What's wrong with watching porn?

Cross posted

Now that the Labour party caucus has castigated the people concerned, and some MPs have been sin-binned, and it might be possible to be heard above the rapidly subsiding roar, I’m going to add my tuppence worth.

For people reading in Australia and further afield, New Zealand has been having its very own little ministerial and MPs expenses scandal. But being New Zealand, it’s all very small beer. No moat cleaning or duck houses or pricey toasters as there were in the UK. In NZ, it’s been a matter of ministers having a few drinks on the taxpayers’ tab, or getting a massage, or putting some purchases on the Crown plastic instead of a personal one (notably some golf clubs and a bike). Even then, the money was refunded almost before the bill came due, but the minister in question nevertheless thought that the taxpayer was a jolly good source of short term credit.

The biggest offence seems to have been one minister who spent his lonely nights in hotels watching pay-per-view porn, and putting it on the Crown tab. Again, it was all repaid, well before the minister left office, and several years before the press got wind of it. He tried in the first instance to pretend that he was just a movie buff, but when a little bit of press digging revealed that his movies cost $19.95 each (the standard price for porn) and regular movies cost $14.95 each, he had to change his tune. To his credit, when his cover was blown he fronted the press, admitted his misdeeds, made his apologies, and asked for forgiveness.

The issue in the NZ press and the NZ blogosphere has been whether or not it is appropriate to put private expenditure on taxpayer funded credit cards, even if the private expenditure is subsequently repaid. The answer is no. I agree with that answer.

Everyone has very very carefully said that watching porn is not an issue. Oh no, what a person does in the privacy of their own room is their business and its private and there’s no public interest in poking our noses in there and people’s sexuality is their own affair.

Hmmm….

In general, New Zealanders aren’t really concerned with what consenting adults do. Some politicians have been pilloried for hypocrisy – for example, Don Brash, who allowed himself to be portrayed as supporting traditional family values, but had an affair on the side – but usually, the New Zealand press gallery don’t report on pollies’ private affairs, unless they begin to think that those private affairs are having a public effect. Even then, they err on the side of caution. New Zealanders have happily elected gay and lesbian and transgender MPs. Sex and sexuality is very much regarded as a politician’s own business, thank the FSM.

However, I think that watching porn could be an issue.

I see two potential problems with porn. The first is to do with the extent to which it involves consenting adults, and the second is to do with the narrative about women that it may contain. Because porn may not involve consenting adults, and because porn may portray demeaning ideas about women, it is ethically risky. Not necessarily ethically wrong, but ethically risky.

Please be very clear about the distinctions I’m making here. I am not saying that porn infringes against morality. If morality consists in precepts about who is permitted to have sex, and in what position, and with whom, then I’m just not interested. Take your tired shibboleths, do what you will with them, in the privacy of your own bedroom, and stay away from mine. And anyone else’s. Really, just f*ck off.

I’m also not saying that watching porn is necessarily wrong. Rather, I’m saying that it is risky. It may be that the porn that you are watching does not involve consenting adults. And that’s a problem.

Remember that the gold standard in sexual activity is consenting adults. It’s not just the gold standard – it’s the minimum standard. If the porn you are watching is not made by consenting adults, then you are watching rape. You may not be getting your rocks off by watching rape, that is, by participating vicariously in scenes depicting rape, but your jollies come at the expense of the actors in the scene. Because that’s what they are. Actors. Those big smiles, the sounds and words of consent and delight: they’re an act. Just because the actors look like they want to be doing what they’re doing, doesn’t mean that their consent is real.

Equally, it doesn’t mean that the actors haven’t consented either. Just as plenty of sex workers say that they enjoy sex work, and it’s something they freely choose to do (see for example, this great post from Hexy: Accessories, Australian sex workers, and Sheila Jeffreys and Claire Finch’s story in The Guardian: I ran a brothel in a country village), plenty of actors in porn are happy to do the work. But just as plenty of sex workers are cruelly exploited, trapped into sex slavery, plenty of performers in porn movies are forced into it. And if you think Linda Lovelace was the only person ever forced into performing in porn, then I’ve got a very nice bridge that crosses Sydney Harbour that I’d like to sell to you. As a viewer, you just don’t know whether the actors you are watching have consented, and are continuing to consent, to perform in the movie, or whether they never consented, or consented initially, and then withdrew their consent. If they have not consented, if they have withdrawn their consent, then what you are watching is rape. That’s why porn is ethically risky.

Even if all the actors participating in the movie consented, and you’re sure about that, then there’s still the problem with the narratives contained in porn. Porn contains narratives that suggest that underage girls want sex (“barely legal” movies, using actors of legal age, but made up and dressed to look adolescent), that women like being raped, that the only way sex should end is with a money shot all over a woman’s face. They are narratives of aggression and derision towards woman. Domestic and Laboratory Goddess Dr Isis has a great post about the aggression towards women in porn, complete with edited photos. Go take look, unless you’re my mum or Ms Eleven, in which case do yourself a favour, and don’t look. Those narratives disturb me. Sure, it’s only fantasy, but they are fantasies which involve the degradation of human beings.* That makes them, to my mind, ethically risky.

There is at least some porn that is made ethically. Fair trade porn, if you will. No, I’m not going to include links to it in this blog, but if you google say, “feminist porn”, and do a little research and exercise a little judgement, you should be able to come up with some porn that doesn’t involve exploitation of women, and doesn’t contain nasty narratives about women. In other words, take some responsibility for what you’re viewing. Mutatis mutandis, for gay or lesbian or bi or trans or wev, really.

I suppose that given that the minister in question purchased his movies through a hotel, they probably weren’t too extreme. Perhaps that might give us some reassurance, because the business retailing the porn might have taken some care about what it was offering to its customers. However, given what Motella (who’d have thought you could write a blog about motels?) tells us:

Most major hotels seem to offer adult pay movies. Why do they do this? Simply, because their guests demand it AND it generates huge profits! It has been reported that up to 50% of the hotel guests purchase the material and it is estimated that between 70 -80% of the hotel’s in-room profit come from adult movie viewing.

…I wouldn’t be counting on that.**

I think we ought to be worried about pollies purchasing porn on the Crown tab. The reason that we ought to be worried is not because porn is necessarily immoral – it isn’t. If it passes that gold standard consenting adults criterion, then it’s probably okay. Maybe not great, given the concerns about nasty narratives, but almost certainly there are worse transgressions. But it’s ethically risky.

We make ethically risky purchases all the time. I eat chocolate, drink coffee, wear clothes, use a computer and a mobile phone and watch TV. All of these products may be made with child or sweated labour, and I haven’t made the effort to find out. Where I do find out about ethically dubious practices, I sometimes stop buying the product, but even then, it’s not necessarily the best thing to do: “fair trade” is rife with anomalies.

More than that, who manages to live an ethically perfect life all the time? I don’t, even though I do try to get it right. But I am no moral saint. Nor do I expect ministers and other parliamentarians to be moral saints. However, I do expect them to demonstrate a reasonable degree of judgement. They are, after all, in the business of making judgements about how to run the country.

I suppose that I think that porn is more likely to come closer to the point of being ethically wrong, because people may have been harmed in the making of it, because the making of it may be a crime, because it may contain narratives that demean people (I really do recommend reading Dr Isis’ post in respect of this last point). We need to be cautious about porn, to consume it, if that’s your thing, with care and with discretion. And that’s why it may be reasonable to be rather more concerned about ministers who consume porn than we are about ministers who simply consume.

* And those fantasies are pretty minor. I came across some sites while I was researching this post that made me feel nauseously ill. I don’t even want to begin to describe them.
** I’ve not linked directly to the post where Motella makes this claim, but you can go find it for yourself if you like. It’s just not something that I really want to link to from this blog.