Pornography and Sexuality

Pornography comes from the Greek words graphos meaning depiction and pornos meaning the lowest of female sexual slaves. Significantly, Susan Cole observes that the use of the word pornos reminds us that pornography was never intended for use with the relationship denoted by playful or loving couplings but rather to denote the active subordination of the most degraded female slaves. Thus, Cole establishes the definition of pornography as "the presentation of sexual subordination for sexual pleasure." This definition establishes pornography "as a practice of subordination [and] embodies the harm [and] the negative, in the very definition." It necessarily connotes the inequality and oppression whereby women are depicted as commodities to be bought and sold and as so sexually submissive that they fall happily into the role of sexual servant.

Cole, who advocates the censorship of pornography, believes that the pornographic message is becoming the cultural norm. She argues that while people have been complaining for years that advertisers use sex to sell commodities, the actual argument should be that advertisers exploit women, who equal sex, to sell commodities. Thus, they are not advertising just the product but the sexual value of exploitation. Sexual stereotypes are often presented for entertainment, but the sexual harassment that went into the making of the product is not presented as the entertainment itself.

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ic of the practice of pornography goes beyond the pictures on the screen. She argues that although the violence done to the woman "is clearly there on the screen or in the picture, viewers have difficulty seeing it as violence." She believes this failure to believe what our eyes are showing us betrays the way in which pornography distorts our perceptions. Thus, Cole establishes that behind the appearance of consent and pleasure in pornography, there could be rape and violation. Sexual subordination occurs in a number of different ways. One example of sexual subordination Cole offers is the explicit violence against women pornography depicts. She establishes that the objectification of a person is the process through which the person on the bottom of the social hierarchy is dehumanized--i.e.,--made less human than the person on the top of the hierarchy, who in turn becomes the standard for what human is. Cole argues that in violent pornography, objectification takes place so effectively that many people can look at these pictures and not see anyone getting hurt. Cole also maintains that sexual subordination occurs whenever a woman is forced into a sexual act for its presentation. When this kind of subordination takes

Category: Psychology - P