AN ARGUMENT AGAINST PORNOGRAPHY
P1. Pornography violates women’s right to freedom of speech
P2. Society should reject anything which violates women’s right to freedom of speech
C. Therefore society should reject pornography
CONSERVATIVE COMMENTARY
This argument is explained by Guy Longworth:
The argument that pornography can undermine women’s freedom of speech is based on the idea that men’s consumption of pornography can have similar effects on their abilities to recognise which illocutionary acts women are trying to perform. Crucially, the central claim is that some forms of pornography train their consumers to see women’s attempts to refuse sexual intercourse as attempts only to pretend to refuse sexual intercourse. Such pornography either presents women as always willing, in a way that can undercut evidence to the contrary provided by what they say, or it presents women as regularly only pretending to be unwilling. In either case, its uncritical consumption can undermine men’s abilities to recognise women’s attempted refusals of sexual intercourse as such. In that way, pornography can lead to failures of uptake. And according to Austin’s suggestion, that can make women unable to perform acts of refusal. If that is right, then the consumption of pornography can lead to a distinctive form of illocutionary silencing.
https://aeon.co/essays/how-pornography-works-to-undermine-womens-freedom-of-speech