Pornography as a Point of View

Most people agree that certain types of entertainment constitute pornography. There is also pretty general agreement that pornography is bad.

There is little agreement on anything else.

I, like many others, have found it hard to develop an objective definition of pornography. (I once actually thought I had an objective definition, till Madonna came along and demolished it quite thoroughly.)

Now I'm convinced that pornography is primarily subjective. Like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder. Fighting it is more a matter of education -- or, more precisely, enculturation -- than of censorship.

There is nothing inherently evil about sex. While there is a tendency to assume that anything that feels good is probably bad for you, pleasure is a prime way for nature to encourage us to do things that we are not instinctively programmed to do. And pain is a strong signal to stop doing something.

For instance, we like sweets, and too many sweets are bad for us. But nature's idea of sweet is not a candy bar, but an orange. Also, most poisons are bitter.

Sexual feelings are nature's attempt to make sure we breed. You might say that sex is proof that Mother Nature loves us.

In human experience, sex is more often an act of love than an act of procreation. The capacity to suckle is used for kissing far more frequently than for nursing at a mother's breast.

But violence and degradation are not acts of love. And they are associated with pornography.

When I thought I had finally concocted a valid definition of pornography, I used violence and degradation as key. The definition went: Pornography is sexually explicit entertainment that involves violence, degradation, or both.

I was quite proud of that definition. I used it without mishap for years. Then I watched Madonna's "Bye, Bye, Baby" number on her Girlie Show -- Live Down Under DVD.

The song expresses a theme Madonna has touched on repeatedly: Dumping the Heel / Escaping the Abuser. The choreography involves her and two other women dressed as men who abuse three women scantily dressed as women. The faux men abuse the women in various ways, such as symbolically striking them and spreading their legs apart.

It is painful to watch, and is supposed to be. It is not pornography.

But it fits my definition, which meant that the definition was no good. Worse, I could imagine some people viewing the number who enjoyed the elements of violence and degradation, so that, for them, it was porn. This suggests that a work could be pornography depending upon factors external to itself, something I had never considered before. So, not only did Madonna smash my definition of pornography, she made it infinitely more difficult to find one.

It reminded me of the story of the ancient Greek philosophers who came up with a definition of a human being: Featherless Biped. They were quite proud of themselves, till some fool tossed a plucked chicken into their midst.

Madonna's "Bye, Bye, Baby" number was my plucked chicken. I could imagine her swaying her voluptuous hips, saying, "Define this, Mr. philosopher."

It was like the old saying that there is nothing sadder in life than a beautiful theory being destroyed by a brutal gang of facts.

After moping around for a while, feeling irritated at being bested by some no account superstar, I realized that our focus should not be on the entertainment, but on the attitudes of the consumers. The subjectivity that Madonna revealed as an overwhelming complicating factor was actually the key to an entirely different approach to the subject.

One thing pornographers and prudes have in common is the conviction that sex is dirty. Newly pubescent children experience feelings of desire, tenderness, and admiration of the object. But children caught showing sexuality often experience a nearly traumatizing storm of condemnation from adults. Boys quickly become ashamed of the feelings, to dread having them, and to regard the source of them -- the female -- as evil and deserving to be abused. Secretly.

Religious leaders often say that sex is something good and holy. They condemn the widespread treatment of sex as a form of heartless consumption. They apparently do not realize that such attitudes are learned partly in church.

As it happens, it was also through Madonna that I became aware that in regard to sex, there is a profound difference between the attitudes of men and those of women. Women, it appears, never learn to think of sex as dirty. This is probably because they'd have to be mentally ill to think of themselves as dirt.

This was made plain in Madonna's video, "Open Your Heart." She portrays a dancer in a porno theatre where the audience is in masturbating booths. She wants to be loved, but all the men do is stare at her. Except for the boy outside, who, of course, isn't allowed in.

It's plain that the boy's sexual feelings are pure. She abandons the theatre and runs off with the boy, kissing him in the mouth and going off into the distance playing with him in a nonsexual way. She gives the boy something few pubescent boys enjoy -- assurance that there is nothing wrong with what he feels.

In another video, "Like A Prayer," she makes love to Jesus. The Vatican condemned her in the strongest terms. A man could not conceive of making love to, say, the Virgin Mary. To a man, sex is lust and exploitation. But to Madonna and other women, the sex act is an act of love, an act of giving, the ultimate expression of acceptance. Madonna was giving herself to Jesus. To a woman, her action was not sacrilegious, it was sacramental.

It is not a coincidence that the market for pornography is largely male. It seems hard to believe, but the problem could be eliminated if we simply stopped teaching young boys that sex is dirty. Maybe that is not as easy as it sounds, given the conflicted attitudes of adults. Adults, especially men, will have to change first.

We can start making life more pleasurable and meaningful for men as well as women if men develop empathy for the objects of their desire. It would also eliminate the market for pornography.

Imagine a photo I've seen of Madonna. She's singing intently, squatting with her legs spread apart, revealing the soft warmth of her supple inner thighs. You might consider it pornographic. That would be the case if you just think about doing things to her that in real life would surprise and distress and harm her. But it is not porn if you are simply aware that she is totally unaware that she is making you want to put your face right in her vagina. You see a sincere and gifted woman who is oblivious of her own power, a beautiful woman who is literally sexier by accident than others are on purpose. You love her.

Yet men tend to separate sex from love. There is no value in that. The ability to feel desire for someone you neither love nor admire only enables you to commit rape. If you are a man, you should bond with someone you love, and remember that when you look at her body, you are looking at her.

Richard W. Fox is a university lecturer in astronomy and physics at Governors State University near Chicago. His fiction has appeared in Aim Quarterly, Dana Literary Society Online Journal, and elsewhere. Essays have appeared in a variety of venues, including The Taj Mahal Review, Mercury (publication of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific), and Ascent Aspirations. He is also co-author of several published astronomical research papers.

Email: Richard W. Fox

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