Bad Attitude/s on Trial: Pornography, Feminism, and the Butler Decision

Andrea Levan is an associate professor and co-ordinator of the Women’s
Studies Program at Thorneloe College, Laurentian University.

This important contribution to the feminist debate on pornography
focuses on the Canadian context in developing an anti-censorship
position. The introduction gives an excellent overview of the history of
Canadian obscenity law and the events (including a new law on child
pornography and seizures and prosecutions of gay and lesbian material)
that have followed since the Supreme Court upheld the obscenity
provisions of the Criminal Code in the Butler decision.

Each author has contributed one essay to the text that follows. Lise
Gotell examines in detail the arguments developed when the Women’s
Legal Education Action Fund (LEAF) intervened in the Butler case. She
adopts a postmodern approach that emphasizes the complexity and
ambiguity of sexual images and concludes that LEAF’s view of
pornography as the embodi-ment of gender discrimination is founded on a
false claim to speak the “truth.” Cossman’s chapter argues that
the Butler decision is informed by the conservative sexual morality of
traditional obscenity legislation and does not, as LEAF asserts,
constitute a substantially new feminist representation. Lesbian sexual
representation and the criminal prosecution of Bad Attitude, a lesbian
erotic magazine, are explored by Becki Ross, who was called as an expert
witness in the trial. In developing a concept of pornography as a site
of competing morals, ethics, and value judgments, Shannon Bell focuses
particular attention on the new child pornography law.

My own view is that the feminist anti-censorship position often
overlooks the complexity of arguments and evidence that anti-pornography
feminists have put forward in concluding that pornography is harmful. A
direct causal relationship may never be proven, but the accumulation of
anecdotal, experimental, and statistical evidence is at least troubling.
The cursory dismissal of these arguments is a weakness. It is
particularly disturbing to see women’s experiential claims of violence
given so little weight, given the fact that disbelief in the past has
served to perpetuate abuse.

The anti-censorship position does not need to minimize the possibility
of harm to put forward a powerful case. This book is intelligently
argued and develops a detailed and convincing analysis of the ways in
which the feminist anti-pornography arguments developed in Butler have
served to reinforce conservative policing of sexual morality. It
challenges us to examine the many meanings of sexual expression and the
moralistic prescriptions often underlying Western representations of
sex, and reminds us again of the complexity of an issue that does not
lend itself to easy answers.