In an ideal world of undamaged people, would there be some forms of intensely sexually arousing media that would play a role in people's lives? I believe so.

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Introduction

 

In our society, pornography is considered something immoral, pernicious, shameful, scandalous. Those who produce it, and those who are its audience, are seen as disreputable.

(Pornography I am defining as any media that depict sexual matters and whose purpose –whatever the nature of the depiction (however subtle or blatant)—is to produce intense sexual arousal in its audience. Such media include pictures, stories, and videos.)

Looking at the whole universe of today’s pornography, one can certainly find much to object to in terms of what’s healthy for human relationships and what’s moral. But the American condemnation of pornography tends not to be confined to any particular kinds of pornography, but rather objects in principle to depictions whose purpose is the arousal of “prurient interest.”

It is in this more comprehensive condemnation that the defects in American morality’s relationship to sexuality are revealed. Indeed, I would argue that in a moral and sexually healthy society, there would be a respectable place for some kinds of pornography. And I would venture further that what’s wrong with the pornography in today’s America is merely the counterpart with what’s wrong with our culture’s sexual morality.

Where Does Sexuality Fit Into the Human Good?

 

Can you imagine any fully explicit depiction of people engaging in sex that you would think to be a good thing for some adults to make and for other adults to watch? If not, why not?

Our culture creates media –considered entirely legitimate and respectable-- that evoke in us the experience of grief. We have media expressions, generally held in high regard, that provoke us to the experience of fear. So also with anger and wonder and nostalgia, and other feelings that are part of the basic repertoire of human experiences.

If all these feelings can be the legitimate outcomes of our experiences of media (literature or film or painting or whatever), why should sexual arousal be different?

Is it because there’s some reason why sexuality uniquely should be kept private? But why should it be acceptable for our media to explore all kinds of other aspects of our lives in intimate detail but somehow must stop short of getting deeply into a sexual space?

Is your objection based on the idea that the conditions under which people are brought in to participate in the production of much of today’s pornography are exploitive or coercive? If so, would you approve if the conditions of such employment were fair and if the participation were freely chosen? Or do you maintain that no pornography could be produced if fairness and freedom of choice were protected? Is it your belief that in a healthy society, for no one would it be an acceptable and wise choice to participate in the creation of the pornography (issues of consumption aside)?

If you disapprove of all explicitly sexual, deliberately arousing media – if you disapprove of all pornography—is it because you think that there’s something fundamentally wrong, or base, or sinful, or dirty about sexuality?

This certainly has been a widespread attitude in the history of our civilization. But what is the justification for it?

Sexuality is not only necessary for the transmission of life, but sexual passion is one of the most powerful avenues along which people experience a gladness to be alive.

If “Therefore choose life” is supposed to be the injunction from the God of the Bible, why would the arousal of sexual desire be contrary to our notion of the sacred in human life?

Indeed there are some religious traditions –including some threads in the Judeo-Christian line—in which sexuality is seen as connected with the sacred.

But, it might be objected, that sacred sexuality –generally, sexual love within a committed marriage relationship—is an entirely different thing from becoming aroused by pornography.

Yet is it necessary to draw so complete a separation between the two?

If a married couple were to use pornography as part of the means of stoking their sexual fires together –and many couples now do use pornography in this way—would that meet with your approval? Is there any reason why good sexuality has to be a purely hermetic thing between two people cut off from the experience and observation of its universality? Is there some virtue to two people going through life with each other being the only sexual beings they ever encounter.

Is experiencing our shared humanity not as valuable in the sexual realm as in the other realms of life?

The Spirit Behind What is Shown

 

If you object to pornography, is it because there is so much in the porn of our society that depicts relationships in an unhealthy way? I agree that much of today’s porn has pathological and degrading elements.

But is that any different from what we see in all our other arts: are there not many of them that, while not being explicitly sexual, show us aspects of human lives in a spirit that degrades us as an audience? (Is it not the spirit in which violence, for example, is depicted –in Hamlet, for example, or the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, as opposed to something, like Hostel or ?, which glorifies violence—that determines whether the work enhances or diminishes our humanity?)

Should it not be the spirit behind the depiction, rather than the content of what is depicted, that determined whether we should appreciate or condemn a given media expression?

The idea is valid that there should be standards by which we judge the moral quality of what our media presents us with. But the question is: what should be at the heart of those standards?

In the America I grew up in, the essence of the standards had to do with restraint in the depiction of sexuality. I would propose that what is more to the point is the spirit with which this sexuality expresses itself.

We could ask ourselves of any actions depicted on the screen, would I feel good if this is how things were between my spouse and me? Would I feel good if he/she felt with me that way, if he/she looked at me that way, if he/she touched me that way? Is the sexual experience being shown one that we’d wish for ourselves or for those we care about?

If the answer is yes, then I say this can be a life-serving thing. To awaken sexuality and to reveal it expressing itself in a good spirit is, I would argue, a good thing.

So there are lines to be drawn: no violence or cruelty. But plenty of eagerness to give pleasure and plenty of being comfortable with one’s sexuality and plenty of excitement and enjoyment and plenty of love and care. (These latter elements are not so rare in today’s pornography.) It would seem that the line between love and cruelty, between the kind and the unkind, is no harder to draw than in human affairs generally.

Would you approve a pornographic –sexually arousing—film that stayed on the right side of that line? Would you agree that seeing two people treating each other in a way that one would hope for, that one would wish for others, helps open us up to a part of the sacred?

The Whole and the Unwhole

 

Taken as a whole, the pornography we see in our society today has its sickness. But so also does that sexual morality that condemns it. They are both part right and part wrong. That’s the nature of splits. That’s the cost of polarization.

Our culture is very split –unwhole-- in its relation to sexuality, being both lecherous and repressive. It’s a dialogue of unwhole parts: the partial unwholeness that we see in most porno materials is a mirror of sorts reflecting the unwholeness that we have in the realm of sexual morality.

The culture of pornography and the morality of sexual condemnation are two sides of the same coin. In people like Jimmy Swaggart and Reverend Hazzard, we see people who in their very lives have dramatized the larger cultural splits. Their tragedies manifest the cultural failure to bring the pieces together into a whole that embraces both the sexual energies of the human being and the need to channel our energies in accordance with a life-serving concept of the human good.

So we should begin to conceive of what porno would look like it if were part of a WHOLE (not split) relation to our sexuality. If we are pretty much agreed –new agers and evangelicals—that fulfilled loving sexuality is an important part of our relation to the sacred, perhaps we can strive together to envision what sexually arousing media would look like in a culture that is whole.

If sexuality is connected with the sacred, and if sexual arousal can be part of the gift of a life in touch with the sacred, is there any reason we should not have media that can open up the channels for us to receive that gift?

Authors Bio:
Andy Schmookler, an award-winning author, political commentator, radio talk-show host, and teacher, was the Democratic nominee for Congress from Virginia's 6th District. His new book -- written to have an impact on the central political battle of our time -- is WHAT WE'RE UP AGAINST. His previous books include The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution, for which he was awarded the Erik H. Erikson prize by the International Society for Political Psychology.