Plenty of people watch pornography – the industry grosses $10 billion a year, more than the revenues of NBC, ABC and CBS combined – but few people actually talk about it.

“People have a preconceived idea of what images of people’s bodies means, they’re either negative or positive, but I don’t think people think about what that actually means” said senior Anisa Baldwin Metzger, a resident advisor in Shepley House.

In an effort to raise the level of the conversation, the RAs in the William Greenleaf Eliot (WGE) residential college sponsored a lecture on Wednesday by Barbara Baumgartner, a professor of women’s studies at Washington University, on the role pornography plays in society at large.

“I heard Professor Baumgartner speak three years ago, and thought it was very thought-provoking,” said senior Jessica Hahn, another Shepley RA and the person behind the event. “I wanted to do it again. I thought it could attract people and create an intellectual discussion.”

During the lecture, Baumgartner presented two segments of a documentary that showed graphic scenes from pornographic films. One of the pornographic scenes depicted a man molesting a naked woman who was tied to a table.

Baumgartner stressed the importance of watching these images.

“I think it’s one thing to talk in the abstract and it’s another to see the kinds of things that are out there,” she said. “While this type of pornography makes up a small minority of the industry, it’s much more mainstream than people realize.”

The lounge was deathly quiet for several seconds after the clips had ended and the lights came back on. Many students were shocked to learn that such explicit material was created and was available to the public.

“It really disturbs me that this [scene] is a reasserting of male over female dominance, that sexuality is solely about pleasing a man,” one student said.

Another student called that kind of pornography “inhumane” and “wished the popularity of it would decrease” without infringing on the freedom of expression guaranteed to United States citizens in the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Baumgartner also outlined the two positions feminists take when dealing with pornography. One group, she said, finds pornography demeaning, exploitative and supports legislative efforts to suppress it.

Other feminists don’t like it either, she said, but are sensitive to pornographers’ freedom of expression. The latter group points out that, just a century ago, it was illegal to distribute educational information about the use of contraceptives because it was deemed obscene.

Baumgartner said that legislation is largely ineffective in controlling the type of pornography released to the public, and argued that the best way to deal with porn is to talk about it.

“Educating helps, we need to get it out in the open in order to weed it out,” she said. “That way, we can re-envision pornography to be more sensual and equitable for both sexes.”

In order to draw attention to the lecture, flyers were posted throughout the halls of Shepley, Wheeler and Danforth dorms with the words “FREE PORN” scrawled in oversize block print on the top third of the sheet. At the bottom of the flyer, it said “FREE FOOD & VIDEOS!” and a line below it: “it’s gonna be hot…”

After the lecture, students said they were glad they went, and felt they had a better handle on pornography’s role in society.

“It was definitely really interesting,” said sophomore Michael Kugler. “I had grappled with the essence of pornography. I definitely think it’s something you can view as universally subordinating.”

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