With the home computer busted, I sure do miss a lot when I am out of the office. (I have ordered a new desktop system from Dell, and will finally get broadband at home — soon.)

One thing I missed was the discussion that began late last week about the prison scandal in Iraq and feminist comparisons between the Abu Ghraib photographs and porn. Ralph at Cliopatria posted about it on Friday, linking to several articles. Through HNN, I read this terrific piece by Donna Hughes (a Gender Studies prof in Rhode Island) in the National Review. Excerpt:

Why are we shocked by these images from Abu Ghraib, but when the victims are women (or gay men) the images are called pornography or “adult entertainment”? Why can we easily see the violations of human beings in one set of images, but miss it in others? What if the Iraqi men had been forced to smile, could we be convinced that there was a newly formed “publishing and film production” company in Baghdad instead of sexual abuse and humiliation being perpetrated?

President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have condemned the acts and the abuse of the Iraqis. They said that these acts do not represent American values. I want to believe that is true. Yet, I see the common themes and methods used by other types of perpetrators on different victims. These similar images are what the young American soldiers from the Internet generation have grown up with and learned to call “adult entertainment.” Did they become desensitized to the harm of doing such things to people by seeing multiple images of similar abuse to women? Did they learn how to violate someone by being a voyeur to abuse, and in Abu Ghraib they had the chance to become perpetrators — and pornographers? Did they fully comprehend the harm they were doing?

Cliopatria then linked to a Clayton Cramer, who offered this response to Hughes:

I completely agree with her that a lot of pornography is degrading to the people involved–I see examples often enough in my in-box. There is one rather dramatic difference between the pictures from Abu Ghraib and the vast majority of commercial pornography–the question of choice. Unless there’s something that Professor Hughes knows about Abu Ghraib’s detainees that the rest of us don’t know, every single of them was there against his will.

One might be able to make the case that economic necessity “forces” some people to make pornography today–but only in the same sense that economic necessity “forces” me to work for my current employer, instead of doing what I would prefer–blogging all night, and haunting university library stacks all day.

And then my esteemed fellow Cliopatriarch, Jonathan Dresner, rebuts Cramer, saying that ol’ Clayton is

splitting hairs when (he) attack(s) the pornography argument, because the bulk of Hughes’ argument (which Cramer accepts) is about the connection between sexual humiliation and enslavement (sexual, political or otherwise), and the fact that there are “voluntary” (within the limits of social choice) subjects of pornography and “voluntary” prostitutes does not in any way rebut the existence of involuntary participants. Moreover, the inability (or unwillingness) of consumers to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary participants means that the sexual product/services marketplace is clearly tainted. The connection between political repression and sexual humiliation is even more powerful, and that’s clearly a way in which we should be loudly and clearly distinguishing ourselves from Iran, etc., not making excuses for diving (not falling) to that level.

Dang. Between Donna Hughes and Dresner, all the money quotes have been taken!

I agree completely with Jonathan that one of the most troubling aspects of pornography is that we eroticize the absence of consent. Those of us who are most disturbed by the porn industry recognize that the harm done to its perfomers is not the greatest of its sins, though the harm it does is deep and enduring to thousands (Hughes’ piece goes into details). The most destructive aspect of the porn industry is the harm it does to the culture by presenting images of degradation and domination as “fun” and “entertaining”. (Like many, I am fascinated by the role of American women guards in these pictures from Abu Ghraib. I don’t doubt for a second that they — like virtually every other American young adult — had seen plenty of porn that depicted women as victims in their lives. One cannot help but wonder if the opportunity to “turn the tables” as it were, and force men into traditionally female positions, was too irresistable to ignore. )

One of the most common subgenres of American porn is the “facial”, which features men ejaculating onto women’s faces. The recent New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib makes it evident that Iraqi prisoners were compelled to do just that with one another. “Facials” are something young Americans in Iraq have grown up with on the Internet, and I haven’t any doubt that many of the postures and positions they forced upon their captives were inspired by pornography. Porn was the text from which the torturers learned their techniques; what is normally done to young and vulnerable women was now done to imprisoned, vulnerable men. But beyond that, there isn’t a heck of a lot of difference.

At its core, porn is less about pleasure than it is about power. Most women spend their young adulthood trying to “show just enough, but not too much”. Most young men are denied total and unrestricted visual access to the bodies of their female peers. Lots of young men, who hear endless “nos” and experience numerous rejections, fantasize about dominating and controlling the very young women whom they cannot physically possess. Porn offers these young men — and older men too — an alternative world where women’s legs are spread instead of crossed, where their bodies are receptive instead of closed, where a “no” can always be overcome and ultimately, no woman can hold back her own ecstatic “yes!” Porn doesn’t just make its consumers feel sexy, it makes them feel powerful. And when one suddenly finds oneself in a position of total power over another human being, is it any wonder that one might be tempted to force them to recreate the very images and act out the very scenarios that made one feel so wonderfully, near divinely, strong?