inegalitarian pornography sustaining women’s unequal social status and their subordination

 Anne Eaton argues that pornography shows the subordination of women to be sexually pleasurable and, for this reason, it is more effective than other representational materials in shaping viewers’ attitudes and desires (Eaton 2007: 680).

 Pornography engages and trains us to be sexually aroused at images depicting women as social inferiors, and thereby reinforces the “mechanisms, norms, and myths” that sustain women’s unequal social status (679). Eaton acknowledges that not all pornography eroticizes inequality and focuses her critique on “inegalitarian pornography”.

 She hypothesizes that the harms caused by exposure to inegalitarian pornography range from increasing rates of sex discrimination, sexual harassment and assault to degrading the status of women. Eaton recognizes that her causal model requires empirical support, and that the studies needed to confirm or refute it have not yet been done. Because inegalitarian pornography is not the only kind of mass culture that promotes sexist attitudes and behavior, it can be difficult to separate out the effects of sexist materials that are sexually graphic from those that are not.