Feminist views of pornography
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 Growing Up in a Pornified Culture, Gail Dines, TEDx
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Feminist views on pornography range from condemnation of pornography as a form of violence against women, to an embracing of some forms of pornography as a medium of feminist expression. Feminist debate on this issue reflects larger concerns surrounding feminist views on sexuality, and is closely related to feminist debates on prostitution, BDSM, and other issues. Pornography has been one of the most divisive issues in feminism, particularly among feminists in anglophone countries. This deep division between feminists was exemplified in the feminist sex wars of the 1980s, which pitted anti-pornography feminism against sex-positive feminism.
Feminist opponents of pornography—such as Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Robin Morgan, Diana Russell, Alice Schwarzer, Gail Dines, and Robert Jensen—argue that pornography is harmful to women, and constitutes strong causality or facilitation of violence against women.
Catharine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin had separately staked out a position that pornography was inherently exploitative toward women, and they called for a civil law to make pornographers accountable for harms that could be shown to result from the use, production, and circulation of their publications. When Dworkin testified before the Meese Commission in 1986, she said that 65 to 75 percent of women in prostitution and hard-core pornography had been victims of incest or child sexual abuse.
Andrea Dworkin's activism against pornography during the 1980s brought her to national attention.
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