‘The idea that pornography is "dirty" originates in the conviction that the sexuality of women is dirty and is actually portrayed in pornography... Pornography does not, as some claim, refute the idea that female sexuality is dirty: instead, pornography embodies and exploits this idea; pornography sells and promotes it.' (Andrea Dworkin) Dworkin's diagnosis of pornography as institutionalized (male) ‘violence against women' has triggered vehement debates within feminism and feminist theory. Critically evaluate what you consider to be the key aspects of these debates.

In this essay I will begin by establishing the four main positions on pornography in order to draw the battle lines of this debate. This is important because although the core of the debate may lie in a split between feminists, it is crucial to understand the positions of their respective "allies". The following paragraphs will analyze different definitions of erotica and pornography. Although it is very difficult to arrive at clear-cut definitions, it is nevertheless very useful to see how different groups define the two categories, in particular the anti-pornography feminists, as many of them are very much pro-erotica. I shall then look at pornography from a psychoanalytical perspective - first a Freudian one, then looking at Susan Lurie's criticism of his definition of the castration complex - which I believe will be important in defining not only why pornography is so important to men, but why they also enjoy the more violent side of pornography as well as other forms of violence against women. I will conclude by briefly looking at the research presented as evidence of the effects of pornography - positive and negative - and question whether censorship would actually help advance the feminist cause in any way.

Lynne Segal (1993;6) usefully identifies three distinct positions on pornography. According to her, the liberal position points to the fact that there is no definitive scientific evidence for pornography causing harm to society, and in spite of being offensive to some, it brings pleasure to others and there can therefore be no true justification for banning or censoring it. She then outlines the Moral Right position, which considers pornography to be a threat to family values in that it promotes sex unrelated to reproductive purposes, making it a position that does not protect women or support feminism, but upholds the core value of patriarchal society. The feminist view, on the other hand, is divided into those who believe that pornography constitutes in itself violence against women and those who caution that such blanket condemnation discourages women from facing up to their own sexual fears and fantasies, repressing women instead of liberating them.

Before engaging further with these views it is important to touch on the difference between pornography and erotica. This is crucial due to the fact that the part of the feminist movement that wishes to impose censorship or even a total ban on pornography, makes allowances and even exalts the liberating qualities of erotica. I will now look at some definitions offered by different people both from within this movement and from outside it.

Andrea Dworkin in her 1978 speech quoted Georges Bataille as saying that ‘In essence, the domain of eroticism is the domain of violence, of violation.'. She did this in order to support her point regarding pornography, and explained the difference in terminology simply by saying that Bataille ‘called it eroticism'(1980;286). This in my view immediately illustrates the difficulty in attempting to clearly differentiate between pornography and eroticism (or erotica, or erotic art) as it is so highly subjective and open to interpretation. I will now look in some detail at some of these attempts.

The difference between erotica and pornography is often defined in the association of erotica with art and higher culture and pornography with intellectually devoid material which stirs the body whilst never engaging the mind, being therefore potentially corrupting to its audience which is (perhaps wrongly) perceived as the lower classes. According to Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen (1973;6) Erotic art educates at the same time it entertains, and while it arouses the body it makes us think. Others, like Kenneth Clark, believe that art is bound to the realm of contemplation, meaning that if it stirs physical responses in the viewer, inciting action, it loses its true character (Cited in Longford, 1972;99-100). Lynda Nead (1993;145) builds on this by asserting that ‘for art to be art it has to engage the mind rather than the body; it has to involve the faculty of imagination and bring about a still, contemplative state in the viewer'. If we accept this definition, then the difference between erotic art and pornography becomes somewhat clearer in that pornography tends to leave nothing to the imagination, and the pornographic gaze forever investigates in up-close detail the sexual acts performed.

The question then poses itself of where the boundary between these two categories lies. Nead offers the answer that erotic art seeks to transcend the market place, and is essentially unconcerned with money, whereas the same cannot be said of pornography. (1993;146). Some academics such as Audre Lorde exalt erotica as a potentially beneficial ally of women in their struggle for equality and liberation, arguing that ‘The erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelations, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough' (1980;296). This opinion makes it clear that the body and its physical sensations are not enough, they are somewhat dirty and low if not accompanied by supposedly higher intellectual levels, and I would pose the question of whether this view is liberating for women, in the sense that it does not leave them the choice of simply enjoying their bodily sensuality and sexuality - free sexual enjoyment being traditionally the privileged and exclusive domain of men - implying that female sexuality in itself is in itself dirty in the way that Dworkin suggested pornography did.

Charlotte Bunch (1980;93) believes that the line between pornography and erotica can be instinctively defined by women, and argues that ‘We can tell the difference between eroticism and anti-female pornography... we all do know the distinction between eroticism, which celebrates our sexuality, and pornography, which degrades us.'. When the issue being discussed is censorship, however, it becomes problematic to rely on instinctual definitions, especially since this definition would - if some feminists such as Gloria Steinem had their way - decide whether a certain kind of material would be subject to censorship. Ellen Willis insightfully notes that this instinctive definition usually comes down to ‘what I like is erotica, and what you like is pornographic' (1979;28). Steinem (1978;37), however, firmly believes that the crucial feature of erotica is the idea of positive choice, while pornography in her view puts one party (usually the woman) in a position of inferiority and passivity. In this same vein, pornography is also defined as endorsing abusive sexual behavior towards women while erotica does not (Longino, 1980;44).

Carol Clover (1993;3), on the other hand, links this debate with the polarization between high and low culture, arguing that erotica is nothing but a category of representation that is less moving than pornography, thus allowing the viewer to be ‘aroused within the purified, contemplative mode of high culture'.

Finally, Allison King (1993;57) uses the definition offered by Dr bill Thompson which defines pornography as sexually orientated material of a graphic nature designed for recreation rather than education; a neutral definition which in turn fails to neutralize the debate, since it becomes clear that the very issue of defining what constitutes pornography is central to the argument on whether or not it is harmful to women.

In psychoanalytical terms, Freud (1912) explains the reason why men need pornography is that males only develop full sexual potency when they find themselves in the presence of a lower type of sexual object, and therefore cannot fully enjoy themselves sexually with a woman whom he respects (cited in Straayer, 1993;157). Pornographic cinema reduces the woman to this inferior position, and reduces sexuality to a male perspective grounded on patriarchal myths about female sexuality (Koch,1993;39). Susan Brownmiller (1980;32) argues that pornography reduces women to ‘anonymous, panting playthings, adult toys, dehumanized objects to be used, abused, broken and discarded'.

According to Gertrud Koch it is Freud's castration complex that gives rise to the voyeuristic mania to look at the female organ which is endlessly repeated in pornography, showing the need to scrutinize the mystery represented by the female genitalia and therefore neutralize the threat of the female lack. The invisible female phallus, according to John Ellis (1980;103) must be transformed into a visible fetish, so that that pleasure can overcome the fear of castration, and pornographic language thus makes female pleasure visible.

Susan Lurie (1980;165), on the other hand, presents a different perspective on Freud's castration complex, arguing that ‘the castration fantasy that the (male) child invents is not that the mother is mutilated but that she has a terrible power and is capable of mutilating him'. She goes on to say that the Freudian concept of the "mutilated creature" (meaning woman perceived as castrated) ‘is a wish-fulfillment fantasy intended to combat the early imagined dread of what his mother's intentional power, very much intact, might have in store for him' (1980;165). She goes on to say that what makes women so terrible to men is that they possess the whole range of powers that males associate with their penises without actually having one. The conclusion she draws is that males go through great effort to literally and metaphorically castrate women (hence the Freudian fantasy) because they do not truly believe her to be castrated. This view, applied to pornography, might help explain why the majority of pornographic material picture women as passive, making them "safe". According to Koch (1993;42) male ejaculation in this context becomes proof that the vagina has yielded its victim unscathed, it is proof of uncastratedness. Pornography is therefore a ‘desperate attempt for self and sexual preservation' (Lurie, 1980;161).

Some of this fear of the female body might also have its roots in the fact that women are perceived as being closer to nature than men, partly because of their reproductive functions, particularly the act of giving birth. Susan Griffin (1988;170) exploits the idea that nature is feminine and argues that ‘drawing on culture's indelible association between woman and nature, he (the chauvinist) decides that woman is closer to nature, and that she more than man deeply fathoms the nature of things'. Men therefore tend to project their denied other self onto women, therefore not only separating themselves completely from their female counterparts - more easily achieving the state described above by Freud in which they can fully enjoy themselves sexually - but also punishing her for what is perceived as her sexuality. This view proclaims that just as Jews embodied this other self for the Nazi ideology, receiving the blame and punishment for their otherness, so is the woman punished in pornography.

The Nazi ideology according to Griffin (1988;196) had the same relationship to the pleasure principle as does the pornographic ideology, and just as pornography punishes sexuality instead of seeing it as a celebration of pleasure, the Nazi expressed deep hatred of instinctual pleasure. Gloria Steinem reiterated this view by saying that ‘A woman who has playboy in the house is like a Jew who has Mein Kampf on the table.' (quoted in Lederer1980;122). Lederer herself argues that ‘pornography is a hate campaign; make no liberally sophisticated mistake about that. It is a campaign to humiliate and brutalize all females, women and children.'(1980;132) a statement, which clearly equates pornography with racist propaganda.

The anti-pornography campaigners make much of research, which they claim proves that pornography is largely to blame for many kinds of violence towards women. Feminists such as Carol Clover (1993;15), however, argue that ‘inconsistence is the only consistency to emerge from empirical research which ignores semiotic and social contexts of the images'. It is quite easy to understand the problems posed by trying to quantify, in an artificial environment, the effect that pornographic materials have on society. Not only do the materials and methodologies vary significantly from experiment to experiment, but these tend to assume that subjects are ‘blank sheets' and that whatever material they are exposed to will be the only factor influencing their actions. There is also the very real issue of whether a subject will act ‘naturally' or try to act so that he/she is not embarrassed or even do what they perceive is expected of them. As Pauline Bart and Margaret Jozsa point out, ‘ what people believe and what they tell researchers they believe...if they do it in an experimental laboratory situation...will they do it in the outside world (and vice versa)...and material that is not pornographic in one context may be in another' (1980;205). The result of these less than ideal conditions is that the results of effects research can usually be manipulated to suit the researcher's view.

A point of contention between feminists on opposing sides of the pornography debate is the effects of the legalization of pornography in Denmark. This represents a significant case because it is a rare opportunity to study these effects not on individuals, but in a whole society within natural conditions, which do not rely on artificial methods and laboratory experiments. The disadvantage is, however, that because any studies of these effects must be in such a large scale, and dealing in factors that are difficult if not impossible to quantify, the results often are as ambiguous as any laboratory study, and are used by both sides to prove their respective points.

Feminists that do not agree that pornography directly causes violence against women argue that in countries such as Sweden and Denmark there is a positive relation between equal opportunities and more freedom in relation to pornography due to greater social tolerance in those states while in places such as US states with high preponderance of Southern Baptists which had very low circulation of pornography there was much higher discrimination against women. (Baron, Cited in Segal, 1993;18). In 1970 the commission on Obscenity and Pornography cited two studies claiming the decrease of sexual crimes in Denmark due to the legalization of pornography. Anti-porn feminist campaigners, however, argue that these studies were ‘incomplete, inadequate, and biased' (Russell, 1980;82) due mainly to the fact that pornography is the third largest industry in the country, which they argue is the reason why the government would tend to cover-up negative statistics. There is therefore very little in the way of conclusive evidence either way, and the discussion remains open.

There is strong argument on the more liberal feminist front against the claims of certain effects research linking the incidence of rape with access to pornographic materials. The idea that pornographic material causes men's violence has the undesirable effect of giving them a perfect excuse, and the risk is that it will lighten or even remove the blame from them, which would hardly be a positive result for women. Certain feminists like Susan Griffin, however, argue that to put any two images together is to create an association (such as in advertising) and the product being advertised in violent pornography is brutality against women (1980;145). The problem with these simplistic cause-effect arguments is that no two people are exactly alike, and the same product might produce a hundred different effects applied to as many people, and it is dangerously misleading to make such sweeping generalizations.

The main problem the anti-pornography feminists face is defined by Susan Brownmiller (1980;30) in that ‘the battle lines were falsely drawn a long time ago' by right-wing vigilante-type people, and the problem stems from the fact that the traditional vigorous opponents of pornography are the same who would repress such things as the right to contraception, abortion and female sexual desire. By supporting the same cause as them, albeit for different reasons, they associate themselves with people and organizations that in essence stand against everything the woman's movement struggled to achieve.

Another criticism of this movement addresses the fact that anti-pornography feminists are convinced they speak for all women, when there are in fact many women and many feminists who do not agree with their position. The Feminists Against Censorship group is a typical example of a group that is attacked by anti-pornography feminists as either not understanding the issues or as "traitors". A spokesperson for Feminists Against Censorship argues that many of the feminists who argue for censorship are upper-class women who do not take into proper consideration the issues facing socially disadvantaged females. These upper-class feminists, according to her, are in a crusade to protect the working classes from such materials, and instantly assume that ‘all other jobs available to women are necessarily better than those in the sex industry' and points out that many women in this industry do not agree with the belief that ‘being pushed around and demoralized for 40 hours a week is so much better than posing for pornography for a few hours and making a lot more money at it' (Cited in Assiter & Carol , 1993;148).

While many anti-pornography feminists believe that there can be no compromise between a complete ban on pornography or total acceptance of it, Assiter & Carol (1993;152) argue that it is important for there to be criticism of pornography, but warn that ‘it must not be equated with a reason to censor it' concluding that ‘It is important for women to remember that sex isn't the only area where sexism manifests itself'. Perhaps the main point here could be that by focusing too hard on banning pornography, some feminists have ceased to foreground issues that deeply affect women, such as being paid less than men for the same jobs or being sexually harassed in the workplace.

There is also doubt that banning or censoring pornography would have the desired effect of "protecting" women - both the women who work in the industry and the ones who are raped or feel violated allegedly as a result of its circulation - from its violent and harmful effects. It would seem a little naive in my view to expect the entire billion-dollar sex industry to just disappear as a result of censorship, it would be a lot more reasonable to expect it to be at most driven underground, which would not protect sex workers, on the contrary, it would criminalize their activities and make it impossible for them to seek help from the authorities.

Assiter and Carol believe that the anti-pornography movement represents a shift of focus from reproduction to sexuality itself and argues that this is detrimental to women. ‘Both Dworkin and Jeffreys seem to believe that the purpose of heterosexism and sexism in general is a male conspiracy to get women to provide the maximum amount of sexual pleasure to males - but this hardly explains why society deliberately limits female willingness to become involved in sex' (Assiter and Carol, 1993;155). Christobel Mackenzie of the Anti-sexism Campaign, on the other hand, asserts that this targeting of pornography has the effect of oppressing female sexuality. Attacking the fact that many feminists still treat sexual "innocence" as a virtue when in fact it is sexual ignorance that is being promoted. ‘We are ashamed to admit to sexuality, so we pretend we don't have sexual feelings...these lies go on for women into adulthood...we are discouraged from admitting we have positive feelings about being sexual. We are somehow seen as ‘dirty' or ‘bad' if we have sexual experience or if we admit we like sex.' (Cited in Assiter and Carol. 1993;140)

Opinions on the issue of pornography and what action - if any - should be taken with regards to it could not be more heavily polarized. There really seems to be very little middle ground between a total ban and liberalization, and both sides exhibit scientific and academic research that seems to irrefutably prove their case. The fact remains, however, that most scientific evidence obtained to prove the effects of pornography is either flawed by its very nature or inconclusive and inconsistent at best, hardly solid ground from which to base a momentous decision such as censorship. The fact that pornography offends some is not sufficient reason for banning it, in spite of anti-pornography feminist claims that it offends ‘all women'. This claim is clearly untrue as there has been a large backlash from feminists who do not agree with this position and wish to have their voice heard. They argue that while most pornography is undeniably made for men, some women do find it enjoyable and even if they do not care to watch it they don't wish to condone censorship. They believe censorship is not the answer because it ‘can be used by those in power whenever they want to suppress the free exchange of knowledge and ideas' (Assiter and Carol, 1993;153) and it would very likely be used against educational sexual materials and gay and lesbian groups a lot more readily than it would be against heterosexual pornography.

Some anti-pornography feminists such as Laura Lederer (1980;124), use the argument that pornography is the cause of male disrespect and abuse of women, saying that ‘over and over again females are depicted as nonhuman, as whores, as animals - thereby removing any obligation on the part of the male to treat them as equal beings'. Yet I believe pornography is in fact an expression of the patriarchal structure that both spawns it and feeds most of the materials produced by it. On these grounds one could see the point that pro-censorship feminists make in that it is harmful to women, but it is not simply harmful in itself, which is why I do not believe censorship to be the answer. The true problem facing feminism is much more difficult to fight against because it is much more covert and ingrained in society, even today. What is truly harmful to women is the patriarchal structure of society that struggled so hard and struggles still to keep them silent. In the words of Dworkin (1979;258) commenting on freedom of speech, ‘The counsel of men (to women) is consistent: maintain a proper - and respectful - silence. The best answer to that would be for women to find their own strong voice instead of merely trying to muffle the expression of pornography, one of the many voices of patriarchal oppression of women. It is crucial that we learn to celebrate female sexuality and refuse to feel ashamed of it, as that would be the most empowering thing women could do for themselves and the most threatening to patriarchal structure, contradicting pornography's message of female sexuality being dirty and in need of punishment.