The Anti-Porn Origin of the Anti-Free Speech Left in the United States?

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Yesterday, Thomas Edsall published an opinion piece in the New York Times concerning the question of free speech in relation to the third indictment of Donald Trump and the changing attitude of the American Left towards both free speech and the current expansive state of the 1st amendment. He cited an author that made a connection on the latter change in attitude that is obvious in retrospect but that I had never considered:

Fred Schauer](https://archive.is/o/6gvG8/https://www.law.virginia.edu/faculty/profile/fs7t/1206076), a law professor at the University of Virginia, stressed his agreement with the view that Trump exacerbated the growing disenchantment on the left with free speech:

You and I came of age when strong free speech positions were associated with the political left, and this was manifested on issues such as protection of civil rights demonstrators, opposition to obscenity laws, protection of anti-Vietnam War protesters, opposition to McCarthyite loyalty oaths and so on.

But, Schauer continued,

Starting roughly in the 1980s, the political valence of free speech arguments has changed, fueled in part by the feminist anti-pornography movement, in part by the movement of the Republican Party in a more libertarian and therefore anti-regulatory direction, in part by concerns about racist and other forms of hate and in part by the growth of what is now labeled political correctness.

A number of scholars have documented the ideological conversion of the left on free speech issues.

What Schauer leaves out is the open alliance of anti-porn/anti-Sex work feminists with conservatives in the 1980s. Perhaps more controversially alliances were made between them and conservatives to defund the state-funded transgender therapy that already existed at the end of the Carter administration.

But you might be thinking, “what does this have to do with opposing racism and all-around toxicity? The Left today does not support a ban on pornography” well…

Catharine MacKinnon, a law professor at the University of Michigan, expanded on the left critique of free speech jurisprudence in a 2020 article, “Weaponizing the First Amendment: An Equality Reading MacKinnon argued that:

Once a defense of the powerless, the First Amendment over the last hundred years has mainly become a weapon of the powerful. Starting toward the beginning of the 20th century, a protection that was once persuasively conceived by dissenters as a shield for radicals, artists and activists, socialists and pacifists, the excluded and the dispossessed, has become a sword for authoritarians, racists and misogynists, Nazis and Klansmen, pornographers and corporations buying elections in the dark.

I’m amazed that someone as far past their prime as Catharine MacKinnon would be trotted out by the factions of the Left that oppose free speech in jurisprudence since she hasn’t been particularly relevant since the 90s. Her obsession with pornography seems to undermine the Left case against free speech particularly with the younger demographic they are hoping to reach.

Maybe there’s a lack of talented people on today’s predominately online left who even can do something like advance a serious legal critique that could be taken seriously by jurors, judges, and prosecutors so they must tap MacKinnon.

Still it does seem odd and it makes me think that the anti-porn/sex work feminists never really went away they just bided their time for things to move in a more favorable direction for them. If this is the case, then it is a surprising example of the cultural left moderating on a culture war issue for optical reasons e.g. fear of losing support by revealing their real position. Is the anti-porn left much more widespread and/or powerful than is frequently presumed?

It’s roots in anti-porn activism makes sense when you consider the other facets of the pro-censorship Left. If words are violence or harm then why not erotic images?

I’m curious if anyone here has experience with anti-porn lefitsts/liberals and what they can tell me about their camp in politics today and their influence. Additional research information on anti-porn feminism in the 80s and 90s would be appreciated, especially if it concerns its influence on the wider Left

Article for those interested
https://archive.is/6gvG8#selection-685.0-700.0

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No, the anti-porn movement far predates the lobbying of Left-leaning feminist groups, such as the ones influenced by Catharine MacKinnon, whose group lobbied state legislatures in legal attacks against pornography and the propulsion of obscenity laws.

MacKinnon’s whole outlook was rooted in the idea that sex culture was adversarial to the interests of women, focusing almost exclusively on the attitudes and beliefs of men, particularly those who were chauvinistic, even in situations where women consented to, or willingly participated in it.

What MacKinnon conveniently overlooks is how much control women in porn do have in the industry while overstating the social impact of certain professions as a talking point… Her arguments were primarily rooted in cultural sentiments and talking points shared by both conservatives and liberals which were more common (and more voracious) during the 70s, 80s and 90s that still exist today.

She also repeatedly asserted that pornography, as a concept, was devoid of artistic value for the same reasons that conservatives would, in clear spite of the disagreement from men and women who consume or participate in the production of, hardcore pornography.

Conservative anti-porn lobbyists, lawmakers, and jurists also echoed the same, or similar, arguments made by MacKinnon and sex-negative feminists and scholars, often times misrepresenting them to be about ‘family sanctity’ rather than from the interests of women to not be sexualized.

This is just a paraphrasing of it all, but the defects are all the same.

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I agree, pornography can be artistic. But in an extension of Sturgeon’s Law [90% of science fiction is crap], 90% of pornography is crap. Of course, that is true in many artistic fields. Thus, porn needs to be evaluated just like any other artistic endeavor. And it should be seen as just as valid as any other artform.

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Also the entire “artistic value” argument is dumb. If it was created and is being viewed, it obviously has value to someone, and unless it’s causing harm, there’s no reason to oppose it unless you’re specifically trying to hurt those people

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It is artistic, in its very concept, no different than a story which professes one’s emotional fancy for anything else.

Anyone who argues or asserts otherwise is wrong, because they would have to justify making sexual interests or feelings being of lesser significance or as anything but emotions, which is not something that can be correctly asserted because they are emotions, by their own right.

I’ve seriously never understood the contention that porn somehow isn’t art because it’s focused on sex. That makes it art, and the concept of it overall is so nuanced and complex that it’s honestly no different than any other subject matter.

It can be the most garden-variety pornographic material - the fact that it caters to sexual feelings or emotions, on its own, makes it a form of art, and that should not go unappreciated.

The argument that it’s not art stems from a double-standard originating from Western puritan ideology and religious tradition. Prior to that, it was seen as art because that’s what it was. The erotic paintings, drawings, etc. we have from histories past were the Playboy, Hustler, and PornHubs of their day. They were reproduced by other artists for the sake of commercial gain, just like other famous works were, and appeared in gentlemen’s clubs, brothels, and other places of adult leisure.

Even CSAM is technically ‘artistic’ by virtue of being pornographic, but just because it’s art doesn’t mean it has a right to exist if its mere existence counts as a form of unjustifiable, intolerable harm.

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It’s because these cowards want to live like heroes without the risk of dying like them. That’s why they made the interview with the legitimate politician editing in a “dark room”:

While keeping the interview with the actual criminal brightly lit. Like I said, the solution for people who want to live like heroes is to get them to die, like heroes. Want to be a hero? Get tossed into a warzone. Doesn’t matter the outcome or reason for the war. The idea is that those busybodies get themselves killed.

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I assume it’s metaphorical, but phrases like “get them to die, like heros” seem a bit extreme for the context, and probably detract from your point. It’s not worth locking people up over fictional content, so it’s definitely not worth anyone’s death

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Given that they talk about wanting us to “face the wall” or go into a woodchipper… Well, let me put it this way. I don’t turn the other cheek. Slaps are returned with fists. Blades are returned with gunfire. Artillery is returned with nukes.

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I get that, and I can’t say I’m opposed to the point. Just not sure it has much benefit in a space like this, where everyone is on the same side about basics rights and freedoms

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I think there is a confusion regarding art. Legally, art is whatever you call art, because you can’t suppress free expression. At least in theory. But under that definition, everything is art.

The functional definition of art is a method to communicate emotions. But that is a very subjective criterion. Anything else, landscape paintings, most abstracts, portraits, etc., are just decorations. The Mona Lisa is the most famous artwork in the world, but some just see a portrait of a young woman. Pablo Picasso may be considered a great artist, but to me it’s just childish scribblings. I see nothing emotive about and don’t see it as “art”. YMMV.

Frankly, having watched various porn movies and such, over the past fifty to sixty years, I find it repetitive and unimaginative in most cases. They are just making a sex movie, not a work of art. I have seen a few where an effort was made for a message to be conveyed or at least to satirize society, but most are just people sucking and fucking. Ho hum.

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I always go with the definition of the supreme court of germany:

Art is “the result of free creative design, in which impressions, experiences and fantasies” of the artist “are brought to direct view through the medium of a certain formal language.” Recognition as art should not be made dependent on state control of style, level and content.

And this can cover, logically, all topics including sexual acts.

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The fact that they’re doing so in order to elicit sexual feelings within their audience makes it a form of art, since such feelings do qualify as emotional.

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Okay, I will accept that. But do not try and tell me it’s artistic. Artistic is a word with understood meanings of quality art and not schlock and dreck.

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You’re thinking of the social definition of artistic. Terms have very different scopes when it comes to legal proceedings.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/bees-are-fish-under-calif-endangered-species-act-state-court-2022-06-01/

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I do believe I made that distinction earlier. Legal versus functional. In this @Chie and I agree, the government has NO authority to decide what is art and what isn’t.

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Legislature doesn’t, but legally, courts do. Personally I believe it should just be as broad an interpretation as possible with no room for court reconsideration, because fuck censorship, but in practice, it is up to judges.

Also, having just finished writing an article that discusses the role fictional porn can play for CSA survivors in terms of self-expression and reframing their experiences to move forward, I’d absolutely argue that it should be considered artistic socially as well. Some people may not see it in that way, but that doesn’t change the power it has as an artistic medium for others.

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That is to be decided by the people, on an individual basis, as it is, and has been the case over the thousands of years humans have used artistic expression as a means of communication and personal/interpersonal development and engagement. Any attempt to deny that fact is to undermine - if not wholly invalidate - 1A and its core underlying rationale.

Pornography - even the most deviant or raunchy depictions or descriptions - are inherently artistic by their very description and purpose. An image or video that is of a hardcore pornographic BDSM routine featuring adult participants is art, regardless of whether those were actual human person adult participants or 3DCG fictional child models.

Even CSAM still has artistic value under this scheme, but an image like what I mentioned previously, unlike a depiction created using consenting adults or fictional, non-existent minor characters, shouldn’t exist because of the harm it causes real children, and thus its artistic merit cannot and will not save it.

And that’s okay, because the underlying rationale for suppression is the involvement of real children who were exploited and abused in the production process.

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It’s funny that people nowadays say that coomers let the Internet rot their brain, despite the fact that, before the days of computers, horny scholars would read about female ghosts in the mountains and decide to camp out in the mountains. Being literate, they were definitely smarter than some illiterate farmer.

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One of the kinds of images Ms. MacKinnon especially wanted banned were those of women “inviting penetration” (her words). What’s odd about that is that such an image constitutes a refutation of the contention that all porn is about feeding male rape fantasies. The image of a beautiful naked woman smiling at the camera while in lordosis posture clearly aims at male viewers who want to imagine that she likes him and desires him for her consensual sex partner. (But logical coherence was never the feminist antiporn sect’s strong suit.)

Part of what I suspect diminished the antiporn sect’s size and influence within feminism is the fact that more and more feminists started listening to sex workers rather than presuming to speak for them without even pretending to have so much as met one of them. Female porn models get paid a LOT more than male porn models in the same movies, despite the male models doing essentially the same work as their female coworkers. (This is one “wage gap” which feminists don’t talk about).

For generations, conservative antipornsters focused their rhetoric upon the viewers of porn and the alleged harm such viewing caused the viewer in particular and the moral fiber of society as a whole. Their view of the porn models was merely that they were miserable sinners who would burn forever if they didn’t repent. What the conservatives discovered from the feminist antipornsters in the 70’s and 80’s was the political usefulness of posturing as saviours of the porn models themselves - hapless victims who presumably needed censorship in order “rescue” them from the “abuse” of their paid profession and “save” them by putting them out of a job. :roll_eyes:

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Ms. Strossen is terrific on civil liberties and free speech. She was the president of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991-2008, back when the ACLU was the ACLU.

Nadine Strossen, though, is the same principled civil libertarian she aways was, as far as I’m aware.

She helped kick off the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (F.I.R.E.) which is essentially the new “ACLU” for people who want to defend free speech and expression like the old ACLU used to do.

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