Dr Clarissa Smith

Senior lecturer at the Centre for Research in Media & Cultural Studies at the University of Sunderland

Dr Smith researchers women readers and viewers of pornography and has just published a book "One For The Girls! The Pleasures and Practices of Reading Women's Porn"

Do you think all porn is woman hatred ?

No, not at all. In fact, I think there is a problem with the idea that representations of sexual activity are anti- women. Depending on who is doing the talking, this idea of woman hatred seems to be based on the idea that showing women's bodies is a means of degrading women, that it robs them of their subjectivity or individuality. That presupposes that there is something "precious" that resides in the clothed or hidden body and that there is nothing positive about showing bodies. There's also a very problematic assumption that subjectivity or individuality is something that is not embodied. I think that there is real potential for women in the display of their bodies and the ability to look at other people's bodies. Just as with other kinds of bodily experiences there can be a fascination in looking at bodies engaged in sexual activity and still and moving images are capable of capturing the excitements, pleasures and experiences of sexuality. there are some images of women that I have no taste for but to brand those images as woman hatred is simplistic.

Do you think feminists who criticise pornography as objectification of women have a point ?

Perhaps. But I think we need to think through what it is we mean by objectification and the way the term or concept is used in anti-porn feminism is very problematic. There are two theoretical traditions that give root to the term objectification: Marxist analysis based on the idea of the commodity (the thing sold for profit) proposes women's gender and sexuality are represented in porn as things to be purchased for male pleasure. So women supposedly become objects or articles for trade and thus experience this as alienation from the supposed authenticity of "female sexuality" (as if this actually existed as a singular form). The second level is derived from Freud where parts of the body stand in for the whole. So use of cropped images showing just the breast or the vagina, are supposed to fetishize, fragment and reduce female sexuality to those parts. So for both these traditions, objectification is supposed to be bad - either a sexual disorder: fetishism or the social disorder of "dehumanising women as objects". Neither of these approaches allows for an understanding of the ways in which we might enjoy our bodies as "objects" for ourselves - there is a pleasure in observing, for example, how our legs move or the curve of our feet or whatever and that this pleasure in the part may be a significant element of our pleasure in ourselves as whole human beings. Porn can and often does, speak to those kinds of pleasure.

Should pornography be banned ?

No.

Can porn provide positive models for women ?

Why not? My own research found that women were using a soft core magazine to explore their own attitudes, practices and experiences - sometimes to reject practices, sometimes to try them out, othertimes just to think about them. I don't think that it is useful to think in terms of separating out forms of porn into "good" porn, "bad" porn without accepting that what one person might find positive, another finds repressive or disgusting. However, exploring how porn fits into its readers/viewers" lives does show that porn can have all kinds of uses including but not limited to masturbation and that any positivity there is in porn lies in the ways it fits into women's lives. For some, the positivity might mean a rejection of certain practices as not for them; for others an affirmation of their sexual pleasures - for example, there is plenty of evidence that porn has been a real resource for people who's sexuality has been deemed "outlaw" such as gay men and lesbian women.

Do you think the liberalisation of access to pornography has had a positive effect for women ?

Liberalisation has opened up debate and I think that is a good thing. I also think that we have a tendency to talk about porn in very one-dimensional terms assuming purposes and meanings to pornography, uses and effects that are singular. I disagree that we can state definitively whether porn is good or bad for women, the questions are much wider and more interesting than that!

Do you think there are any acts that it is dangerous for people to look at ?

No!

Do you think there are some pictures that are dangerous ?

No! I know that answer is probably going to give rise to the question "what about images of children?" and yes that is a problem but there are rafts of laws already existing which make these images illegal. But I would want to make clear that I don't think that seeing a picture of child will turn the viewer into a sex fiend.

Have you any other comments about ponography ?

Overall, I think one of the significant problems in our way of talking about pornography is the focus on the idea of interpreting porn - that is, your earlier questions presuppose viewers watch pornography in order to interpret it but I don't think thats what viewers do at all. Instead I'd want to say that people to respond to pornography and through that response or responses give it a significance in their own lives - in their pleasures, experiences, understanding of themselves and to wider questions about the social role of sexuality in our culture. I don't think that people who reject pornography are "wrong", they just respond differently and therefore give porn a significance that is different from that accorded by someone who "likes" porn. I'm not now suggesting that its all a matter of taste (although that is important) but there is no one instance of pornography, no one use of pornography, no one meaning to pornography.

Have you got any suggestions for further reading ?

There's masses of books out there on porn and its a very mixed bag - if I was to recommend anything I think it would be Catherine Lumby, Bad Girls; Jane Juffer, At Home with Pornography; and Kath Albury, Yes Means Yes and, of course, my own book!!!! So that's One for the Girls! I also think that there are some very important books written on a sister topic - cinematic violence - which are very useful and here I'd recommend Martin Barker & Kate Brooks, Knowing Audiences which is about Judge Dredd, plus Martin has written a number of very interesting articles about "risky" films like Straw Dogs and A Clockwork Orange.

back to the main womens' views page