theory, that no uptake at all was needed for successful illocution, the ratification
theory remained the strongest. At this point, it was clear that for pornography to be
justifiably shown to silence women it must side with the ratification theory of uptake,
something in which Langton’s (1993) argument did not due to how she defined
illocutionary disablement.
In the second part of this dissertation, I discussed a paper by Hesni (2018) titled
‘Illocutionary frustration’. The paper observed two scenarios which Hesni (2018)
argues are worthy of equal treatment and name as they are indistinguishable. Hesni
(2018) pointed out that Langton (1933, as cited in Hesni, 2018, pp. 951) was wrong to
suggest that illocutionary disablement does not require uptake. She drew upon the
model of non-literal speech to show that what Langton (1993) called illocutionary
disablement did, in fact, have uptake. Hesni (2018) then went a step further to suggest
that the harm caused by pornography is best described as illocutionary frustration as
opposed to silencing. She demanded that the two scenarios were indistinguishable and
that they deserved the same treatment and name (Hesni, 2018, pp. 953).
I agreed with Hesni (2018) that both scenarios are more similar than suggested by
Langton (1993) and that Langton (1993) is wrong to suggest that uptake is not an
element of illocutionary disablement. I suggest to Langton (1993) that she reworks her
definition of disablement to encompass uptake or redefine it as something else. My
work has identified that the two scenarios are different in terms of how the uptake
occurred and how seriously the man took the women’s refusal. In scenario 1 refusal
was not taken as seriously compared to scenario 2. Therefore, I reject the parts of
Hesni’s (2018) work which demands that the two scenarios are so similar that they
should both be called the same, however, I accept that uptake is present in both. I think
that the difference between the two scenarios allows us to see how one (scenario 1) is
a better way to capture the harm imposed on women specifically by pornography,
whereas the other is not as a result of pornography. I am not suggesting that the
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