#SEGGSED: SEX, SAFETY, AND CENSORSHIP ON TIKTOK

Defining Pornography

The definition of pornography is unstable. Although I offered some definitions that have shaped my understanding of the term in the introduction, it is necessary to reflect on other definitions of porn that are historically and culturally significant. How pornography is defined will become central to my exploration of TikTok’s selective implementation of its community guidelines. This definition of pornography lends itself to the discussion of the larger impacts of whorephobia (Blunt and Stardust, 2021) on the accessibility of sex education. Among the most famous anti-porn and sex-negative feminists is Andrea Dworkin, who, for someone who hated porn, wrote an awful lot about it. Dworkin’s definition of pornography provides insight into sex-negative feminist beliefs asserted during the Sex Wars. Dworkin defines pornography as “the graphic depiction of whores.” With no attempt at nuance or empathy towards sex workers she venomously continues, “Contemporary pornography strictly and literally conforms to the word’s root meaning: the graphic depiction of vile whores, or, in our language, sluts, cows (as in: sexual cattle, sexual chattel), cunts. The word has not changed its meaning and the genre is not misnamed” (Dworkin, 1989). In her argument for defining porn, she equates the ‘violence’ of porn with r*pe and battery, reifying the relationship between sex work and violence against women. The cause of violence against women and children unites feminists and religious conservatives on the right who believe that women have a divine purpose of serving as the moral compass of the household. The belief that it is a woman's duty to maintain the moral health of the nuclear family is also an American value emphasized by post-World War II and Cold War political tensions.  The specter of dangerous obscenity and anti-pornography stigma were seen as central to the task of containing the spread of Communism abroad and its infiltration into US lives during the Cold War. “Maintenance of an idealized family came to be seen as essential to the preservation of the ‘American way of life’ -- an ideological configuration that collapsed capitalism, consumerism, democratic institutions, and a nuclear family composed of a breadwinning father, stay-at-home mother, and obedient children” (Friedman, 2000). The demand to reject communism and protect American family values created a dominant expectation that to be a good woman and fit mother, one must police the consumption of the rest of the family, including keeping the husband and children away from morally corruptive media like pornography (Friedman, 2000). Of course, policing the social consumption of the family was far easier in the time before the internet and SNS like TikTok were potentially at the fingertips of children at all times. Through understanding an anti-pornography stance as an essential US (and anti-communist) value, combatting pornography could make one feel like they are doing the objectively good and right thing: protecting women, protecting children, rejecting communism, and upholding moral standards bolstered by faith. Anti-porn feminists believe that they are protecting, empowering, and freeing women, and folks on the right who may not usually identify with feminism or feminists, are happy to see (some) feminists taking a turn towards upholding cis-hetero-patriarchal ideas of womanhood and sexuality. To the American religious right, sex-negative feminists fulfill their womanly obligation to their families and the country by opposing the sex industry. 

Sex-negative feminist definitions of pornography and the anti-porn/anti-obscenity movements are telling attributes of the history of sex education in the United States, and perhaps why sex education in the U.S. is yet to have a national standard that is medically accurate, inclusive of diverse identities (not only sexual and gender identities but also diversity in race, class, and ability) and that teaches consent. Formal sex education in the U.S. more or less begins in the 19th century with the beginning of education becoming available to the masses. The sex education taught at the time, “heavily emphasized morality and Bible-based ethics” (Huber and Firman, 2014). In the 1870s the Comstock laws were passed, outlawing, “the distribution of birth control information or devices, characterizing them as ‘lewd’ and ‘obscene’ (Wardell, 1980)” (Huber and Firman, 2014). The legacy of the Comstock laws can be seen online, as sex educators struggle with sharing information about contraception without being censored. 

 The term “obscene” is often used in conversation with pornography, even in its definition. The online etymology dictionary traces the term ‘obscene’ from the 1590s, “‘offensive to the senses, or to taste and refinement,’ from French obscène (16c.), from Latin obscenus ‘offensive’, especially to modesty… Legally, ‘any impure or indecent publication tending to corrupt the mind and to subvert respect for decency and morality” (etymologyonline). What does it mean to “subvert respect of decency and morality,” when both categories are as subjective as obscenity and pornography? Whose standards of decency and morality are being privileged by what gets marked as obscene? Interestingly enough, Dworkin argues that pornography and obscenity are not the same, rather obscenity is an idea and therefore subjective, but pornography is concrete. Though I do not agree with Dworkin's “concrete” definition of pornography, I find her framing of obscenity as subjective to be interesting. Whether or not porn is itself obscene is a matter of one's “taste and refinement,” not an objective truth. So what is pornography when it is not defined by obscenity and violence? 

Some of the competing definitions of pornography by pro-porn and pro-sex work feminists highlight how porn is a flexible marker of constructs of morality. Pornography may be defined as a media genre that maps a culture’s shifting borders by questioning normative expectations of decorum (Kipnis 1999, Tarrant 2015). Pornography raises questions of power, desire, agency, and pleasure which disrupts conventional constructions of sex, gender, and power (McElroy 1995, Taormino, et al., 2013). Of course, the sex-positive reframing of pornography threatens the belief systems of many Americans, who as I have mentioned before, believe they are irrefutably doing the right thing by opposing the existence of the sex industry. Believing that porn has value beyond sexual gratification destabilizes the teachings of institutions such as the state, religious institutions, and likely one’s family. Sex-positive feminism rings the alarm bells for moral panics surrounding the protection of childhood innocence. This can be seen through national attitudes towards sex education.
 

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