Doing things with words: Pornography
Introduction
This essay critically evaluates Langton’s (1993) polemic on pornography as the “illocutionary disablement” of women. This essay will answer the question in two parts. Firstly, this essay will elucidate the notions of “illocutionary disablement” and the “pornographic language game”, through which pornography as speech-acts might be understood to silence women (Langton and West, 2006). Secondly, this essay will assess this claim by engaging Green’s (1998) critique against pornographic authority and illocutionary disablement as silencing and argue that these criticisms overlook pornography as proliferating a larger “rape culture” of women’s systemic silence. Thus, this essay outlines contexts in which pornography entrenches, normalises and legitimises a culture of silencing women within the sexual language game— akin to a Pygmalion effect. This essay argues that the claim that pornography silences women is true to a large extent.
Pornographic discourse is subject primarily to eclectic conceptual definitions. Hence, when asserting pornography silences, this essay adopts the definition posited by Mackinnon and Dworkin (1997) within the Indianapolis Ordinance. Pornography within this essay will be understood as the “graphic sexually explicit subordination of women, whether in pictures or words” (Mackinnon et al.,1997). Pornography, then by definition, is inherently harmful and is antithetical to “feminist pornography” or “erotica” that “uses sexually explicit imagery to contest and complicate dominant representations of gender” (Mikolla, 2019). Per Langton (2006), such “pornography” goes beyond speech and represents “speech-acts”, which, when fulfilling certain conditions, perform actions, inducing the silence of women within the domain of sexual discourse by making their “speech-acts unspeakable”.This essay will now unpack this claim within the parameters above by outlining illocutionary disablement and the sexual language game before compounding them within two illustrations of women’s silencing.
Foremostly, speech acts are functional utterances that go beyond locutions and have illocutionary and perlocutionary effects. An exposition of this concept would be through examples such as marrying. Within a specific context, the locution “I do” goes beyond its inherent semantic content and has an illocutionary constitution of the speaker marrying. Although the subsequent perlocutionary effects of the speakers having married might vary, this scenario shows that a speech-act has occurred, encompassing a locution, illocution and perlocution; words have done things. Hence, the claim that pornography silences women is not literal but instead illocutionary. Per Langton (2006), pornography silences women by disabling their illocutionary capacity and disallowing them from “doing things with words”.
Support for this claim comes through establishing felicity conditions of authority and uptake that grant illocutionary license, applied within the aforementioned marital context. As felicity conditions exist, dictated by convention, Langton (2006) posits that there represents specific contexts whereby locutions fail not only in achieving their intended effect but also in “counting as the actions they were intended to be”. The ability to illocute necessitates a level of authority. Hence, if the locution “I do” had been uttered by a homosexual in Malaysia, the illocutionary intent of marriage would have misfired. “Something about who he is” within the context of the institutions around him would have denied his authority over himself, disabled his illocutionary capacity and made “the act of marriage not speakable” for him (Langton, 2006).
Thus, this essay posits that such instances of illocutionary disablement happen within an overarching language game that encompasses the “variety of linguistic interactions” (Langton and West, 1999). Such language games are interactive, adjusting “in response to the moves speakers make” with later moves “dependent on the prior score”. Analogous to a baseball game where “correctness depends in part on the score at a particular time” (Langton and West, 1999). Hence, much like the baseball player whose range of options changes in relation to the game, e.g. whether he has had two strikes or three, moves available to speakers within the language game are contingent on prior linguistic exchanges, e.g. a witness in court who is asked a yes/no question.
However, an earmark of the language game is that it is governed by “a rule of accommodation” whereby the conversational score evolves to accommodate and vindicate the “truth value” of prior linguistic exchanges (Langton and West, 1999). Per Langton and West (1999), this is demonstrable through introducing the notion of “presuppositions” whereby scores and understandings within a language game subsequently adjust to make sense of the presupposed premises and make “the move count as correct play”. Hence when the statement “even Lisa could pass” is made, a presupposition of Lisa’s incompetence is enforced upon players to make sense of the exchange (Langton and West, 1999). Consequently, this essay asserts that pornography exists within and influences the sexual language game, introducing notions and understandings both explicitly or “implicity, as presuppositions”, begetting the illocutionary disablement of women through limiting the moves available to them. (Langton and West, 1999)
Understanding illocutionary disablement and the sexual language game dually illustrates how speech-acts might be silenced and how speech-acts might silence. This essay will now compound these two notions and consider two examples within the sexual language game where “felicity conditions for women’s speech-acts are set by speech-acts of pornography” (Langton, 1993).
How Pornography Silences
Firstly, pornography disallows women from illocuting refusal within sexual discourse. Here, Langton (1993) posits a scenario in which a woman’s “no '' as an illocutionary means of sexual refusal “does not count as refusal”. Langton (1999) argues that pornography, through introducing "favourable rape depictions", has propounded a presupposition that "raping a woman is sexy and erotic for man and woman alike". This presupposition then is accommodated and enshrined within the score of the sexual language game and consequently induces a “failure of accommodation” for the woman’s subsequent refusal (Langton, 1999). Pornography as a speech-act has challenged and warped the woman’s authority over herself. Hence, within this context, presuppositions constitute “something about her”, “something about the role she occupies” within the sexual language game whereby the illocutionary act of refusal “has become unspeakable for her”(Langton, 1993). Pornography silenced the woman and legitimised the rape, leaving “no room for refusal.” (Langton, 1993).
Secondly, Pornography prohibits women’s illocutionary protest within the sexual language game. Here, Langton (1993) highlights the book “Ordeal”, which had been “intended as an indictment of the pornographic industry”. However, the act of protest had subsequently been warped, reinterpreted and ultimately “remarketed as pornography” within the sexual language game, which Langton (1993) posits as analogous to the language games of sexual offenders who “reinterpret their victims’ behaviour” and assert that their victims had “wanted it or enjoyed it”. The example of “Ordeal” thus highlights yet another example of women’s illocutionary uptake misfiring as a result of “something about her”, “who she is”, and “the role she occupies” (Langton, 1993). A women’s illocutionary act of protest within a sexual language game’s score, which includes presuppositions “introduced and reinforced by pornography,” thus becomes unspeakable (Langton and West, 1999). Hence, Langton’s claim is two-fold. Pornography as a speech-act silences women within the sexual language game while concurrently denying them the use of their speech-acts as a means of defence.
Criticisms
However, Green (1998) criticises this view and raises a dual criticism against pornography as authoritative and the epistemological precision of illocutionary disablement as silencing. Foremostly, Green contests the notion of pornography’s jurisdiction within the sexual discourse and the scope of its authority. Per Green (1998), evaluating the illocutionary speech-acts of pornography and its propounded impacts would require justification not simply through its speech-acts but “within the whole social context of which it occurs.” Hence, Green (1998) outlines two conditions of legitimacy and efficacy required “in justifying authority”. Firstly, pornographic norms prescribed must be “perceived to be legitimate” against any “presence of countervailing forces”(Green, 1998). Secondly, pornography must have an efficacious degree of power that it markedly exercises over women (Green, 1998).
Hence, in engaging the example of sexual refusal, Green (1998) rebuffs the notion that porn has silenced the woman within the sexual language game as it did not “function as an authority about sexuality”. The relevant speech-acts within the sexual refusal would have extended far beyond the jurisdiction of pornography as societal institutions would have recognised the rape and validated the illocutionary intent of the woman. Furthermore, Green (1998) questions the culpability of pornography within the rape as pornographic representations, although eroticising rape, lack legitimacy, “existing in competition with other putative social authorities”. Thus, Green two-fold contests Langton’s assertion of pornographic authority. In this view, it stands to reason that as overarching egalitarian societal institutions oppose the legitimacy and efficacy of pornography, it fails to represent an overwhelming authority within the sexual language game.
Secondly, Green criticises Langton’s epistemological reasoning behind illocutionary disablement as having induced women’s silence. In engaging with the example of “Ordeal”, Green (1998) argues that this example of illocutionary disabled sexual protest would only be legitimate if “Ordeal” were “bought and used and pornography”. However, instances of “idiosyncratic or unreasonable responses” do not constitute women’s silence through illocutionary disablement but instead merely require evaluation of the nature of the hearers (Green, 1998). Furthermore, Green (1998) propounds that as the convention-sensitive nature of illocutions potentially allows “an unlimited number of...conventions that establish an unlimited number of illocutionary acts”, illocutionary disablement represents a frequent phenomenon. Green (1998) raises an example of an Islamic man who within western convention is unable to exercise his right to illocute “talaq” and divorce his wife and questions whether this illocutionary disablement, although functionally analogous to the homosexual man unable to illocute marriage, would equally constitute “silencing”.
Thus, Green rejects the notion of illocutionary disablement as a sufficient onus of proof for silencing. Green (1998) distinguishes between broad and narrow cases of silencing and asserts that while illocutionary disablement might inflict a broad case silencing where one cannot realise communicative intentions because their locutions might not be heard as intended, this form of silencing is neither “prima facie harmful” nor “blameworthy”. In this view, it is fundamentally too demanding to necessitate that illocutions should be met with “a receptive audience disposed to hear them just as intended ”(Green, 1998). The claim that pornography silences women thus is only justifiable if a narrow case of silencing exists whereby “one cannot realise one’s communicative intention” through being denied locution or “a fair opportunity to be heard”(Green, 1998). Consequently, aggregating these criticisms begets the notion that Langton’s claim of pornography as silencing women through illocutionary disablement is epistemologically flawed and problematic in application.
Defending Langton’s Argument
However, this essay poses responses to Green's two-fold critique that defends and enriches Langton’s position. Foremostly, this essay asserts that the legitimacy and efficacy of pornographic authority is manifest due to its lack of regulation. This essay argues that as pornography is essentially “public, available and effectively legal”, it is thus “visible, credible and legitimised” and comparable to the state in its unchecked nature (McGowan, 2005). To this end, this essay highlights that much empirical evidence exists that illustrates pornographic norms as authoritative and influential within sexual discourse. Firstly, The Child Welfare Group Report (2003) suggested a “desensitising effect” from pornography through which Cambodian children were found to have used pornography “as a means to obtain information about sex” and consequently adopted pornographic notions as matters of fact. Secondly, researchers such as Malamuth (1985) have further illustrated a correlation between “higher levels of exposure to pornography” and “beliefs that women enjoy sexual violence”. Per Malamuth (1985), prolonged exposure to pornographic depictions of “rape myths” had been shown to consequently “change subject perceptions of women’s reactions to sexual violence”.
A further example that substantiates this claim would be a baseball scenario whereby the umpire has made a bad call. Here, although baseball rules would have determined a player as safe, a fallacious call by the umpire that remains unregulated and not subject to review would nonetheless be factored into the score and dictate correct play for the rest of the game. This essay thus reposits the case of misfired sexual refusal as silencing, affirming the importance of context-specific onuses in propagating silence, despite societal conventions. Much like the woman is silenced by pornography through its authority over the rapist within a specific sexual exchange, despite otherwise egalitarian social conventions, players within a particular baseball game are subject to and accommodate calls of the umpire, despite potential violations against the overarching rules of baseball. Per Langton (1998), a functional linguistic exchange is dependent on “nothing more than both speaker and hearer”. Hence, when Green supposes “that a woman is silenced only if no hearers recognise the refusal”, he wrongfully tenders a Hobson’s choice such “that no woman is ever silenced unless all women’s refusals are silenced always” (Langton, 1998).
Furthermore, in assessing Green’s epistemological criticism of illocutionary disablement as women’s silencing, this essay argues that Green overlooks the notion that eclectic atomised instances of women’s illocutionary disablement potentially conflate to normalise, legitimise and ultimately entrench larger movements for the silencing of women. Hence, while Green might relegate the perversion of “Ordeal” as the idiosyncrasies of hearers and further trivialise instances of illocutionary disablement within everyday scenarios, this essay argues that a distinction can be drawn such that the illocutionary disablement of women by pornography as outlined above encompasses a political dimension of asymmetrical power relations. Illocutionary disablement based on who someone is or the “role they occupy” has far-reaching implications beyond the dimensions of which they first occur and ultimately warps cultural conventions (Langton, 1993).
In substantiating this argument, this essay reevaluates the example of illocutionary disablement within sexual refusal. This essay asserts that pornographic illocutionary disablement as silencing in this context holds, and arguably extends beyond the initial rape as varying pornographic conventions, i.e. “rape myths,” when aggregated together, holistically results in an overarching culture of women’s silencing despite alleged “countervailing societal institutions” (Green, 1998). This essay will substantiate this claim by linking the example of sexual refusal and the phenomena of rape trials.
In analysis of court proceedings addressing rape, Davies’ (2016) has highlighted how the interactional structure of cross‐examinations allow for “presupposed rape myths” to enforce a false dichotomy and establish an “inhospitable illocutionary context” for women. Hence, for example, if the presupposed rape myth that women want to be “raped and dominated” were to meet the rape myth that “sex with a woman who is drunk is still consensual sex”, a “loaded yes/no question” within legal proceedings would thus accommodate the truth values of perverse pornographic rape-myths while eliding a woman’s ability to illocute protest through the false dichotomy of options available to her (Davies, 2016) (Langton, 1993).
Consequently, the speech-acts of pornography effectively silence a woman two-fold, having denied her illocutionary capacities of refusal and protest within both rape and rape trials. “We live in, and live out” the sexual reality pornographic material “constructs” (Stark, 2004). This essay propounds this as a patriarchal presuppositional pygmalion effect, A self-fulfilling prophecy whereby pornographic presuppositions of rape culture influence our beliefs, impact the institutions around us, and ultimately influence actions and verdicts that reinforce that very rape culture. Langton (1998) thus rejects the “false dichotomy” of Green’s broad and narrow silencing. Locutionary and illocutionary disablement could both equally result from “intervention or blameworthy omission” having perverted the “mutual capacity of uptake” between speakers (Hornsby and Langton, 1998). This essay thus argues pornography satisfies this criterion when silencing women through illocutionary disablement in a way that is “prima facie harmful” across varying levels. (Langton, 1998) (Langton and West, 1999).
In conclusion, this essay has linearly engaged the question. This essay has outlined and contextualised a robust understanding of how pornography as a speech-act silences women within the sexual language game through illocutionary disablement and evaluated this claim through engaging criticisms from Green and subsequently outlining a response. Thus, through substantiating pornography’s culpability in inducing a self-perpetuating holistic movement of silencing women both at individual and cultural levels, this essay argues that the claim that pornography silences women is true to a considerable extent.
