This is a comment by Lars Fischer on the post “Women’s erotic fiction is perfectly acceptable, no matter what the fantasy, but men’s pornography is controversial and borderline misogyny.“
There’s plenty of pro-porn feminism out there, and there’s plenty of anti-porn rhetoric that is not at all feminist. To bundle together feminist and anti-porn views is, at best, a gross oversimplification.
It *is* true that there’s a relation between feminism and the fact that (women’s) erotic literature is (now) culturally acceptable. Making it acceptable for women to (publicly) enjoy sex(uality) and eroticism has after all been a major drive for the feminist movement. It’s not that long ago that things were quite different; Nancy Friday’s “My Secret Garden” was highly controversial when originally published, as was other women-POV erotic literature published during the 70′s.
There has been much less focus on the acceptance of porn in the feminist movement – in part because there’s all kinds of views on porn among feminists, and the fact that *some* porn is exploitative. And there’s been no other popular movement pushing a “viewing porn is not shameful” agenda.
On the other hand, porn has become infinitely more accessible (due to the net), and porn-like imagery is becoming increasingly common and accepted in movies, advertisement, etc. So, while porn may be controversial in debates and the “letters-to-the-editor section”, a lot of people have voted with their feet. It’s fair to say that porn and porn-like imagery is far more accepted today than every before.
Photo credit: Flickr / hansol
” Making it acceptable for women to (publicly) enjoy sex(uality) and eroticism has after all been a major drive for the feminist movement. It’s not that long ago that things were quite different. Nancy Friday’s “My Secret Garden” was highly controversial when originally published, as was other women-POV erotic literature published during the 70′s.” These sentences are extremely misleading. It makes it sound like Nancy Friday was controversial and feminists helped to change things. But truth is there was always a lot of friction between Nancy Friday and the feminist movement: “Nancy Friday: The original feminists were never in favor… Read more »
Porn is ok now? I’m not meant to feel shame and feel like I am exploiting women?:P So many labels, so many points of view….it’s all so confusing at times:O
Not so fact Archy. Lars only said it was more accepted now than it was before. That doesn’t mean that its okay and it sure as hell doesn’t mean that there no longer exists people (feminist or otherwise) that won’t make that leap from “you watch porn” to “you hate women!”.
But as for feminism and porn I do get the feeling sometimes that there is a separation of what porn is acceptable and what isn’t. As in if it’s not feminist porn then it bad porn.
I’m not sure whether I am meant to be ashamed for what I watch, or celebrate it. Guess everyone feels differently about it all…
“As in if it’s not feminist porn then it bad porn.”
lolz, I’ve just got some funny thoughts rolling through my head of what feminist porn would look like. Basically you’ve got two camps; first are the anti-porn feminists, who tend to be more conservative. And the second camp are feminists who are okay with porn, so long as it’s not exploitative. Now as to what constitutes exploitative, well that’s different to different people. Mostly I saw as long as everyone is consenting, and able to consent (i.e. not coerced or drugged or something) then it’s not exploitative.
I’ve heard facials and/or blowjobs were degrading to some. Some could say pre-marital sex is degrading, I wonder who is right n wrong?
I agree with the everyone consenting, not drugged etc.
So very true…though I’d argue that the other movement(s) that push the idea that porn is okay would be the LGBT rights movement.
(I know the above picture was the editors’ choice, so this is not a response to Lars directly.) Excellent choice of an illustration. I would guess that the billboard shown was NOT created as a feminist warning about porn but as a statement of “family values” cultural conservatives. This shows yet another reason why “feminist = anti-porn” is grossly oversimplified. Not all feminists are anti-porn. By the same token, not everyone who’s anti-porn is a feminist! [Yes, it is possible to have some overlap between feminism and “family values” conservatism. I don’t assume they are completely mutually exclusive, just very… Read more »