Pornography

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the key philosophical themes and debates in discussions of pornography. In particular, I consider the major positions on how pornography ought to be defined, when (and if ) it should be regulated, whether it is best understood as speech (or action), whether there is evidence that is it harmful. I argue in favor of what is known as the civil rights approach to pornography, as reflected in the work of Catharine MacKinnon.

Freedom of expression

“…The regulation of pornography is a longstanding issue for free speech scholars but the explosion of online pornography in the past two decades has made it more topical and urgent 4 . A reasonable normative definition is that ‘pornography is sexually explicit material designed to produce sexual arousal in consumers that is bad in a certain way’ (West, 2012a; see also Watson, 2010, pp. 535‐6).…”

Breaking the epistemic pornography habit

“…I do not consider this to be a perfect definition of "pornography," but one that is good enough for present purposes. In addition to definitional issues, there are both moral and political questions surrounding the issue of pornography, many of which I am not raising here (Watson, 2010).…”

“…Discussions of the harmfulness of pornography fall, roughly, into two parts. A normative part where the question of just what constitutes a harm must be answered, and an empirical part where some type of causal relationship between pornography and the relevant harm must be established (Watson, 2010). It is uncontroversial that rape is a kind of harm, so some who argue that pornography is harmful do so on the grounds that individuals who consume a lot of pornography or a lot of certain kinds of pornography are more likely to commit rape (Linz and Malamuth, 1993, ch.…”