Pornography: The Representation of Power

Abstract Thedebate about pornography which feminists opened in the 1970s seems to have ended in stalemate as most advocates in the public domain begin and end with the ‘conclusion’—that censorship is out of the question. Hardly anyone in fact engages with the analysis which feminists put forward about what exactly is the problem with pornography. Instead, the merest mention of ‘pornography’ is followed like a Pavlovian reflex by the word ‘censorship’, as if there was no context other than that of censorship and the law in which the problem of pornography could be raised. Although feminists have reopened the debate about pornography in a radically new context—the context of the civil rights of women and the context of a gender analysis of pornography1—the arguments invariably revert to the old and familiar playground of repression and taboo, liberation and permissiveness, where old certainties rule: since it used to be prigs and prudes who opposed pornography, we as sexual radicals must defend it (and since we arc for it, those against it must be prudes); since pornography is a right-wing issue, as liberals or lefties we are against it being an issue at all; since those against pornography arc for censorship, we as opponents of censorship must be for pornography. The feminist perspective on the problem of pornography has been well and truly buried again, as the old ghosts of church fathers and forbidding parents arc invoked once more. Despite the protestations of a permissive society, these ghosts continue to haunt the collective consciousness of the left and the media public.