treatment. Illocutionary frustration is the product of the correct understanding of these
scenarios. The two scenarios go as follows (Hesni, 2018, 951):
Scenario 1: A woman utters “no” to refuse sex, but uptake doesn’t occur (the
man has not understood that the woman is refusing sex), yet sex is still initiated
by the man.
Scenario 2: The woman says “no” to indicate refusal of sex, there is uptake,
and the man recognises the “no” as refusal but for some reason ignores it and
proceeds to have sex with the woman anyway.
Hesni’s (2018) main argument in opposition to Langton’s (1993) illocutionary
silencing regards uptake. More specifically Hesni (2018, pp.252) claims that in both
scenarios we must recognise that the woman has successfully refused, and thus uptake
has occurred and been secured . This is in contrast with Langton (as cited in Hesni,
2018, pp, 951) who claims that uptake hasn’t taken place in the first scenario, which is
what makes it to be a more severe form of silencing (illocutionary disablement). From
this difference, Hesni (2018) presents her findings that the linguistic harm imposed by
pornography is best explained by the term illocutionary frustration as opposed to
illocutionary silencing. This chapter will explore Hesni’s (2018) proposition, which I
will mainly agree with due to its thought on refusal. I will then investigate where this
leaves the justification of Langton’s claim (1993) before explaining how I come to the
suggestion that; whilst Hesni (2018) is right in her explanation of refusal and uptake,
this does not completely dismiss Langton’s (1993) work on the harm pornography has
on women, and that if Langton (1993) is willing to rework how she defines
illocutionary disablement she is still justified to make a partial distinction between the
two scenarios and doesn’t have to complete accept illocutionary frustration.
3.2 How Hesni (2018) and Langton (1993) view the two scenarios as
different.
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