Content area
Full Text
Gay Male Pornography: An Issue of Sex Discrimination. By CHRISTOPHER N. KENDALL. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004. Pp. 270. $85.00 (cloth).
The characterization of pornography as sex discrimination has come to the fore of academic and policy debate due largely to the writings and activism of Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon. Yet for many gay and lesbian activists who support the suppression of heterosexual pornography, the differences between heterosexual and homosexual sex justify viewing gay and lesbian pornography as not only harmless but equality affirming and, indeed, necessary to gay and lesbian freedom. In Gay Male Pornography: An Issue of Sex Discrimination Christopher Kendall, dean of law at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, argues forcefully against that view. To Dean Kendall, gay and lesbian pornography (to be distinguished from nonharmful erotica) presents, as his title implies, an issue of sex discrimination every bit as serious as that presented by the heterosexual variety. Based on that conclusion, Dean Kendall argues for legal restrictions on gay and lesbian pornography (again, as implied by his title, focusing his attention on gay male pornography) not only as harmful sex discrimination but as inimical to the very goal of gay equality.
The main thrust of Kendall's argument begins by confronting the most obvious argument in defense of gay male pornography, namely, that it does not present an issue of sex discrimination because it portrays only men. He rejects this argument as resting on a biological essentialism that conflates anatomical maleness with socially constructed ideas of masculinity. To Kendall, the fact that only men appear in gay male pornography misses the point that it, just like its heterosexual counterpart, portrays socially constructed maleness as dominant and the only valuable quality and socially constructed femaleness (in gay pornography the recipient in insertive intercourse and in scenes of sadism, humiliation, and degradation) as worthless, shameful, and subordinate. Thus, Kendall critiques gay male pornography for replicating society's sexist message that to be female is to be inferior, even if the female role is played by men. Beyond this message-based harm, Kendall also argues, in a parallel fashion to Dworkin's and MacKinnon's claims, that gay male pornography directly inflicts serious harms on the performers (69-86) and causes even broader harms by encouraging...