This was written as a speech, my part of a
debate on pornography with civil liberties lawyer and Harvard
professor Alan Dershowitz, who recently went on the
Penthouse
payroll but had no direct ties with the
pornographers that I know of at the time of the debate. The
debate was sponsored by The Schlesinger Library for Women at
Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In his
autobiography, The Best Defense,
Mr Dershowitz claims
that he was threatened during the course of the debate by
lesbians with bicycle chains. He wasn't; there were no bicycle
chains and no threats. He continuously insulted the audience
of mostly women and they talked back to him with loud and
angry eloquence. The ACLU defends the "heckler's veto"—the
right of hecklers to shout a speaker down; but when women
answer misogynist insults with cogent, self-respecting speech,
Mr. Dershowitz doesn't like speech so much anymore. Even
though he has spent years defending the pornographers in the
name of principled free speech, he suppressed the tape of the
debate by refusing to give permission for its distribution.
This piece has never been published before.
We live in a system of power that is male-supremacist. This
means that society is organized on the assumption that men are
superior to women and that women are inferior to men. Male
supremacy is regarded as being either divine or natural,
depending on the proclivities of the apologist for it.
Theologically, God is the supreme male, the Father, and the
men of flesh and blood one might meet on the streets or in the
corridors of universities are created in His image. There is
also a divine though human though divine Son, and a phallic
Holy Ghost who penetrates women as light penetrates a window.
In both Jewish and Christian tradition, women are dirty,
inclined to evil, not fit for the responsibilities of
religious or civil citizenship, should be seen and not heard,
are destined, or predestined as it were, for sexual use and
reproduction and have no other value. Also, in both traditions
(which are Father and Son respectively), the sexuality of
women is seen as intrinsically seductive and sluttish, by its
nature a provocation to which men respond. In theological
terms, men are superior and women inferior because God/He made
it so, giving women a nature appropriate to their animal
functions and men a nature with capacities that raise them
above all other creatures.
The biological argument is even sillier, but because it is
secular and university-sponsored, it has more credibility
among intellectuals. Throughout patriarchal history, not just
now, biological determinists have made two essential claims:
first, that male superiority to women resides in an organ or a
fluid or a secretion or a not-yet-discovered but urgently
anticipated speck on a gene; and second, that we should study
primates, fish, and insects to see how they manage, especially
with their women. Sociobiologists and ethologists, the latest
kinds of biological determinists, are selective in the species
they study and the conclusions they draw because their
argument is political, not scientific. The male, they say,
regardless of what bug they are observing, is naturally
superior because he is naturally dominant because he is
naturally aggressive and so are his sperm; the female is
naturally compliant and naturally submissive and exists in
order to be fucked and bear babies. Now, fish do not reproduce
through fucking; but that did not stop Konrad Lorenz's
followers from holding up the cichlid as an example to the
human woman. The cichlid is a prehistoric fish, and according
to Lorenz the male cichlids could not mate unless the female
cichlids demonstrated awe. Kate Millett wonders in Sexual
Politics how one measures awe in a fish. But biological
determinists do not wait around to answer such silly
questions: they jump from species to species as suits their
political purposes. And of course there are species they do
avoid: spiders, praying mantises, and camels, for instance,
since the females of these species kill or maim the male after
intercourse. Biological determinists do not find such
behaviors instructive. They love the gall wasp, which they
have affectionately nicknamed the "killer wasp"—so one gets an
idea of its character—and they do not pay much attention to
the bee, what with its queen. There are also relatively
egalitarian primates who never get a mention, and male
penguins that care for the young, and so forth. And of course,
no biological determinist has yet found the bug, fish, fowl,
or even baboon who had managed to write Middlemarch.
Humans create culture; even women create culture.
"Sociobiology" or "ethology" may be new words, but biological
arguments for the superiority of one group over another are
not new. They are as old as genocide and slave labor. If women
are held to be a natural class that exists to be fucked and to
bear babies, then any method used to get women to do what they
exist to do is also natural. And—to add insult to injury—they
dare call it Mother Nature.
The biological determinists believe precisely what the
theologians believe: that women exist to be sexually used by
men, to reproduce, to keep the cave clean, and to obey;
failing which both men of religion and men of nature
hypothesize that hitting the female might solve her problem.
In theological terms, God raised man above all other
creatures; in biological terms, man raised himself. In both
systems of thought, man is at the top, where he belongs; woman
is under him, literally and figuratively, where she belongs.
Every area of conflict regarding the rights of women
ultimately boils down to the same issue: what are women for;
to what use should women be put—sexually and reproductively. A
society will be concerned that the birth rate is not high
enough, but not that there is a paucity of books produced by
women. For women as a class, sex and reproduction are presumed
to be the very essence of life, which means that our fate
unfolds in the opening of our thighs and the phallic
penetration of our bodies and the introjection of sperm into
our vaginas and the appropriation of our uteruses. In The
Dialectic of Sex, Shulamith Firestone wrote: "Sex class
is so deep as to be invisible." That is because sex class is
seen as the work of God or nature, not men; and so the
possession of women's bodies by men is considered to be the
correct and proper use of women.
In male-supremacist terms, sex is phallic sex; it is often
called possession or conquest or taking. A woman's body is
taken or conquered or possessed or—to use another supposedly
sexy synonym—violated; and the means of the taking or
possessing or violating is penile penetration.
The sexual colonialization of women's bodies is a material
reality: men control the sexual and reproductive uses of
women's bodies. In this system of male power, rape is the
paradigmatic sexual act. The word "rape" comes from the Latin
rapere, which means to steal, seize, or carry away. The
first dictionary definition of rape is still "the act of
seizing and carrying off by force." A second meaning of rape
is "the act of physically forcing a woman to have sexual
intercourse." Rape is first abduction, kidnapping, the taking
of a woman by force. Kidnapping, or rape, is also the first
known form of marriage—called "marriage by capture." The
second known form of marriage is basically prostitution: a
father, rather than allow the theft of his daughter, sells
her. Most social arrangements for the exchange of women
operate on one ancient model or the other: stealing, which is
rape; or buying and selling, which is prostitution.
The relationship of prostitution to rape is simple and
direct: whatever can be stolen can be sold. This means that
women were both stolen and sold and in both cases were sexual
commodities; and when practices were codified into laws, women
were defined as sexual chattel. Women are still basically
viewed as sexual chattel—socially, legally, culturally, and in
practice. Rape and prostitution are central contemporary
female experiences; women as a class are seen as belonging to
men as a class and are systematically kept subservient to men;
married women in most instances have lost sexual and
reproductive control of their own bodies, which is what it
means to be sexual chattel.
The principle that whatever can be stolen can be sold applies
not only to women as such, but also to the sexuality of women.
The sexuality of women has been stolen outright, appropriated
by men—conquered, possessed, taken, violated; women have been
systematically and absolutely denied the right to sexual
self-determination and to sexual integrity; and because the
sexuality of women has been stolen, this sexuality itself, it—as
distinguished from an individual woman as a sentient being—it
can be sold. It can be represented pictorially and sold; the
idea or suggestion of it can be sold; representations of it in
words can be sold; signs and gestures that denote it can be
sold. Men can take this sexuality—steal it, rape it—and men
can pimp it.
We do not know when in history pornography as such first
appeared. We do know that it is a product of culture,
specifically male-supremacist culture, and that it comes after
both rape and prostitution. Pornography can only develop in a
society that is viciously male-supremacist, one in which rape
and prostitution are not only well-established but
systematically practiced and ideologically endorsed. Feminists
are often asked whether pornography causes rape. The fact is
that rape and prostitution caused and continue to cause
pornography. Politically, culturally, socially, sexually, and
economically, rape and prostitution generated pornography; and
pornography depends for its continued existence on the rape
and prostitution of women.
The word pornography comes from the ancient Greek porne
and graphos: it means "the graphic depiction of
whores." Porne means "whore," specifically the lowest
class of whore, which in ancient Greece was the brothel slut
available to all male citizens. There were distinct classes of
prostitutes in ancient Greece: the porne was the
sexual cow. She was, simply and clearly and absolutely, a
sexual slave. Graphos means "writing, etching, or
drawing."
The whores called porneia were captive in brothels,
which were designated as such by huge phalluses painted on or
constructed near the door. They were not allowed out, were
never educated, were barely dressed, and in general were
miserably treated; they were the sexual garbage of Greek
society. Wives were kept in nearly absolute isolation, allowed
the company of slaves and young children only. High-class
prostitutes, a class distinct from the porneia and
from wives both, had the only freedom of movement accorded
women, and were the only educated women.
Two very significant words originated in the ancient Greece
many of us revere: democracy and pornography.
Democracy from its beginnings excluded all women and some men.
Pornography from its beginnings justified and promoted this
exclusion of all women by presenting the sexuality of all
women as the sexuality of the brothel slut. The brothel slut
and the sexuality of the brothel slut had been stolen and
sold—raped and prostituted; and the rape and prostitution of
that captive and degraded being with her captive and degraded
sexuality is precisely the sexual content of pornography. In
pornography, the will of the chattel whore is synonymous with
her function: she is purely for sex and her function is
defined as her nature and her will. The isolation of wives was
based on the conviction that women were so sexually voracious
on male terms that wives could not be let out—or they would
naturally turn whorish. The chattel whore was the natural
woman, the woman without the civilizing discipline of
marriage. The chattel whore, of course, as we know, was the
product of the civilizing discipline of slavery, but men did
not then and do not now see it that way.
Pornography illustrated and expressed this valuation of women
and women's sexuality, and that is why it was named pornography—"the
graphic depiction of whores." Depicting women as whores and
the sexuality of women as sluttish is what pornography does.
Its job in the politically coercive and cruel system of male
supremacy is to justify and perpetuate the rape and
prostitution from which it springs. This is its function,
which makes it incompatible with any notion of freedom, unless
one sees freedom as the right of men to rape and prostitute
women. Pornography as a genre says that the stealing and
buying and selling of women are not acts of force or abuse
because women want to be raped and prostituted because that is
the nature of women and the nature of female sexuality. Gloria
Steinem has said that culture is successful politics. As a
cultural phenomenon, pornography is the political
triumph of rape and prostitution over all female rebellion and
resistance.
A piece of Greek pornography may have been a drawing on a
vase or an etching. No live model was required to make it; no
specific sexual act had to be committed in order for it to
exist. Rape, prostitution, battery, pornography, and other
sex-based abuse could be conceptualized as separate phenomena.
In real life, of course, they were all mixed together: a woman
was beaten, then raped; raped, then beaten, then prostituted;
prostituted, then beaten, then raped; and so on. As far back
as we know, whorehouses have provided live sex shows in which,
necessarily, pornography and prostitution were one and the
same thing. We know that the world's foremost pornographer,
the Marquis de Sade, tortured, raped, imprisoned, beat, and
bought women and girls. We know that influential male thinkers
and artists who enthused about rape or prostitution or battery
had, in many cases, raped or bought or battered women or girls
and were also users and often devotees of pornography. We know
that when the technical means of graphic depiction were
limited to writing, etching, and drawing, pornography was
mostly an indulgence of upper-class men, who were literate and
who had money to spend on the almost always expensive
etchings, drawings, and writings. We know that pornography
flourished as an upper-class male pleasure when the power of
upper-class men knew virtually no limitation, certainly with
regard to women: in feudal societies, for instance. But in
societies that did not find much to oppose in the rape and
prostitution of women, there were certainly no inquiries, no
investigations, no political or philosophical or scientific
searches, into the role pornography played in acts of forced
sex or battery. When pornography was in fact writing, etching,
or drawing, it was possible to consider it something
exclusively cultural, something on paper not in life, and even
partly esthetic or intellectual. Such a view was not accurate,
but it was possible. Since the invention of the camera, any
such view of pornography is completely despicable and corrupt.
Those are real women being tied and hung, gutted and trounced
on, whipped and pissed on, gang-banged and hit, penetrated by
dangerous objects and by animals. It is important to note that
men have not found it necessary—not legally, not morally, not
sexually—to make distinctions between drawing and writing on
the one hand and the use of live women on the other. Where is
the visceral outcry, the famous humanist outcry,
against the tying and hanging and chaining and bruising and
beating of women? Where is the visceral recognition, the humanist
recognition, that it is impossible and inconceivable to
tolerate—let alone to sanction or to apologize for—the tying
and hanging and chaining and bruising and beating of women? I
am saying what no one should have to say, which is simply that
one does not do to human beings what is done to women in
pornography. And why are these things done to women in
pornography? The reasons men give are these: entertainment,
fun, expression, sex, sexual pleasure, and because the women
want it.
Instead of any so-called humanist outcry against the
inhumanity of the use of women in pornography—an outcry that
we might expect if dogs or cats were being treated the same
way—there has been the pervasive, self-congratulatory,
indolent, male-supremacist assumption that the use of women in
pornography is the sexual will of the woman, expresses her
sexuality, her character, her nature, and appropriately
demonstrates a legitimate sexual function of hers. This is the
same assumption about the nature of women and the nature of
female sexuality that men have always used to justify the
raping and prostituting of women. It is no less believed today
than when Greek men imprisoned chattel whores in the fifth
century BC. Almost without exception, the main premise of
pornography is that women want to be forced, hurt, and cruelly
used. The main proof of the power of this belief is when the
female victim of rape, battery, or incest is blamed for this
crime. But the proof is also in the size and growth of the
pornography industry; the ever-increasing viciousness of the
material itself; the greater acceptance of pornography as part
of the social and the domestic environment; the ever-expanding
alliances between pornographers and lawyers, pornographers and
journalists, pornographers and politicians. Pornography is now
used in increasing numbers of medical schools and other
institutions of higher learning that teach "human sexuality."
The pornography is everywhere, and its apologists are
everywhere, and its users are everywhere, and its pimps are
rich, and surely if we assumed that the women in the
photographs and films were really human beings and not by
nature chattel whores we would not have been able to stand it,
to acquiesce, to collaborate through silence or cowardice or,
as some in this room have done, to collaborate actively. If we
assumed that these women were human, not chattel whores by
nature, we would destroy that industry—with our bare hands if
we could—because it steals and buys and sells women; it rapes
and prostitutes women. In 1978, Forbes magazine
reported that the pornography industry was a $4-billion-a-year
business, larger than the conventional film and record
industry combined. A big part of the pornography business is
cash-and-carry: for instance, the film loops, where one
deposits quarters for a minute or so of a woman being fucked
by Nazis or the like. A huge part of the pornography business
is mail-order. Here one finds the especially scurrilous
material, including both magazines and films of women being
tortured, tied, hung, and fucked by large animals, especially
dogs. Child pornography—still photographs and films—is
obtained under the counter or through mail-order. Books of
child pornography that are print with drawings and some
magazines with photographs can be obtained in drug stores as
well as sex shops in urban areas. The above-ground slick
so-called men's entertainment magazines are flourishing, and
every indication is that the Forbes figure of a
$4-billion industry was low to begin with and is now
completely outdated. Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler
together sell fifteen million copies a month. According to Folio,
a magazine for professionals in magazine management, United
States magazines with the greatest overseas newsstand dollar
sales were (1) Playboy with well over ten million
dollars in foreign newsstand sales; (2) Penthouse with
well over nine million dollars in foreign newsstand sales; (3)
Oui; (4) Gallery, owned by F. Lee Bailey who
surprisingly could not convince a jury that Patricia Hearst
had been raped; (5) Scientific American; and (6) Hustler.
Also in the top ten are Vogue, which consistently
publishes the work of S and M photographer Helmut Newton, and
Easy Riders, a motorcycle, gang-bang,
fuck-the-bitch-with-your-Iron-Cross kind of magazine. This was
as of October 1980. According to Mother Jones
magazine, also in 1980, there are three to four times as many
adult bookstores in the United States as there are McDonald's
Restaurants. And the live exhibition of women displaying
genitals or being used in sex of various descriptions or being
tied and whipped is increasing. And there is cable television
and the home video market, both potentially huge and currently
expanding markets for pornographers who use live women. Women.
Real women. Live women. Chattel whores.
Now, some people are afraid that the world will be turned
into a nuclear charnel house; and so they fight the nuclear
industries and lobbies; and they do not spend significant
amounts of their time debating whether the nuclear industries
have the right to threaten human life or not. Some people fear
that the world is turning, place by place, into a
concentration camp; and so they fight for those who are
hounded, persecuted, tortured, and they do not suggest that
the rights of those who persecute supersede the rights of the
persecuted in importance—unless, of course, the persecuted are
only women and the torture is called "sex." Some feminists see
the world turning into a whorehouse—how frivolous we always
are—a whorehouse, in French maison d' abattage, which
literally means "house of slaughter." Whorehouses have been
concentration camps for women. Women have been kept in them
like caged animals to do slave labor, sex labor, labor
appropriate to the nature, function, and sexuality of the
chattel whore and her kind. The spread of pornography that
uses live women, real women, is the spread of the whorehouse,
the concentration camp for women, the house of sexual
slaughter. Now I ask you: what are we going to do?
Copyright © 1981 by Andrea Dworkin. All rights reserved.
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