.
The loosened sex morals of the country that happened in the 1960’s and the change in legal proscriptions of obscene material, a booming pornography business began to emerge. While the business had been growing for sometime before the 1970’s, the loosened approaches to sexuality aided in the movement. Also, the mass production of home VCR’s boosted the business, as once the format war between Betamax and VHS ended; there was only one main format of video – VHS. This spurred the video rental business in the late 1970’s, which really helped the business as it is much cheaper to just rent than to own.
Also mirroring the growth of the pornography business in the 1970’s was the feminist reaction to the loosened sexual mores and increased access to pornography. Understand that is probably the most divisive issue with feminism. In one camp, you have anti-sex feminists. Their politics tend to be radical and they are highly critical of PIV (penis in vagina) sex. For them, the sexual revolution wasn’t about female sexual choice, but to liberate themselves from the patriarchal tyranny of male sexuality. These sorts of feminists are the ones who shame their fellow feminists for not being lesbians. The phrase, “Feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice” sums them up well.
Pro-sex feminists are “pro-sex” but, usually, only insofar that they believe women should be able to pursue sexual relations as women please. They saw and see anti-sex feminists are morally puritanical and their views of banning pornography as a threat to free speech. The term pro-sex feminist was coined by Ellen Willis in 1981. They also were not a fan of anti-sex feminists aligning with right-wing groups on protesting recreational sex and pornography – foreshadowing where this is going.
Let’s step through anti-sex feminists (which will refer to simply as radical feminists from here on) approaches to pornography. This strain of prominent feminism developed out of lesbian feminism in the early 1970’s. Books like Rita Mae Brown’s “The Rubyfruit Jungle” detail lesbian’s exploration and adulation of their sexuality. However, once they figured out what they are into, they began to realize how markedly different male sexuality is from female sexuality. Instead of exploring biological reasons, it was immediately chalked up to patriarchal male oppression. A good distillation of their arguments, by Ellen Willis, is that they are based “patriarchal sexual relations backed up by male power by force.” They thought the use of pornography was a way of socializing and reinforcing female subordination to the male. They focused on BDSM and, eventually, focusing heavily on violence against women in pornography. Before we get into the male violence idea, lets’ talk about a meeting of the minds between pro- and radical feminists – that beauty standards are created by men in order to oppress women. Clearly, that is another reason for radical feminists to oppose pornography, as the most popular porn involves beautiful women with big boobs and hairless bodies. Pro-sex feminists are obviously against beauty standards, generally, so in order to counter this, they fight beauty standards so nonconforming women are equally represented in pornography. As of eight years ago, there is a Feminist Porn Awards, where feminist conforming videos and artwork are awarded for their sexual, racial and body diversity. Important threads in feminist porn are consent, female sexual pleasure and having a female writer or director. While BDSM is accepted, it has to be clearly grounded in consent for all parties.
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While the movement was forming itself, the anti-pornography movement began to settle on focusing on pornography as promoting violence against women. The poster child for this movement was Andrea Dworkin. Her heated and vicious rhetoric was polarizing and fundamentally altered the arc of feminism. She made no difference between heterosexuality or homosexuality. She said all male sexuality is based on hatred, power and male privilege. Here is commonly quoted statement by her:
[q] Pornography is the essential sexuality of male power: of hate, of ownership, of hierarchy; of sadism, of dominance. The premises of pornography are controlling in every rape and every rape case, whenever a woman is battered or prostituted, in incest, including in incest that occurs before a child can even speak, and in murder—murders of women by husbands, lovers, and serial killers [/q]
Thought modern mainstream feminists are bad? Jump in a time machine and go toe-to-toe with this broad. At any rate, this movement gained steamed through the early 1980’s. A couple of highly-charged conventions were marred by division between these two camps. NOW endorsed the anti-sex approach, a convention in 1982 was not keen on radical feminist approaches to sexuality – they locked radical feminists out of the planning of the event as they correctly observed radical feminists were dominating feminist theory.
That’s mostly it for a review of feminist approaches to pornography, but lets’ quickly step through a joint effort by Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon (a prominent legal scholar) to legislatively codify their approach to pornography. They decided to target municipalities for their model ordinance. They framed pornography as sexual discrimination and labeled pornography as “the graphic sexual subordinate of women through pictures or words.” (No Fifty Shades of Grey under this ordinance, huh?) They then articulated, under that definition, that pornography includes at least one of a number of criteria. It included sexual submission by a female, women presented as sexual objects, women on display and women being penetrated by objects (you can rub that dildo on her pussy, but don’t you dare slide it in her!). These ordinances were introduced into many cities, most famously Minneapolis twice – only to be vetoed by the mayor twice. Even when they were passed, they were quickly slapped down by courts as violating the 1st Amendment.
At the same time of radical feminists agitation against the fruits of the Sexual Revolution, conservative Christians were not happy campers, either. Lyndon Johnson famously remarked after signing the Civil Rights Act of 1965 he signed the South over to the Republicans for 50 years. While he was right, he wasn’t right about what would emerge as the major organizing movement for the Republican. Nixon pursued a “Southern Strategy” whereby he would appeal to racism of the South by way of campaigning for states’ rights and a strong, muscular police force (arrest/imprison blacks to Southerners). Top Republicans understood the arc of American progress and knew weakening voting rights and civil rights were a complete nonstarter for their Northern voters, but understood the Democratic hegemony of the South no longer existed. In order to court their votes without openly alienating their Northern supporters, they created strategies to implicitly appeal to racism. However, the unintended consequence of this strategy was Christian disaffection with the progression of federal law.
By far the most important federal approach that, to this day, lights a fire under conservative Christians is Roe v. Wade – the case that guaranteed a woman the basic right to abortion. Clearly, the Sexual Revolution was disconcerting to them, as was new approaches to gender roles, access to birth control and pornography. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1976 on the heels of an extensive tour of the US proclaiming the moral and social decline of America. The movement quickly gained steamed and when Ronald Reagan pursued the Republican nomination for the second time in 1980, he quickly realized he needed to hijack this movement to help his nomination.
Reagan was beyond spot-on. While many commentators proclaimed that he would lose to Jimmy Carter in a landslide in 1980 – Carter was weakened by a rare challenge to a sitting President in the nomination process by Edward Kennedy. Further, Reagan was extremely charismatic and a master of political maneuvering. He famously dumped Carter in a pivotal Presidential debate with the phrase, “There you go again.” Reagan smashed the living shit out of Carter – Carter only carried six states, his home state Georgia, Minnesota and a smattering of small states.
In order to placate his Southern voters, my theory is Reagan instigated the War on Drugs. While many parents supported the movement because they thought it drugs were prosecuted harder their kids wouldn’t abuse drugs like they did through the 1960’s and 1970’s. It also appealed to Southerners, as it allowed them to dump on poor black communities for drug violations. It really was a political masterstroke while also being a complete failure in practice.
However, Reagan had a throw some bones to conservative Christians. He himself, as governator of California, signed off bills legalizing abortion and no-fault divorce. However, he found an issue in pornography. He was renowned for being against hard-core pornography and his Presidency was noted for his increasing enforcement of federal laws against pornography, for example, he stepped up enforcement of dissemination of pornography through the US Postal Service. He sponsored a meeting in 1983 about how to deal with pornography in 1983 – this lead up to his sanctioning of the Meese Commission in 1985.
Even I am long-time registered Republican and wouldn’t hesitate to vote for Reagan, I think Meese is one the biggest blowhards I have had the displeasure of learning of. He was the Attorney General for Reagan’s second term. He had a serious issue with pornography and he chaired a commission on the effects of pornography. First note, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon funded an inquiry in pornography and concluded it was best to legalize pornography. In order to counteract that study, understand that the right-wing Christians focused more on effects of pornography on children, but they also made use of violence rhetoric. Which is the unholy union of feminism and Christianity. Over the course of two years, Meese solicited opinions and held open hearings. The hearings were important because funding was limited.
The most interesting part of the commission wasn’t their predictable conclusion pornography was wrong, but their endorsement of radical feminist theory. Radical feminists came to the hearings and unleashed their theories – and it was, by and large, swallowed whole by the sponsors. Chairman of the hearings Henry Hudson requested transcripts of radical feminist testimony. In the end, the commission issued all sorts of recommendations and possible legal approaches to combating pornography. They advanced some bizarre legal approaches to pornography, such as considering a consensual pornographic film a violation of the right to privacy. They also advanced a legal theory that participation in a pornographic film to be a violation of federal labor law. However, by far the most disturbing recommendation was the wholesale endorsement of the Dworkin-MacKinnon ordinance. They endorsed treating pornography as a violation against women and endorsed all the ways their definition sought to limit the expression of pornography. Dworkin and MacKinnon held a joint press conference celebrating the endorsement, but given that Meese is the Attorney General, he knew their approach to the law would never pass muster with the Supreme Court, so he dropped a footnote in the report stating that the approach should necessarily be limited by Supreme Court jurisprudence – which did not uphold the Dworkin-MacKinnon approach. Do note that all the Supreme did was uphold an Appellate Court case that held the Dworkin-MacKinnon definition of pornography was in violation of the 1st Amendment – in an appeal from their ordinance that was passed in Indianapolis.
While the “Sex Wars” never really died as a political issue, it cooled off as Americans realized the overheated rhetoric towards pornography was unfounded – at least towards the issue the anti-pornography advocated. However, let’s chop up the psychology that motivates both feminists and conservative Christians to oppose pornography.
I remember I had a witchy boss once who was a beyond strict enforcer of the rules. She was liberal, feminist and all that left-wing jazz. After one of her markedly bad outbursts I shot back she would make one hell of bible-thumper in another life. She gave me a weird look as if I accused her of the worst thing in the world. I realized I had hit her where she lived – always be careful of what you hate because it sometimes is a reflection of your perception of yourself. However, from a psychological perspective, I had hit on a truth about both religious people and feminists.
The general term can be described as Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder. Realize that psychological issues can and will manifest at an ideological level. Every serious ideology will have strains of some or many disorders.
However, let’s step through the basic of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (which I will abbreviate going forward as OCPD). OCPD’s are famous for shaking their heads, sighing and displaying all manner of dismissive behavior. They do this because they believe themselves to be morally superior to everybody else. They hide their aggressive, immoral and contradictory behavior beneath a black-and-white adherence to the rules. They are usually good workers and are far more interested in strict adherence to proscribed rules than a real understanding of why the rules are in place. They falsely believe that if everybody obeys the rules to the letter, their internal conflicts and feelings will go away. It is literally papering over their own natural impulses with a rigid adherence to formalized codes of human behavior.
Where do Christianity and feminism collide? Understand that America was born to a Puritanical society and that frames Christianity and feminism in America. Feminism does little to understand the underpinnings of their social psychology, which is why many different cultural feminisms clash – it is really fundamental, but maybe it takes a man to diagnose that. The main collision is over OCPD. Christians and feminists are often cut from the same cloth. That is why they were unholy allies in the effort against pornography – they believed that if the rules were clear enough and effective enough, nobody would transgress against their view of sexuality.
They both seek to codify black and white rules about life, sexuality and general social comportment. It is all about complete conformation to social rules. It is also why they often are good workers and active in their community – they accumulate people who become faithful adherents to their ideology. Their promises of a paradise and ultimate goodness through blind adherence to their ideology are great motivators for their followers. Notice that is never about understanding the rules (maybe Protestant Christianity) but about cosigning previously decided rules. Questioning the rules is heresy.
I did a Bible study once in undergrad and I understood we could have some discussions, but not others. I was never there to troll or anything negative. I was looking for a real discussion. Which I never got; it was all within the proscribed bounds of established Protestant Christianity. I early on realized what analysis to cough up in the study – and I so did. I became good at perfunctory analysis –which I perfected with feminists.
Feminists are the literal embodiment of a compilation of moral superiority and intellectual privilege.
Like Christians, they are quick to analyze their fellow members for lack of adherence to doctrine. The main problem with this approach is that there is no feminist bible. Their emphasis on “diversity” precludes a straight-up manual for feminism. While some approaches to wholesale feminism exist, they are rarely effective.
