Both Sides Of The Horseshoe Are Dead Wrong About Banning Pornography

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Governments have a long history of trying to protect women from making bad choices and many rights—the right to vote, the right to divorce, the right to obtain a line of credit without a male guardian present—were secured over the objections those who thought women would abuse that liberty. And while we now cherish those rights, others, such as a woman’s right to express herself sexually, have become prime targets for paternalism on both the left and the right.

On the right, arguments for banning pornography often center around how it affects men. Conservative men often report being “addicted” to pornography, and describe their shame and self-loathing after consuming it. In one not particularly reliable survey, up to 50% of self-identified Christian men were also self-identified pornography addicts.

On the left, the arguments often focus on how pornography hurts women. How it degrades them, dehumanizes them, and causes men to treat them worse, leading to more sexual assault, more pedophilia, and even “bad sex.”

For these reasons, both sides of the horseshoe argue that we should ban pornography because it will improve our relationships with one another, make men kinder to women, and protect women from bad, life-destroying choices. And as is often the case when there is substantial bipartisan agreement, they’re dead wrong.

A brief survey of countries that ban pornography, countries like North Korea, China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iran, does not suggest that banning pornography leads to any sort of improvement in the lot of women. If banning pornography were truly an effective way to get men to treat women better, we might expect to see even one country on the list where women might prefer to live. But if there’s an example, I haven’t found it.

And a brief history of the practice of banning women from doing sexual things does not suggest that it works out great for women. American vice squads, now often rebranded to “human trafficking” units, have a long and sordid history of sexually assaulting the women they’re expected to protect from brutish men. FOSTA/SESTA, passed nearly unanimously in 2018 as a way to protect women from being able to post advertisements for sexual services online, resulted in a spike in beatings, murders, and rapes as sex workers had to go out into the real world to find customers—reducing their ability to vet potential clients.

It would be naïve to suspect that banning pornography would end it. There will always be a market. There will always be countries where it is legal to produce. But making it illegal provides those with capital in the industry far more leverage to demand unreasonable things from their employees without those employees having legal recourse. Reasonable legal protections—like the right to demand other performers use a condom, the right to being paid wages on time, the right of compensation from workplace accidents, simply can’t exist in a criminal space, which is why you don’t see drug mules getting dental plans.

And even if banning pornography could readily be done, there comes the difficult question of what qualifies. In the 1960s and 70s, at a time when obscenity laws were more regularly enforced, judges and juries often disagreed about what constituted “hardcore pornography” without “redeeming social value.” In one 1973 case, the Supreme Court of Georgia held that the film “Carnal Knowledge” was so morbidly sexual it could enjoy no First Amendment protection. And it wasn’t until SCOTUS weighed in a year later that a diligent reader could learn it was a movie about Art Garfunkel and Jack Nicholson both dating Candice Bergen.

And then there’s the problem of slippery slopes — and yes, I know, once you start making one slippery slope argument you’re bound to start making more. But traditionally, agencies in charge of limiting things, whether it’s crime or pollution or workplace health and safety violations, tend to expand their mandate over time, because taking on more tasks means more funding, more employees, and more clout. Agencies put in charge of limiting pornography, a form of speech older than feminism and religion put together, might find themselves seeking out new and exotic forms of speech-related harms to women.

And we can say all these things even if it’s true that pornography harms women. But the evidence for that is mixed at best. For one thing, some studies suggest that more widely available pornography reduces  rates of sexual assault and violence. Proponents often point to studies showing that men who sexually assault women self-report watching more, and more violent, pornography. But this runs the risk of confusing cause and effect—do chemistry textbooks lead to bomb baking, or do bombmakers simply tend to be interested in chemistry?

If pornography leads to sexual assault, and pornography has become vastly more available in the United States over the past 30 years, we might expect to see a spike in violent sexual crime. But instead, what we see is a large drop from until 2013, when the FBI definition was revised to be more inclusive, leading to an overall slight rise from 1990, even as women have become  more likely to report sexual assault.

As for the claim that men have become worse at sex due to their reliance on pornography, it’s hard to quantify. After all, there is no control group of women who have steadily slept with 20 year olds from 1970 onwards who can report how sexual expertise has changed. And historically, many people have been bad at sex. The solution, sad to say, is the same as it always was: Talk to your partner about what you need and, if they refuse to provide it, consider looking elsewhere.

Ultimately, efforts to ban porn, like efforts to ban drugs, and alcohol, and violent video games, seem directed at addressing a small, embarrassing part of ourselves—the monkey that will keep hitting the button for cocaine until it dies. But there is no way to eradicate the dumb little primate parts of our brains, no matter how many laws we pass. What works for the monkeys, and the rats, and all the other little animals we deal drugs to, is an enriched environment that provides options for pleasure other than spamming the button. To be our better selves, we have to create a better world. And we won’t get there with a set of handcuffs.