And what Dworkin gets at is that this is all very, very convenient for men. Most dudes are perfectly fine with all this.

AB - For a few years in the 1980s, Andrea Dworkin’s Pornography: Men Possessing Women appeared to have changed the intellectual landscape – as well as some people’s lives. Pornography, she argued, not only constitutes violence against women; it constitutes also the main conduit for such violence, of which rape is at once the prime example and the central image. In short, it is patriarchy’s most powerful weapon. Given that, feminists’ single most important task is to deal with pornography. By the early 1990s, however, the consensus had become that her project was a diversion, both politically and intellectually. Today, who would argue that pornography is a crucial political issue? This is one aspect of the porn industry that has changed a lot even since McElroy was writing in 1995. As porn has become more mainstream, especially in the US, the route into the business has shifted; in the past, actresses mainly drifted into it from other kinds of sex work like dancing or modelling. Though this still happens, they've been supplemented by a growing number of women who set their sights on the business from the beginning. I think perhaps Jennas Jameson and Haze were a turning-point (though I'm no expert); certainly more modern stars like Asia Carrera and later Sasha Grey or Stoya have been very vocal about how much they enjoyed, and wanted to work in, the industry. AB - I argue that Dworkin has much to teach us in today’s neo-liberal world. Her argument is not primarily a causal one, despite sometimes reading as if it were. The legal route she chose as the ground on which to fight may well be a dead end, but that does nothing to undermine the force of her underlying analysis. It may even be that pornography is less pivotal than she thought; but even then, the form of her analysis and the substance of her argument, far from being rhetorical and/or fallacious, are exactly what we need to counter the depredations of neo-liberal “common sense”. That she herself found it difficult to find a language beyond that of liberalism to express her argument is no excuse either for ignoring or misinterpreting it. In places her argument certainly remains within liberal constraints; in others, however, it is profoundly anti-liberal: but this internal tension does not detract from its pertinence. Porn (very very different from erotica) is defined as sexually-explicit material that is destructive to women. Erotica is that material which isn't harmful. Another duality- porn is power over/ erotica is power with. I wish the discussion could ever reach that subject, erotica is good and should exist freely. Porn - very much not. Dworkin, A. 1992. ‘Against the Male Flood’ in C. Itzin (ed.) Pornography: Women, Violence and Civil Liberties: a Radical New View. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 515–535.That they've both, but especially the male, been exposed to pornography that sends these messages over and over and over and over again for cumulative hours. That there is no way to be certain that they're actually smart or strong or free-willed enough to be able to state with anything resembling certainty that they haven't been influenced by the pornographic culture they live in.

I shall argue that Dworkin has in fact a great deal to teach us – perhaps even more today, as we are going through the neo-liberal revolution, than thirty years ago. Her argument is not a causal one, despite in places reading as if it were. The legal route she chose as the ground on which to fight may well be a dead end, but that does nothing to undermine the force of her analysis. Nor does the fact that she makes arguments that might not be recognized as professionally philosophical or social scientific undermine their substantive force. It may even be that pornography itself is not the sole key she thought it was to understanding and dealing with political realities; but even if that were so, the form of her analysis, far from rhetorical and/or fallacious, is exactly what is needed to counter the depredations of neo-liberal “common sense”. That she herself found it difficult to find a language beyond that of liberalism to express her argument is no reason either for ignoring or misinterpreting it. One of the things I liked about McElroy's book was that, unlike many defences of porn, she doesn't just defend against anti-porn arguments, she actually makes a case for its positive benefits. Porn and feminism are, she claims, natural bedfellows that share a common interest in exploding traditionalist views of women as wives and mothers with rigidly controlled sexual freedom. Pleasure – entirely absent from Dworkin's account – becomes a key concept. Far from corrupting women's idea of sex, porn can be, McElroy argues, a way for women to explore and expand sexuality in a safe and controlled environment: A bible piling up its code for centuries, a secret corpus gone public, a private corpus gone political, pornography is the male's sacred stronghold, a monastic retreat for manhood on the verge of its own destruction." McElroy wants to argue that many women have an interest in sex just as pressing and valid as that of men, though patriarchal society has worked to suppress it, and porn for her is both a symbol and a tool of this interest. Dworkin – though she doesn't exactly challenge this directly – has a more adversarial view of sex in general, and so she prefers instead to defend women's right to a so-called low libido: Through the course of human history, women have always been objectified and subjected to a certain form of control and humiliation. However, with the advent of capitalism, pornography turned things upside down, canonised and brought to the surface every kind of perversion imaginable. The constant, unchanging element is the debasing and humiliation of women. Objectification in it's ultimate forms. It is an industry created by men, for men. Even in our "sex positive" and pro sex work empowerment "feminism", this constant never had changed. Males are the highest consumers of pornography in all its forms even in the pseudo "safe" medium and faux liberation of the only fans camgirling.

What Is Semantic Scholar?

What remains in question here is the nature of pornographic depictions of women (and men), and what animates them. Dworkin is explicit: porn is ‘the elucidation of what men insist is the secret, hidden, true carnality of women, free women’. Perhaps more accurate, I'd suggest, is that it expresses a fantasy of women's ‘carnality’, rather than a secret belief – but implicit in both those descriptions is the problematic idea that women don't in fact have a hidden carnality that society has done its best to suppress, and many women have been trying to say exactly the reverse. She left the marriage in 1971 aged 25, and fled the country, describing that time as her "living as a fugitive, sleeping on people's floors and having to prostitute for money to live." Sade’s importance, finally, is not as dissident or deviant: it is as Everyman, a designation the power-crazed aristocrat would have found repugnant, but one that women on examination, will find true. In Sade, the authentic equation is revealed: the power of the pornographer is the power of the rapist/batterer is the power of the man.”

Anyway, this debate is still live in many places, but for me it's tangential. I consider it too easy to argue that porn should not be against the law. What interests me far more is whether it can be considered moral and ethical in feminist terms, and I'm open to the idea that the answer might be ‘no’. In fact that's exactly the line taken by some famous porn fans like David Baddiel, who said (I'm quoting from memory here), ‘I know porn is revolting and misogynistic. The point is, so am I.’ Which is disarming, but I'm not sure I'm prepared to surrender that much ground. Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. 1973 [1947]. Dialectic of the Enlightenment, tr. John Cumming. London: Verso. Cameron, D. and Frazer, E. 1992. ‘On the Question of Pornography and Sexual Violence: Moving beyond Cause and Effect’ in C. Itzin (ed.) Pornography: Women, Violence and Civil Liberties: a Radical New View. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 359–383. But Dworkin was no feminist separatist or man-hater. She despised those men who choose to hurt women and children. In Heartbreak (2002) she described the deep sense of betrayal she felt from men in the political left who used pornography.She also analyses Sade’s writings and the sort of things he ended up in prison for. Here is De Sade defending himself to his wife in relation to five fifteen year old girls whom he abused. He had procured them from a woman of his acquaintance: For Dworkin, though, it is not enough to have a greater representation of female sexuality. Male sexuality needs to be excised entirely. Male sexuality is poison; it is violence, it is rape. And porn is just one means by which male society teaches men how to abuse and tyrannise women. I'm writing this on a Saturday night. It's 9:44 PM as I write these words. As a not-hideous male in his twenties who lives right by the veritable meat market known as Vancouver's Granville Strip, I am expected to be getting ready to go out on the prowl, looking to deposit my seed in some not-hideous female in her twenties. The not-hideous female will have shopped specifically for club wear, will have spent hours on her makeup and on ensuring her legs are free of any hair and that her pussy looks sufficiently prepubescent and that the hair on her head is sufficiently alluring. I am expected to go out there and buy her alcohol (aka the world's favourite date-rape drug), and play mental games with her (aka seduction), and this is meant to lead to us both getting laid (aka having utterly meaningless sex that somehow exceeds the emptiest masturbation in sheer loneliness). Itzin, C. (ed.) 1992. Pornography: Women, Violence and Civil Liberties: A Radical New View. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kappeler, S. ‘Pornography: The Representation of Power’ in C. Itzin (ed.) Pornography: Women, Violence and Civil Liberties: A Radical New View. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 88–101. Because no matter how many cases and how many things counter Dworkin's arguments, she is absolutely right in the deepest sense about everything she says here about porn and about what it means. And she's morally in the right, too. We will know we are free when pornography no longer exists. As long as it does exist, we must understand that we are the women in it: used by the same power, subject to the same valuation, as the vile whores who beg for more."But wait a minute; the not-hideous female I'm meant to "hook up" with does not regard herself as a piece of meat. She believes, on some level, that she's like the hot pop star, twerking her way into an embrace of femininity and her own sexuality. She would laugh at what Dworkin has to say. She wants to strut her stuff, drive the cute boys wild, have a wild night out.