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| Pornography
is harmful to women
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Pornography nowadays is quite a widespread phenomenon. Million
of people use it systematically and have no idea what impact
it has on women. As each and every pornography video deals
humiliation of women and perception of women as sexual objects.
In pornography the “character” of the women is
dehumanized and is seen as a body for masculine sexual satisfaction.
Many men watching pornography take this attitude as a model
for further relations with woman and this eventually results
not only in moral but also in physical aggression directed
against women. Evidently, pornography is harmful for women
as it changes the male attitude.
As woman becomes an object in pornography where is sexually
exploited. As pornography has a global social character the
fact the sexual harassments occur is its simple consequence.
The impact of pornography spreads to everyday life of people
and makes the female “body cult” as women become
better sexual objects when their bodies are fit and correspond
to male requirements. These requirements, in their turn are
aimed at getting a better sexual satisfaction for the sexual
object. Pornography hurts the image of women as human being
equal to man and deserving a decent treatment and respect
as human beings.
According to definition of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea
Dworkin presented by Val Richards (1999), pornography is “the
graphic sexually explicit subordination of women, whether
in pictures or words”. Here the key word is subordination
as the woman obeys the man’s sexual will. Very often
in pornography women, experiencing violence seem to enjoy
it and therefore it send a wrong message to the male audience.
As the woman’s body is penetrated not only by males,
but also by objects and sometimes even by animals –
this reduces the image of a woman to a being that can be sexual
penetrated (Richards, 1999).
It is vital to put the borderline between what is erotica
and what is pornography. Erotica shows the beauty of the woman’s
body and pornography deals with hard “mechanic”
sexual satisfaction. It has no contents and evidently destroys
the romantic character of a woman. The sex images presented
in pornography have no emotional dimension but are brought
to the close-ups of the female genitals. In addition to that,
according to Diana Russell (1994), there might be a probability
of pornography causing the increase of the rape level as pornography
often includes violent scenes and as it has been mentioned
before – assaults (p.16). It goes without saying that
these facts may be argued; nevertheless it is rather hard
to argue with the fact that the female sexuality is harmed
by pornography.
Many women follow the “pornography” trend and
convert themselves into sexual objects in order to be needed
by man and to be “loved” but they always have
the opportunity to disprove the fact that women are sexual
objects (Lebegue, 1991, p.44). It is all their behavior and
choice. If a man watches pornography and starts perceiving
women as sexual objects but in real life faces the fact that
the woman does not want to be involved in violent penetrations
– he will learn from it.
Pornography is truly harmful for women, as it hurts their
sexuality and converts them into sexual commodities and can
make them objects of violence. Nevertheless if women do not
oppose this stereotype, nothing will eventually change. The
way out is not to follow and subordinate this “dehumanization”
but to show that women have self-respect and are more than
sexual objects as they have minds and not bodies only.
Bibliography:
1. Lebegue, B. (1991). Pornography Made Me Do It. Bulletin
of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law , 19(1).p
43-48.
2. Russell, Diana E.H. (1994). Against pornography: the evidence
of harm.Russell Publications. p.16
3. Richards, V. (1999). Pornography - safe or sexual? University
of Michigan press. Retrieved July 21, 2008.
<http://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/pornog.htm>
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