Criticisms of inegalitarian pornography (which I will call “pornography” hereafter for brevity)—or what Ann Eaton defines as “sexually explicit representations that as a whole eroticize relations (acts, scenarios, or postures) characterized by gender inequity”—are not new. Partly in response to free speech defenses of pornography, much philosophical critique has stemmed from the philosophy of language tradition. Using J. L. Austin’s insight that saying things sometimes constitutes doing things, anti-pornography feminists such as Rae Langton have argued that pornography involves illocutionary speech acts that oppress, subordinate, and silence women. One controversial aspect of this speech act account is the claim that pornography as a form of speech not only causes the oppression and subordination of women but also itself constitutes oppression and subordination. If pornography is not only speech that can produce harmful effects but also an objectionable act itself, then defenses of pornography based on freedom of speech are less powerful, and the regulation of pornography is more warranted.
Langton and others who argue that pornography is itself an illocutionary act of oppression or subordination support their conclusion by saying that this is the best explanation for pornography’s subordinating and oppressive effects. But many who object to Langton’s argument question the overall subordinating and oppressive effects of pornography. It is also hard to operationalize these effects to gather empirical evidence of whether these effects occur in some particular viewings of pornography, let alone most viewings. Further, many have argued that most producers or distributors of pornography do not have the intention to oppress or subordinate women. Their main aim is monetary profit. It is also hard to establish that most viewers of pornography have the intention of oppressing women when they watch pornography. Their main intention may just be acquiring sexual pleasure. Langton’s argument is undermined unless the relevant claims about intentions are established.
Moreover, as Jennifer Saul has argued, only utterances in contexts can be speech acts, so pornography itself is not a speech act. While proponents of the speech act approach have attempted to answer these critics, the speech act approach still faces serious challenges and argumentative burdens. I think we need to consider how helpful or necessary the speech act approach is and whether we can develop other philosophical tools to evaluate and condemn the wrongs of pornography. Moreover, we—including philosophers and laypeople—do not have a clear conception of what acts count as oppressive or subordinating, even though the words “oppression” and “subordination” come up frequently in academic work and our daily usage of language. Therefore, I develop an account of what acts of oppression and subordination are that is useful, produces specific judgments that align with our reliable intuitions, and can circumvent problems faced by the speech act approach to pornography.
In developing my account, I have been heavily influenced by what philosophers call “conceptual engineering.” When we have uncertainties about how to understand a term or a concept, we usually consider how the term or the concept is used in ordinary language. But in certain hard cases, we cannot get a satisfactory answer just by attending to ordinary language. Conceptual engineering projects rely mostly on normative reasons to choose some understanding or definition of a concept over others. As Sally Haslanger explains, conceptual engineers are motivated by ameliorative goals to try to formulate a concept that best suits the point of having a particular term. They ask about the most important purpose of talking about the term and work toward an overall conceptual scheme that best supports valuable moral and political goals.
I think these sorts of ameliorative goals should be assigned greater importance for understanding concepts that have more moral and political importance than for other concepts. And the concept of oppressive acts has profound moral and political importance. So, ameliorative considerations ought to be given significant weight when we try to understand what oppressive acts are. In the case of oppressive acts, I think it is obvious that at least one crucial ameliorative consideration is the moral and political goal of combatting structural oppression.
I assume that oppression is a structural phenomenon and take social norms and institutions to be crucially constitutive elements of the structure of oppression. I propose that an act of oppression is one that complies with or reinforces social norms or institutions, in their broad or local manifestations, that oppress certain people. Similarly, an act is subordinating when it complies with or reinforces social norms or institutions that subordinate some people.
I intend the criteria I propose to be sufficient conditions rather than necessary conditions for oppressive and subordinating acts. I leave it open if there are other conditions that are sufficient to make an act oppressive or subordinating. Crucially, when we determine whether an act is oppressive or subordinating on my account, we need to consider the context, the intention, and the effects, among other factors. But none of these factors is by itself necessary. For instance, the intention behind an act is relevant to whether the act complies with or reinforces some social norm that oppresses, but acts can comply with or reinforce oppressive social norms without the agent having a conscious intention to oppress anyone. The effects of an act are relevant to our judgment of whether the act complies with or reinforces oppressive norms. But overall or long-term oppressive effects need not obtain for an act to be oppressive, since the oppressive effects could be resisted in a particular context.
For example, legislation to undermine the voting rights of people who live in poverty might be quickly repealed due to fierce resistance, and the intended oppressive effects would not obtain as a result. But passing and approving such a law is still an act of oppression. A sexist remark from Hui-Jun’s coworker during Hui-Jun’s conversation with him is strongly protested by Hui-Jun. No one else is affected by the remark in the end, except that the coworker may hold fewer sexist attitudes due to Hui-Jun’s resistance. But uttering the sexist remark is still an oppressive act if it by itself complies with or reinforces social norms or institutions that oppress women. Producing, showing, or viewing pornography in certain settings complies with or reinforces social norms and institutions that oppress women. The specific instances of producing, showing, or viewing pornography are oppressive speech acts.
Oppressive acts are ubiquitous, according to my account. I take this feature to be a virtue—or at least, not a weakness—if we take our ameliorative goals seriously. I leave aside what ought to be done about oppressive acts in this post. But regardless of what moral, political, and legal reactions to oppressive acts are warranted, registering some acts as oppressive is the first step towards our goal of combating oppression. And registering more rather than fewer acts as oppressive is at least not a hindrance towards reaching that goal.
Moreover, social norms and institutions are sustained by individual acts that comply with or reinforce them. Social norms and institutions can only change when enough acts that sustain those norms and institutions change. Following Cristina Bicchieri, I understand social norms as shared behavioral rules that prescribe or proscribe behaviors within relatively large classes of situations that occur in a culture or group. Behaviors regulated by norms are interdependent. One crucial condition for an individual’s choice to adhere to a particular norm is her expectation of what others do (empirical expectation) and her expectation of what others think a person should do in such a situation (normative expectation). Acts that comply with or reinforce a social norm, therefore, signal to others that social expectations for these acts exist. This is one reason why individual acts that comply with some social norm also sustain the norm.
Based on empirical research on social norms and changing norms, acts that comply with social norms sustain and reinforce them, while acts that defy social norms potentially contribute to changing norms to various degrees. If the most important ameliorative consideration for our conception of oppressive acts is our goal of combating systematic oppression, including changing social norms that oppress people, identifying acts that sustain and reinforce oppressive norms as oppressive acts is a crucial step towards this goal. This includes acts that simply comply with oppressive norms, even when there is no direct intention of oppressing or no overall significant effect of oppressing. Our ameliorative considerations give us strong reason to adopt my broader conception of oppressive acts. And my conception allows us to say that certain production and viewings of pornography are oppressive acts without having to answer challenges to the speech act approach.
More importantly, my account picks out the right cases of viewings as oppressive. Imagine two male coworkers who both embrace the oppressive norm that women should play a submissive role in heterosexual relations, including sexual interactions. They talk about their preferences for pornography that portrays women as submissive and objectified while they have a drink together after work. Their viewings of this kind of pornography and their chat about it are acts that comply with the oppressive social norm that expects women to be submissive to men. Their acts also reinforce each other’s beliefs about the oppressive social norm. So, their acts are acts of oppression and subordination according to my account, even if they do not take their viewings and discussions as oppressive, and even when we cannot find or verify oppressive effects on particular people resulting from their acts or oppressive intentions from them.
Next, consider anti-pornography feminists’ showing and critically discussing pornography that portrays women as submissive during sex. Their acts do not comply with or reinforce the social norms that women ought to be submissive. Rather, their acts aim to undermine the oppressive norms to various extents. Thus, their viewings and discussion of pornography are not acts of oppression.
What about femdom pornography in which male actors play a submissive and subordinating role? Since a wider social norm of males being oppressed and subordinated by women does not exist in the workplace, homes, or bedrooms, this type of pornography does not comply with any oppressive or subordinating social norm. Therefore, it is not an act of oppression and subordination (even if it may be morally problematic for other reasons). And if it turns out that showing and viewing this sort of pornography has the capacity to undermine existing oppressive social norms, which I think is likely the case, then we have reasons to promote the production and viewing of this type of pornography. The same analysis holds for pornography that depicts the sexual agency of gay and trans people, as well as people with disabilities or other features that make others perceive them as sexually unattractive in mainstream sexual contexts. It also holds for pornography that depicts manners and forms of sexual conduct that do not comply with the dominant, misogynistic, and racist norms surrounding sex and pornography.
Domination, subordination, and power imbalances in private relationships and interactions, including sex, involve complex ethical considerations. My account suggests that when we evaluate power relations in these specific instances of private relationships and interactions, the ethical consideration of utmost importance is whether there are oppressive and subordinating social norms in a broader context that have a pervasive and significant impact on these private relationships and interactions. Therefore, it is able to incorporate the valuable insight that only utterances in contexts can be speech acts and that the context is crucial for determining whether a speech act is an act of oppression.
You may worry that such an expansive account of oppressive acts is too harsh or will create backlash from people who fear being accused of engaging in oppressive acts. However, acts of oppression admit of degrees according to my account. Social norms and institutions are oppressive to different extents. Acts also comply with or reinforce oppressive social norms to different degrees. Accordingly, some acts are more oppressive than others. For instance, even though the norms sustained and reinforced by pornography are highly oppressive, threatening the dignity and autonomy of women and other disadvantaged groups, producing, sharing or appreciating pornography with others more substantially reinforces oppressive norms and is thus more oppressive than one private viewing that has minimal effect on the viewer (although private viewings are still oppressive because they reinforce oppressive norms by providing incentives for the production of pornography.)
On my account, oppressive acts encompass a wide variety of acts that differ from each other not only in degree of oppressiveness but also on many other dimensions. These differences can all potentially affect how we understand—and what we should do with—oppressive acts morally, politically, and legally. While discussing all of these dimensions in detail is beyond the scope of this post, we can consider several factors and how they might apply to the case of pornography.
First, we need to distinguish between the oppressiveness of acts and the wrongness or blameworthiness of acts. When we consider the wrongness or blameworthiness of an agent performing an oppressive act, we need to take into account factors that are not relevant to our evaluation of the oppressiveness of the act. These factors include the usual considerations determining the degree of moral responsibility that the agent bears and whether there are excuses that reduce the blameworthiness of the act.
One such factor that is especially relevant to oppressive acts is how costly and difficult it is to resist complying with some oppressive social institution or social norm. Suppose we think that capitalism is oppressive. It can be extremely costly and difficult for someone living in a capitalist society to avoid doing things that comply with capitalist social institutions. This is a factor that can reduce the wrongness of acts that comply with capitalist social institutions. It may be easier to resist the pressure of social norms than that of social institutions in general. But resisting extremely powerful social norms can also be very costly when the social acceptance, social support, and social bases of self-esteem available to one are being threatened by defying some norms. These are some of the mitigating factors when we assign moral, political, and legal blameworthiness to oppressive acts even when we hold the oppressiveness constant.
My account of oppressive acts by itself does not directly lead to conclusions about the legal regulation of pornography (as it would need to be combined with a theory of political legitimacy to do so). However, my account does imply that producing, viewing, or other acts related to pornography that reinforce oppressive and inegalitarian norms are oppressive acts. We are morally obligated to refrain from engaging in those acts and to resist them when the sacrifices are not too high—which is usually the case for most people.
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