Pornography and Violence

What the 'Experts' Really Say

Bibliographic Data

ID3945782
AuthorsLynne Segal (corresponding author)
Year1990
Issue36
Pages29
Publication date1990-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-7789 • E-ISSN: 1466-4380
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1395107
OpenAlexW4236723249
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited8

It is now conventional wisdom that there is overwhelming scientific evidence linking pornography with sexual violence. The link 'is considerably stronger than that for cigarette smoking and cancer', Everywoman announces in its introduction to the transcript of the public hearings organized by Minneapolis City Council in 1983 to collect the latest evidence on pornography and sexual violence in support of proposals for new legislation against pornography, the Minneapolis Ordinance. (Everywoman, 1988: 5) 'I doubt that anybody disputes the data', the psychologist Edward Donnerstein, a leading figure in pornography research, breezily announces at these same hearings. (Everywoman, 1988: 22) Well, anybody except himself, perhaps, and his fellow researchers, who, in their more scholarly writing, not only confess that their research on possible links between pornography and violence has been misunderstood and misused, but add that whether their laboratory experiments tell us anything at all 'about real-world aggression, such as rape, is still a matter for considerable debate' (Donnerstein, et. al., 1987: 174). That debate, however, has not so much been opened up as closed down by much of the recent writing and activity around pornography. This is not so surprising. Accompanying an ever greater and more chilling awareness of the extent and horror of men's violence against women and children, much of it sexual violence, pornography is becoming one of the most fiercely contested moral issues of our time conceptually and politically. Traditionally defined as sexually explicit, and therefore obscene or lewd words or images intended to provoke sexual excitement, the term was first used in the 1860s to describe the photography of prostitutes. Today, however, there is immense disagreement over both its definition and its significance such disagreement flowing inevitably from the contrasting political positions

Criminology · Feminism · Human sexuality · Legislation · Political science · Pornography · Sexual violence · Sociology · Anthropology · Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology

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