Susan Griffin's PORNOGRAPHY AND SILENCE: by Margaret Smith Susan Griffin's Pornography and Silence: Culture's Revenge Against Nature is a very special book and at this moment, very appropriate reading for Canadian women. During the past few months, concerned women and feminist groups across Canada have become increasingly vocal and visible in their opposition to pornography. This increased activity is a response to the changing role of pornography in Canadian society. Traditionally, pornography has been a product about women, produced and packaged by men, and marketed almost exclusively to men through pornographic magazines, 16mm. and 35mm. film theatres and rental agencies. The images were a male interpretation which presented very specific messages and values about women's bodies and sexuality: we are sex objects available for use and abuse by men. Women certainly knew of the existence of pornography when passing by the magazine racks in their neighborhood milk and variety stores, through conversational references to stag parties and at home, through the material purchased by husbands and sons. Nonetheless, pornography was a male preserve; part of a separate male culture and consumerism. Although readily available, men, women and children had to make a conscious decision to consume it. They had to visit a store, open a magazine, pay an admission. Today the product is still the same, except for an increase in violent imagery. But the way it is produced and marketed has changed drastically, with the application of the new video display and reproduction equipment. Decisions by Pay TV networks such as First Choice, to air Playboy films, are effecting the transfer and integration of pornography into our mainstream visual culture. Previously available by choice, it now confronts and is increasingly difficult to avoid, particularly for consumers such as children who are in the process of developing their value systems and attitudes about women and men and about male/female relations. Pornography is a problem because it promotes, through fabricated and distorted images of women, a view of sexuality which is technical, violent, and without passion. It isolates and alienates people from a sexual dynamic which is personal, warm, nurturant, exuberant and fun. It is also a problem because the pornographic values about women complement and reinforce the more general societal values which contribute to women's secondary status in the society. The access to, ease and economy of video reproduction make censorship irrelevant as a solution to pornography. My own view is that, aside from the very serious social and political problems presented by the censorship issue, it was never a viable solution anyway because restriction of access does not at all address the impulses or values which motivate the consumer to desire such a product. |
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