Eve vs Adam- The Battle of Pornography

One of the most striking and fundamental differences that define our place in society is our gender. Right from the moment we are born, we are going through this separation, when our parents dress us in blue and pink*, then our relatives and family friends gather to give us our presents, dolls and Barbies for girls, military men and airplanes for boys. This is the way things go for a long time, for most people for their whole lives. Thus, different values are born in our minds and hearts and the war between the sexes begins.

We have all felt it and experience it: when our friends joke about how unmanly we look, or when our parents tell us to dress more girly. We act against it when we say “no papa, I am not going to wait until I get married to have sex” or we accept it when we agree to smoke or put on a mini skirt just to attract a member of the opposite sex.

This is my introduction to a series of articles dedicated to gender wars. I have decided to call the series “Eve vs Adam”, because these are two symbols in our culture that represent our many views of how we treat such issues and stereotype our views on man and womanhood. I hope that through these articles, we will find many ways to redefine and analyze our definitions of gender and sex. I deeply hope you find some usefulness to these thoughts and you are free to post any comment you might want to.

*The colors differ from culture to culture. Blue for boys and pink for girls is the norm for America and most countries of the European Union.

Eve vs Adam: Episode 1: The battle of Pornography

“Pornography is the theory, rape is practice” Robin Morgan

That is the belief of one of the most extreme parts of the feminist movement. Various women believe that watching porn is equal to raping a woman or sexually harassing her. There may not be blood running down her vagina, but her soul is decapitated and abused. The state must protect women from the attack of men. On the other hand, liberals* claim that denying the right of a person to choose what they will watch, whether it is considered good or bad, ethical or unethical, is an act of violence towards democracy itself. In this collision of opinions and arguments, who wins?

To understand the feminists who attack pornography it is very important to define what they consider as pornography and what they think of themselves. Pornography for these women is
“…speech that legitimizes and fosters the physical abuse and sexual repression of women…”**
and of course it should be limited, censored. Such was the case with the movie Windows. The following quote is taken from the last page of an article called Women against Violence

“GOOD NEWS!

According to Jane Hall, a vice-president of Transamerica Corporation (which owns United Artists), the movie Windows will not open in the Bay Area. Windows is a mainstream United Artists movie about a psychotic lesbian who hires a man to rape the woman she loves so that she’ll hate men. Then she listens to the tape of the rape to turn her on. The movie equates lesbianism with psychosis, teaches the lie that women are responsible for and enjoy rape and further perpetuates violence against women.

To protest these images, WAVPM organized a coalition of fifty individuals and organizations (including Women Organized Against Sexual Harassment, Lesbians in Law, The Stonewall Alliance, The Susan B. Anthony democratic Club, Lesbians against Police Violence, Stop the Movie Cruising, The Women’s Building, and many more).

Hall said, “Windows has done abysmally at the box office. And from all I’ve heard, it deserves this…I think the work WAVPM and others are doing is very useful and is certainly going to have an impact on the way decisions are made.

The Coalition will be ready just in case Windows does open in this area.”

In this occasion we witness the action of women’s groups to prevent people from watching a film of their liking, because of its extreme and unpleasant messages. And they demonstrate for this cause, not leaving much choice to those who want to watch this film. Ever since 1980 when Windows was broadcasted, much have changed and we have seen many films dedicated on the empowerment of women. But it is not only films that followed this course but advertising messages, too. During the 1990s the Superwoman, the female who could do everything at all times were introduced to the American public, thus giving a new positive turn to ad messages men and women receive daily***. But it was not only the positive description of women that appeared in advertisements, but also a huge increase in what many feminists seem to consider as the worst attack on the imagery of womanhood: sadism and masochism, are both themes that have increased in popularity and thus the media have shown a great tendency in showing them. Woman with collars and chains, kissing men’s feet or cleaning the floor with their tongues. It is not only women of course that are presented in such a manner, but they surely represent the majority of such ads.

It is my strong belief that, a person enjoying the view of blood, violence, domination, has a tendency towards such things. That is to admit that when feminists claim that enjoying the view of a woman licking a man’s feet you are hoping to dominate over a woman, they are right. Violence, passion, aggressiveness, all are parts of humanity, and there is no denial that people who would buy a product because its advertising has the main model chained, would like to experience that in their lives (or that at least they enjoy fantasizing while are afraid to make it happen). Perhaps watching such themes is what helps them constrain their passions and desires, or is what unleashes them. The problem for me is not on what effect the view of such images has, because that differs from person to person, but the possibility that these images make up the stereotypes that we analyze here.

The answer for me is negative. Ads, movies, books, they do not make up desires. They stimulate them. But the views of people are not necessarily aligned with their desires and I think the best prove of that is the denial of sexuality by Christians. Another great example is the feminist movement itself, which is so diverse that confuses people with its antithesis. Let me explain better: feminists wish for the liberation of women from patriarchy. In order to achieve this, they first started to fight to earn their rights and prove their worth. They demanded emancipation and the right of suffrage, they worked amazingly hard during the Second World War. This is how women reached a place in society, but the time was not enough for old prejudice to fade away. Then, their daughters started to burn their bras and wear jeans, listen to rock n roll, etc. One of the feminist mottos that stroke hard on society was the motto of free love, the liberation of women’s sexuality, the acceptance of masturbation as a natural pleasure for woman and also the embrace of lesbianism.

Then, feminism was separated into various groups with different beliefs, and at that time appeared the view that pornography, the image of a woman’s naked body is a violence against women. Once sisterhood was close to conquering the high spot they deserved in society, evil male institutions forced them down.

There is a major problem with this belief, or should I say four? Firstly, men are presented as evil creatures, constantly forcing women to do things they do not want to. As a man, I find this very insulting, because at least from my experience, I never thought of forcing women against their will and I do not consider men to be born evil. Secondly, I do not know any conspiracy group to fight against the sisterhood, nor was I or any of the people I know invited to such an institution. Believe me ladies, there is no conspiracy among us, and we have not all agreed to use sex as a medium against you. Is it not extremely conservative when women condemn a stimulation of sexuality? And is it not that exact thing that women in the older days wished for? To watch and have sex on their own free will? Thirdly, there is a very sad result when women are presented as constant victims: they start act like they are, which is the least productive thing people can do. When we are treating women as fragile creatures, who cannot even accept the view of sex, how is it possible to evaluate each woman for who she is and not for the stereotype around her? When we are called to believe that the entering of a penis into a woman is an act of violence, how do we expect men to respect a woman’s body?

But these are not the only ‘problematic’ feminist arguments against pornography. Pornography does not exist on its own. People are making it, having sex to produce and sell it. That means of course that the will to watch sex already exists. It is not pornography that creates sexism, but our environment that makes us view porn as sexist. Why should we not think of a BDSM scene as something that both man and woman have accepted on their own free will for their own pleasures? Why should we not guess that men are forced to play the role of the bad guys, the aggressive animals that know only to hurt and destroy? Why should we view a woman as a victim when we are watching a man penetrating her vagina? Some of these questions have partly their answers on biological issues, but we seem to take them to the extreme. The result is, that instead of liberation of such stereotypes, we reach to the old symbols of oppression we tried so hard to run away from. Because from my point of view, such feminists are much more connected to the old American Puritans than to those American women who fought for suffrage.

In conclusion: pornography is just sex. What matters is our way of viewing it, and that is made by our environment. We should not condemn porn or sexuality, but we should debate those who run the old stereotypes, and most of all criticize our own choices, in order to make better ones, as men and women, in respect to each other.


p.s.: The article is not 100% finished, so I will surely make an update to it one of these days and try explain my views better.
p.s.2: I have nothing against feminism. Quite the opposite. On another episode, I will make a statement of my own personal relationship with it.