ANALYSIS OF "THE SOCIOLOGICALLY EXAMINED LIFE" (part 31)

Enabling Conditions

by

Charles Lamson

The student said, "I read the chapter in the book, and I can't tell if the author is saying that pornography causes sexual violence or not. Please just tell me if it does." This student wanted a yes-or-no-answer, and probably thought I was waffling when I refused to give one.

You can probably see why a statement such as pornography causes sexual violence is wrong. Pornography is not a natural force that causes people to behave in any particular way, but if you are mindful of connections and context, and the web of causality, you can probably also see why it is wrong to say pornography has nothing to do with sexual violence. Indeed, pornography has something to do with sexual violence by men against women, but the connection is not simply cause and effect.

Sexual violence involves one person hurting another. For one person to inflict harm on another, the person doing the harm must disregard the feeling of the person being harmed. It is as if the injurer treats the other as an object - a thing with no feelings worthy of respect. How do some people's feelings come to be seen as unworthy of respect? This can happen only because some people create and spread the idea that other people's feelings don't matter.

Through words and pictures, pornography conveys ideas about women - ideas that can affect men's thinking about women. One idea conveyed by much pornography is that women are always ready and willing, despite outward appearances, to satisfy men's sexual desires. Another idea is that women are desirable, because of their looks, and their willingness to serve men sexually. A woman's thoughts and feelings, in other words, are less important than the shape of her breasts, or her interest in having sex with men.

The ready availability of pornography also conveys a message it is okay to portray women as sex objects. If pornographic representations of women are everywhere, and there is little protest about this, then it can begin to seem natural (and perfectly acceptable) to view women as sex objects.

Do these ideas and their pervasiveness cause sexual violence? No. That is too simple a way to put it.  Most men do not look at pornography, and then feel compelled to commit sexual violence, even if they are aroused by the images. But this is not proof that pornography and sexual violence are unrelated. Being mindful about cause and contingency, we can see pornography, and its ready availability, as enabling conditions.

In our culture, young men are taught to believe that manhood is signified by having sex with women. So one way that men compete with each other is to see who is more of a man by scoring sexual conquests. In this competition, a man's goal is to get a woman to comply with his sexual wishes. Her feelings are worth considering only if they impede a man's sexual advances. A woman's feelings are thus not respected, but are seen as problems for a man to overcome.

In a larger context, his competition for manhood status ensures that most men will lose, because winning depends not only on sexual prowess, but also in wealth and power - of which most men have little. As you might imagine, or as you might know from your own experience, these conditions can make many men feel angry and insecure. Now add pornography, which reinforces the idea that women are sexual objects, and that men know women's sexual desires better than women do. Under these conditions, sexual coercion in violent and subtle forms is likely to occur. And often it does.

Being sociologically mindful about the causes of sexual violence, we arrive back at the idea of contingency. We have seen sexual violence as emerging from a conjunction of enabling conditions. So while we cannot say pornography causes sexual violence, in this case pornography is one of a multitude of causes, a strand in the web.

If we are mindful about cause in this way, we can also see why abolishing pornography would not end sexual violence. One reason is, that the ideas that promote sexual violence are not found only in pornography. And most of the other enabling conditions would not be changed by a ban on pornography. Then again, as some people argue abolishing pornography might reduce sexual violence by making these ideas it conveys less readily available, and by making it clear that those ideas are harmful and should be rejected.

*SOURCE: THE SOCIOLOGICALLY EXAMINED LIFE, 2ND EDITION, 2001, MICHAEL SCHWALBE, PGS. 120-121*

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