Playboy’s big cover-up is anything but a victory for women

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/19/playboy-cover-up-women-nude-pornography

Version 0 of 1.

Last week, Playboy magazine announced that it would no longer be featuring naked women in its pages. When it comes to pornography, the internet has stolen the magazine’s audience – so forgive me for not jumping with glee at the decision. This is no victory for feminism. This is a warning that the proliferation of pornography is one of the most pressing and urgent cultural battles of our time. Girls and boys, women and men, are living in a culture saturated with pornography.

Related: The Playboy problem: has the brand ever endangered women?

The insidious reach of pornography is not limited to the internet. Pornography has sexualised mainstream culture and media. Bare-breasted women are splashed across the Daily Star newspaper, while men surrounded by “pussy” rap about violent sex in chart-topping music videos. The Blurred Lines single, which has been banned from some educational institutions for apparently glorifying rape, was one of the bestselling singles of all time, with sales of 14.8m in 2013. The moral of the story is: sex has always been used to sell, now it seems rape makes sales soar.

The pornified media eroticises the gendered dualism of dominance and submission. Playboy provides “entertainment for men” by objectifying women. Only women who represent pure sex are visible. Meanwhile, glossy fashion magazines groom women and girls to become beautiful but passive objects of male desire. Pornography has made women aware that every part of their body is displayed, scrutinised and open to ridicule. The rise of pornography and the surveillance of women’s bodies in popular culture have changed beauty practices.

Some women now resort to labiaplasty, breast augmentation or genital piercings to emulate the bodies of the “porn stars” who are glorified by men. Dr David Veale, a consultant psychiatrist, has linked the surge in demand for labiaplasty to greater access to pornography, as women compare their bodies to “porn stars” who may have had the surgery.

The word “pornography” is derived from Ancient Greek and means “writing about whores”. Mainstream pornography epitomises the origin of the words: the graphic denigration and humiliation of women. In the construct of the “slut”, every aspect of the development of girls’ and women’s sexuality is fetishised: there is pornography devoted to children, teenagers, to women who are menstruating, pregnant, lactating, who are daughters and mothers and grandmothers. And for specialist titillation, black and Asian women’s bodies are offered up to audiences.

Sexism is inherent to much pornography. In the process of denigrating women and girls, pornographers teach men and boys what sex is: no means yes, rape is eroticised sex, and hypermasculinity is the norm. Boys and men are also the victims of pornography. Watching pornography makes sexual intercourse into a performance, rather than an intimate act, in which boys and men are expected to measure up to “porn stars”.

Of 304 pornography scenes analysed for a research study, 88%contained physical aggression, such as spanking, gagging and slapping. Pro-sex anti-porn feminists recognise that there is a relationship between pornography and the staggering rates of physical and sexual violence perpetrated by men against women. But they need to be unwavering in making a robust case against porn even when pro-porn women valorise the industry without resistance. Pornography is not countercultural when it is mainstreamed, and it is not transgressive when it reinforces stale socially constructed gender roles. Pornographers do not seek to unleash women’s sexuality. They seek to profit from exploiting women.

Globally, porn is reportedly a $97bn industry. The law says women consent to pornography even when hanged, whipped, beaten, fisted, mutilated and gangbanged. And yet, the homosexual sadomasochistic case of R v Brown (1994)concluded that consent is no valid defence to assault. “Porn stars” are apparently the exception.

Related: Playboy magazine to stop publishing pictures of naked women

These women choose to appear in pornography so they must be punished with sex, which is often synonymous with violence in this context. The law frames pornography as an issue of obscenity, decency and morality. Pornography does not cause injury because of obscenity. It causes injury because it is violence against women and girls. Women in pornography are at risk of physical and psychological harm: post-traumatic stress, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, diseases and so on.

To take just one account, former “porn star” Vanessa Belmond has described how, in the course of making pornography, she was infected with chlamydia numerous times, had gonorrhoea once, and suffered injuries through sexual acts that left her torn and bleeding and requiring heavy medication.

Which aspects of this are emancipating?

Recognising the need for recourse to law for the injuries caused by pornography, two US feminists, Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, drafted the Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance in the mid-1980s. The law redefined pornography as a violation of women’s civil rights, and gave women a civil remedy for harm inflicted on them by pornographers. Arguably, the law was survivor-led by Linda Lovelace, the prostituted woman who appeared in notorious 1970s porn film Deep Throat. The sexual slavery she endured at the hands of her brutal husband/pimp was captured in lurid Technicolor. In Linda’s own words, “every time someone watched that film, they are watching me being raped”.

With depressing inevitability, the law met a backlash from American liberals who contended that pornography is free speech. Stimulation from the sexual exploitation of women and girls is not free speech when it devalues all women and girls. It is not free. It comes at a cost. A cost paid by some of the most vulnerable in our society.