Pornography and Intimacy

Feminists are engaged in a rancorous debate. According to the antipornography side, pornography fosters violence against women by publicly displaying images of women being objectified and violated. Robin Morgan (1980) “Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice.” Andrea Dworkin (1989) believes that men have committed atrocities throughout history because of their “sexual obsession”: Pornography reveals that slavery, bondage, murder, and maiming have been acts suffused with pleasure for those who committed them or who vicariously experienced the power expressed in them. (p. 69) Susan Griffin (1981) describes pornography as “the mythology of the male chauvinist mind” (p. 2). The other side does not refute the fact that the pornography industry, as a whole, promotes sexism—it would be rather difficult to do so and still call oneself a feminist—but argues that a dogmatic stance against all forms of pornography merely sets up an alternative form of censorship and social control. In other words, where patriarchs have for centuries set themselves up to prescribe and proscribe acceptable forms of sexuality for women, some feminists would substitute their improved, nonsexist prescriptions and proscriptions for everyone. How is one to evaluate the implications—for gender politics—of two lesbians privately enjoying a video of two women engaged in sadomasochistic acts? for more information read this book.....................