In addressing such questions, I offer the following assumptions to situate a study of propaganda in general, and pornography as propaganda in particular:
(1) Human beings are storytelling animals; stories are a primary way we communicate what it means to be a person in the world. When we tell stories, we not only report on our experiences in the world but also contribute to a collective understanding of that world, which will influence the experiences and understandings of others. Stories matter. In any culture, the stories that people tell will reveal things about how they collectively make sense of the world, and that sense of the world will shape how people act. Stories shape attitudes, and attitudes affect behavior.
(2) In flourishing societies with a relatively egalitarian distribution of power, storytelling tends to be dialogic and creative, a way for people to engage each other with respect and explore ways of understanding the world. In contrast, in societies marked by inequality and concentrations of power, storytelling can be a vehicle to control and dominate, a way for people to shut down that dialogic and creative process in the service of maintaining or taking power. This type of human communication is called propaganda.
Special attention to propaganda is especially crucial in societies with concentrations of power that undermine the dialogic and creative aspects of human communication. In heavily mass-mediated societies such as the USA, Canada, Australia and European countries, this inquiry is vital.
Again, a comparison to make this point: when critics speak of commercial advertising as propaganda for capitalism, we are not asserting that a specific advertisement viewed by a person is the direct cause of that person’s decision to purchase a good or service. Even advertisers recognize this, reflected in the common quip, ‘We know half our ads don’t work, but we don’t know which half’. Critics cannot explain exactly how a specific advertisement or series of advertisements cause people to think of themselves as consumption machines rather than human beings. Instead, we recognize that in a larger culture which encourages that sense of self, the endless barrage of commercial advertising carrying the same message plays a role in that process.
This is the sense in which we can see pornography as propaganda for a rape culture.
Pornography
The term ‘pornography’ is used by many people to describe all sexually explicit books, magazines, movies, and Internet sites, often with a distinction made between softcore (nudity with limited sexual activity not including penetration) and hardcore (graphic images of actual, not simulated, sexual activity including penetration). Pornography also is often distinguished from erotica, with pornography used to describe material that presents sex in the context of hierarchical relationships. Laboratory studies often construct categories of pornography according to their degree of violence and degradation.
The associated terms ‘indecency’ and ‘obscenity’ have specific legal meanings. In the United States, for example, indecency concerns only broadcast television and radio, while the case of Miller v. California (1973) established a three-part test for obscenity in any media – material that appeals to the prurient interest (an unhealthy interest in sex); portrays sexual conduct in a patently offensive way; and does not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value – and identified contemporary community standards as the measure. Pornography using children is a separate category that is banned.
In this essay, I focus on the heterosexual commercial pornography industry which produces a significant portion of the pornography available and whose codes and conventions have shaped much of the pornography produced by others.
Rape Culture
My analysis is rooted in feminist critiques of male dominance and hierarchy. By feminist, I simply mean an analysis of the ways in which women are oppressed as a class in this society – the ways in which men as a class hold more power, and how those differences in power systematically disadvantage women. Gender oppression plays out in different ways depending on social location which makes it crucial to understand the oppression of women in connection with other systems of oppression such as heterosexism, racism, class privilege, and histories of colonial and postcolonial domination.
In patriarchy, men are trained through a variety of cultural institutions to view sex as the acquisition of pleasure by the taking of women. Sex is a sphere in which men are trained to see themselves as ‘naturally’ dominant and women as ‘naturally’ passive. Women are objectified and women’s sexuality is commodified. Sex is sexy because men are dominant and women are subordinate. Power is eroticized.
The predictable result of this state of affairs is a world in which violence, sexualized violence, sexual violence, and violence-by-sex is so common that it must be considered to be normal – an expression of the sexual norms of the culture, not violations of the norms. A recent review of the data by well-respected researchers concluded that in the United States, at least 1 of every 6 women has been raped at some time in her life, a figure that is now widely accepted (Tjaden and Thoennes, 2006).
The term ‘rape culture’ describes ideas and practices beyond those legally defined as rape. As one researcher suggests, we should “… broaden the definition of violence against women to include not just violent acts, such as physical assault, sexual assault, and threats of physical and sexual assault, but also nonviolent acts, such as stalking and psychological and emotional abuse” (Tjaden, 2004, p. 1246).
I use the term ‘sexual intrusion’ to describe the range of unwanted sexual acts that women experience in contemporary society – obscene phone calls, sexual taunting on the streets, sexual harassment in schools and workplaces, coercive sexual pressure in dating, sexual assault, and violence with a sexual theme. In public lectures on these issues, I often tell the audience that I have completed an extensive scientific study on the subject and determined that the percentage of women in the United States who have experienced sexual intrusion is exactly 100%. Women understand the dark humor; no study is necessary to describe their routine collective experience.
The Ideology of Hierarchy and the Role of Propaganda
No society would let happen what happens to women, and children, if at some level it did not have contempt for them. A rape culture is a woman-hating culture. But most people’s stated philosophical and theological systems are rooted in ideas of justice, equality, and the inherent dignity of all people. So, how do we explain all the violence, exploitation, and oppression? Only a small percentage of people in any given society are truly sociopaths, those incapable of empathy who engage in cruel and oppressive behavior openly and with relish.
Maintaining a claim to naturalness is essential for the maintenance of unjust hierarchies, and the illegitimate authority that is exercised in them. Oppressive systems work hard to make it appear that the hierarchies – and the disparities in power and resources that flow from hierarchies – are natural and, therefore, beyond change. If men are naturally smarter and stronger than women, then patriarchy is inevitable and justifiable. If white people are naturally smarter and more virtuous than people of color, then white supremacy is inevitable and justifiable. If rich people are naturally smarter and harder working than poor people, then economic injustice is inevitable and justifiable.