성 보수주의와 남성 성 자유주의를 넘어: 페미니스트는 포르노 문제에 어떻게 대응할 것인가

Abstract

Pornography has been a heated issue for American feminists, dividing them into two opposite camps, whereas Korean feminists kept silent during the pornography debate in the 1990s when the event of Jang Jungil, a Korean male novelist who wrote a sexually explicit novel and got imprisoned for that, took place. In the Korean sexual debate male sexual liberals and radicals fought against legal authority whose ideological position was based on moral conservatism; they advocated the right of writing and enjoying pornography, and criticized feminists for colluding with sexual conservatives. During that period Korean feminists belatedly exposed the sexual violence in Korean progressive movements in the 80s and early 90s, arguing for women’s rights of sexual self-determination. This article attempts to map out the topography of sexual ideology in Korea since late 1990s, and examine how to tackle the issue of pornography. First, it critically examines several definitions of pornography, both Korean and American, and then attempts to explain the tempting power of pornography on men, borrowing Drucilla Cornell’s psychoanalytic interpretation. Pornography reflects men’s sexual fantasy where lie their desire for and dread of the phallic mother; once the fantasized mother/infant dyad is broken, the phallic mother remains, in its unconscious, powerful and threatening; she at once gives and takes back life. In order to compensate for her power, the infant attempts to penetrate and destroy her through the father’s imaginary penis. It is the biological penis, the simplistic conflation of the penis with the phallus, that is portrayed in pornography. This ever-erect prick is just a fantasy, yet it exerts a powerful influence on men. Pornography as a representation of this masculine fantasy, I argue, harms women’s imaginary domain, a term coined by Cornell for indicating “psychic and moral space” in which one imagines who one is and who one seeks to become. I argue for feminist’s response to pornography shifting from legal regulation to political intervention. Legal regulation on pornography limits not only men’s but also women’s freedom of sexual expression, pivotal for women’s exploration of their selves. However, pornograph’s curtailment of women’s equal right for imaginary domain should be countered in political and cultural dimension. In conclusion, I argue for the responsibility for our desire as well as the demand for its right in order to live together.