Casey White
Period 3B
November 9, 2009
English 1010
Final Draft
Response to “Pornography”
Sexy, erotic, fun and exciting or dirty, foul, degrading and deadly; pornography
has many different faces. Over the years, pornography has evolved and more and more
people have begun to see its ugly face. Margaret Atwood attempts to inform her readers
about the dangers of violent pornography through her essay entitled “Pornography.”
Atwood uses graphic vocabulary and portrays horrific scenes to capture her audience and
relay the mature subject she writes about. Although Atwood may have had good
intentions while writing her essay, she let her own opinions and career motivations get in
the way of pure factual evidence on the dangers of violent pornography and did not
emphasize the need for government regulation enough.
While researching pornography for her book, Bodily Harm, Atwood decided to
write an essay informing society of the dangers that violent pornography poses to society.
Many of the arguments made against violent pornography had evidence to back them
and/or an emotional statement that made me, as the reader, side with Atwood and the
antiporners. Atwood’s use of graphic vocabulary worked well to capture my emotions
and make me agree with the arguments she made. One such argument was when Atwood
said, “Why is hate literature illegal? Because whoever made the law thought that such
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material might incite real people to do real awful things to other real people.” (33) The
extreme case of Ted Bundy is an example that Atwood gave. Ted Bundy admitted right
before he was executed that the reason he started mutilating, torturing and killing his
victims was because of his early exposure to pornography.
Because of people like Ted Bundy, Atwood’s purpose in writing her essay,
“Pornography,” is to inform society of the dangers of violent pornography and although
she did give some examples of its dangers, she let her own opinions interfere too much.
It is always hard to write something and leave your personal opinions and biases out of it.
In my sophomore English class I had to write a letter to an anonymous person trying to
convince him or her that doing drugs hurt more than themselves. I could not add any of
my own opinions or experiences but had to use strict evidence or facts to sway the
opinion of the anonymous reader. I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to leave all
personal opinion out of my writing. It took me hours to complete a short one page letter.
In her essay, Atwood imposes her personal opinion when she says: “It seems to me that
this conversation, with its You’re a prude/You’re a pervert dialectic, will never get
anywhere as long as we continue to think of this material as just ‘entertainment’.” (32)
This statement shows Atwood’s bias, in favor of government sanctions on pornography.
Although I do not like the way Atwood imposes her personal opinions in her essay, I do
agree with the need for government control of violent pornography.
Just as Atwood imposed her personal opinions in her article she may have also
had other motives. Because she was about to release her book, Bodily Harm, she got
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carried away trying to promote her book and career that she did not focus on the more
important facts about violent pornography. In her essay she does not use any factual
evidence about her case against violent pornography. Atwood might as well have
written, don’t forget to read my new book, Bodily Harm, coming to stores soon, at the
end of her essay. If Atwood would have used more facts to back up her statements, her
essay could have had a much more profound affect on its readers. Whenever I read an
article, I know I can rely on it better when there are reliable facts to back up the author’s
statements.
In addition to adding more factual evidence to her essay, I wish that Atwood
would have stressed the need for government control. Although Atwood did mention that
society needs to think of violent pornography as more than just ‘entertainment,’ she
needed to emphasize the need for the government’s help. Over the years, pornography
has changed immensely and it continues to get worse. As time goes on, pornography
viewers demand more excitement from their so called entertainment. Viewers of
pornography are no longer just men, the number of women that watch pornography is
growing rapidly. Pornography has evolved from plain copulation videos to child
pornography and now violent, graphic, mutilating and even deadly pornography.
Because pornography evolved and child pornography became available, The United
States government made child pornography illegal to protect children from being harmed.
Since those laws have been passed, pornography has evolved again and the government
needs to pass laws to protect society against violent pornography. If the government does
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not step in; an increasingly large number of people are going to get hurt by this new form
of pornography.
Margaret Atwood skimmed the service of a problem in American culture. If she
would have left her own personal opinions and career motives out of her writing, and
instead put in more factual evidence to back up her claims, she could have made great
progress in the fight against violent pornography.
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Source: “Pornography” Chatelaine Magazine (1988)