The Impact of Internet Pornography on Married Women: A Psychodyna ...

Dines et al. (1998) also see issues of pornography embedded in a larger system and discuss the consumption and production of pornography from a social, political, and economic context. From their perspective, women are objects in pornographic representations. The authors view pornography as part of an oppressive, patriarchal sexual system that perpetuates injustice. Like MacKinnon (1987) and Dworkin (1989), Dines et al. (1998) believe that this pattern of “dominance and submission … … has been incarnated as sexuality in each of us” (p. 6).

According to Laura Lederer (1980), only two sides of the pornography issue had been presented as of 1980. She proposed that the conservative approach, which declares pornography to be immoral, and the liberal approach, which presents pornography as an aspect of our expanding human sexuality, have not addressed the culture’s debasement of women in pornographic images and films. Like other social feminists (Dines et al., 1998; MacKinnon, 1987; Dworkin, 1989), Lederer (1980) views women as victims in the pornography debate. Lorde (1980) expands the discourse by examining the role of desire and eroticism in pornography. She believes women have learned to suppress eroticism as a result of being immersed in a patriarchal culture.

In his contribution to the discourse on pornography, Khan (1979) evaluates pornography from an aesthetic and psychological perspective rather than focusing on the judicial and ethical. He criticizes the “ecriture” of pornography for its repetition, and lack of literary style imagination, and monotony. It is not that it is immoral but that it is “pathetically bad literature” (Khan, 1979, p. 221), which alienates an individual from himself and from the other. Pornography is not about intimacy. It appears to be about sensuality and orgiastic pleasure, but is really about a physical manipulation of one’s own body and the other’s bodily organ. He agrees with radical feminists in equating pornography with rage, humiliation, and submission. “The true achievement of pornography is that it transmutes rage into erotic somatic events” (p. 222). Rather than stimulating desire, it paradoxically is about a lack of desire. Compulsive use of pornography inhibits the inner capacity for growth.