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The Pornography Tug-of-War

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In the article "Pornography, Oppression, and Freedom: A Closer Look," Helen Longino concludes that pornography is immoral and should be censored. She believes that anything which causes injury or is harmful to people in any way than it is immoral. Longino believes that pornography causes emotional injury and severely degrades to women. The tolerance of this material reinforces this injury. Longino begins by explaining how the sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies released a flood of sexual behavior and pornographic material. Traditionally, such behavior and content was considered immoral. Sex that was not for the sole purpose of procreation, outside of marriage, or sex with the same sex was frowned upon. She goes on to say that the sexual revolution had beneficial results for a flourishing acceptance of the distinction between questions of sexual traditions and its morality. Longino states that "What is immoral is behavior which causes injury to or violation of another person or people.  Injury was not limited to physical injury but included psychologically according to Longino. We cannot condemn forms of sexual behavior on the sole opinion of it being distasteful or not coinciding with one's religion. But according to Longino we do not have to tolerate pornography once it becomes harmful to people. Longino defines pornography as "verbal or pictorial explicit representations of sexual behavior that, in the words of Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, have as a distinguishing characteristic the degrading and demeaning portrayal of the role and status of the human female as a mere sexual object to be exploited and manipulated sexually."  Firstly, Longino argues that women are almost always the recipient of violent sexual encounters that provide sexual stimuli to the male characters. Longino states "not all sexually explicit material is pornography, nor is all material which contains representation of sexual abuse and degradation pornography.  Pornography is when the content in which one of the participants are degraded physically or psychologically and it is not suggested to be inappropriate. Longino believes this leads to the endorsement of this behavior and more violence against women in the real world. She believes that women, including herself, are connecting the consumption of pornography to sexually abusive acts such as rape (194). Furthermore, Longino argues that the roles portrayed by women in pornography are lies. They are limited to only satisfying their male counterparts and are considered mere instruments for fulfilling the male fantasy. "Pornography lies explicitly about women's sexuality, and through such lies fosters more lies about our humanity, our dignity, and our personhood,

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