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During a debate on pornography on SBS TV on October 5, Sydney academic Helen Pringle argued for sexuality vilification legislation to combat pornography. Pringle took great pains to differentiate between "erotica" and "pornography". The latter, she said, promotes inequality. She drew comparisons between racial and homosexual anti-vilification legislation, and argued that a sexuality vilification bill would provide recourse for those who felt "vilified" by pornography. Pringle's proposal is the latest in a series of legislative proposals by pro-censorship feminists around the world to control the production of sexually explicit imagery. The most well-known of these was proposed by US lawyer Catherine MacKinnon and author Andrea Dworkin in the early 1990s. They sought to provide women, who considered themselves to have been harmed by "degrading" material, recourse in the courts. Regardless of the difficulties in defining pornography or "degrading" material, such legislative approaches have other weaknesses in common. First, they display an over reliance on legislative solutions for what is a much broader social problem — sexism. Secondly, they exhibit an extreme willingness to hand crucial social decisions, such as what we are permitted to watch or read, over to nameless, faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats. Thirdly, they seek to define sexist and degrading imagery in a very narrow fashion, deliberately confusing it with sexually explicit imagery. If Pringle describes material which promotes inequality as pornographic, what is her attitude towards margarine commercials? Every day we are surrounded with material — in advertising, the mass media, school text books and religious institutions — which promotes sexist attitudes towards women. It is certainly one of the tasks of the women's movement to highlight the problem of imagery which perpetuates sexism — and then to tackle that sexism. But for this to happen, it must be done on a much broader scale than simply via vilification legislation. A sexuality vilification bill would contribute very little to a broad based, anti-sexism awareness and education campaign (which is sorely needed). Also, just as worryingly it could be used to achieve the opposite of Pringle's (however noble) intentions. Censorship legislation in one form or another has traditionally been used to suppress the voices of those who are least able to be heard. In Ontario, Canada, when a Dworkin-MacKinnon type court ruling was made regarding pornographic material, it was subsequently used as a pretext to raid a local lesbian and gay bookshop, and ban a lesbian magazine. Activists in the women's and gay and lesbian movements of the 1970s campaigned strongly against censorship laws which were used to suppress publications which advocated a challenge to the nuclear, monogamous, heterosexual family. More recently, safe sex campaigns have come under attack from pro-censorship forces. The struggle to combat sexism must take place on many fronts. Legislative attempts to further limit, rather than increase, our freedom of expression, are the wrong way to go.
Kath Gelber