The Devil of Violence Isn’t in Sexual Words and Images : Psychology: Feminists and fundamentalists confuse the emotional whirl of sex with rape and harassment. What children are taught is far more important.
NEW YORK — The most frequently proposed remedies to sexual harassment and rape hang on the idea that sexual words and pictures are the root of the trouble. Getting rid of these words and images, then, is the key to reducing sexual violence. Promoted by some feminists and fundamentalists as a radical solution to social ills, the remedies are actually rooted in three of our oldest traditions: the quick fix, suspicion of sex and the myth of female purity. Reliance on these can do women no good.
Consider the Pornography Victims’ Compensation Act, now in the U.S. Senate. The legislation would allow victims of sexual violence to sue publishers, distributors and retailers of any book or movie if they could persuade a jury that the words or images were obscene and had triggered the crime that harmed them. Monetary damages would be unlimited.
Sexual imagery degrades women, the argument goes, and teaches men to rape and batter them. Yet thousands of years before the printing press and camera, men raped women, and do so today in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, where no pornography or even rap music is available. No reputable research demonstrates a link between sexual imagery and violence, including the much-misinterpreted Meese Commission on Pornography and the Surgeon General’s report.
This blame-the-image argument is nevertheless appealing because it suggests a quick fix: sexual imagery is far easier to expurgate than the sexism embedded in our economy, politics, and social and family norms. Well-meaning activists feel they can beat it and win.
Yet sexual imagery causes tumescence, not violence. To all but the most zealous followers of Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, eliminating arousal is not a goal of feminism or law enforcement. Trouncing arousal will not diminish violence or otherwise better women’s lot, and should not be the basis for legislative or judicial remedies to rape and battery.
Indeed, the idea that sexual imagery or male arousal is degrading to women is curious. To accept it, one has to believe that good girls don’t arouse men.
The reasons men call sexual women “bad” are easily understood: Arousal is a threat to their sense of control; men get on top of the situation by taking women down. But the double-standard that pure girls are “good” and sexy girls “bad” is neither feminism nor rape prevention. Remedies linking sexual imagery to violence against women provide men with such escapes from responsibility as the “tight sweater” excuse. When the image is blamed, men still blame women, if not the woman in the sweater, then in the centerfold.
The favorite quick-fix remedy to sexual harassment includes a list of words and images men may never utter and from which women must be protected. Its underlying idea is that women squirm when sexual language is spoken or feel threatened when sexual imagery is presented. Worse, it tells women that they should, or that good girls do.
As effectively as any Victorian manners manual or squeally Doris Day movie, this approach urges women “not to look,” to fear sex and to imagine themselves as its victims. It is “the voice of mom” reminding us what we learned as children--that sex is “icky” and dangerous. When we hear it in grown-up terms, it clicks. Already wary of sex, we are ready to blame it for sexual harassment and violence. But male arousal is not women’s problem. Sex is not sexism. The pedestal is not feminism. And blaming images will not rid us of violence.
There is a better view. For males and females, arousal includes desire, affection but also fear and anger. Human beings fear the loss of control inherent in sex and get angry at stimuli that trigger this vulnerability. This shows up in our dreams, fantasies and culture, where it belongs.
Men and women are angry at women for another reason. Since they remain the primary caretakers of infants and toddlers, women must satisfy their children’s desires for affection, warmth and food. A child’s anger is focused on mother as well. These experiences show up, later in life, in private and public fantasies, where they again properly belongs. But the idea that what happens in fantasy happens in life is neither science nor feminism. It is voodoo. No public policy on sexual violence or harassment has any business being based on black magic.
To diminish the incidence of violence in society, one must look at the life experiences that teach children where and how to deploy power and aggression. Research continues to show that children learn their values from their three-dimensional parents and neighbors, however popular it is today to blame two-dimensional media. Four areas should be examined:
* Training that makes bullying and physical violence not only an acceptable response to frustration but a manly one, and that teaches boys that the thrill of dominance is their due;
* Training that teaches girls to be ingratiating, which makes them dismissible, and that reinforces an overreliance on pleasing others at the expense of self-respect and authority;
* Adjustments in work and family to enable men to care for newborns and children 50% of the time;
* The subtle patterns of sexism taught in the home, not only the husband who slaps his wife around but also the husband who walks out on his wife while she’s talking or who spits out “Aw, shut up.”
Three words will reduce harassment in the workplace: Look at her. What is collegial banter to one woman may be offensive to another. Adults are well-attuned to the fleeting signals of conversation--the nuances of allegiance, flattery, one-upmanship and discomfort. If a man offends a woman and makes her squirm once, he cannot be expected to read her mind. If he does it again, he is doing it to make her squirm. Remedying this requires communication between men and women, not magic lists of “bad” words.
In their attack on images and words, right-wing feminists and fundamentalists confuse the emotional whirl of sex with violence. By attacking sex, they leave the sources of violence untouched. They tell women to fear sexual fantasies in all their potent complexity rather than to develop their own. The protections of being a “lady” will neither stop violence nor make for a feminist future.
