Mill and Pornography

Abstract

In a recent article in this journal,' David Dyzenhaus has argued that Mill, by his own principles, be open to the legitimacy of coercive action to eradicate pornography,2 that is, censorship. This conclusion, Dyzenhaus admits, is surprising. After all, the ingredients of the principled opposition to censoring pornography appear to have their roots in On Liberty: in Mill's articulation of a narrow harm principle as the sole legitimate basis for state coercion; in his zeal to protect a private sphere of self-regarding action for the sake of an ideal of individual autonomy or self-government; and in his defense of a right to complete freedom of expression.3 In light of the strong prima facie case for Mill's opposition to censorship, Dyzenhaus must argue convincingly if he is to shift the consensus of Mill-inspired liberalism. I do not think that the argument is convincing enough to sway either a true Mill-inspired liberal or Mill himself. Dyzenhaus's argument, as I understand it, runs as follows. Pornography (presumably he means not all pornography, but only that which presents acts) eroticizes the social and physical inequalities between men and women, thereby making such inequality seem both natural and sexy. Sexual domination, as one part of a much larger program of the pansocietal domination of women by men, involves an apparent willingness and an apparent complicity on the part of the dominated, and this complicity is taught, encouraged, and maintained by pornography. These points, though never made by Mill, are in the same spirit as The Subjection of Women. (Mill indeed made very similar arguments against numerous discriminatory laws, institutions, and practices in his time.) Now Mill claimed in that book that the most valued right of any person in a free society is the right to autonomy,