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Once again, I thank the authors of this article for creating it to begin with, as an article on this subject was clearly needed on Wikipedia. Also, unlike the related article on Feminist views on prostitution, there was at least some attempt here to present a balance point of view (albeit, with some low-level editorializing, which I've been working to remove). However, I think that there are some strong factual inaccuracies in here regarding the positions of both sides, though this is particularly egregious in the section on sex-positive views, and betrays the author's lack of knowledge on the subject. Also, the way the article is organized is problematic – the breakdown of the arguments on both sides are often points where each side has a point of view, but they happen to disagree on the subject. The "porn versus erotica" topic being a case in point, and by the way, this distinction is one generally made by anti-pornography feminists not the sex-positive side. Iamcuriousblue ( talk) 23:34, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
I note that unfortunately a recent set of edits has made the section Feminist_views_on_pornography#Glad_Day_Bookshop_controversy entirely one-sided. There is substantial disagreement between supporters of Dworkin and MacKinnon on one hand and their feminist and LGBT critics on the other over the role that the Canadian Butler decision played in the crackdown on LGBT materials in Canada in the 1990s. This article gives Dworkin and MacKinnon pretty much the only commentary on the subject and editorial "last word". To say this flies in the face of WP:NPOV and WP:CONTROVERSY is to put it mildly. Iamcuriousblue ( talk) 17:09, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
I just wanted to note the following articles in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on this topic:
They give a pretty good summary of the feminist debate on the issue, though the first of the two is perhaps is a little light when it comes to the sex-positive position. In any event, I think it summarizes the general issues at hand better than this article does, and I hope to soon get around to substantially rewriting this article using the Stanford Encyclopedia articles as a template. Iamcuriousblue ( talk) 01:13, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
After re-editing the article and consolidating the sections in a more coherent way, I see now that the section on sex-positive perspectives is relatively brief, largely quite poorly written, and doesn't really state the case of this perspective very well at all. There are problems with the anti-porn section as well, but, but not nearly so bad, and by consolidating the material properly, I've been at least able to put together a section that gives the basics of the anti-porn feminist argument. The sex-positive section is probably in need of a total rewrite. The "unbalanced" and "factual inaccuracy" tags should remain in place in that section is rewritten and a fair summary of that perspective is present in the article. Iamcuriousblue ( talk) 22:32, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
Right now, the page is organized such that it lists anti-porn feminists and their list of issues, then sex-positive feminists and their set of issues. I think the sections on anti-porn and sex-positive feminism should focus on the core ideas about pornography that each of these feminisms espouses, then a following section on specific issues, where specific points of disagreement and debate are fleshed out. For example, legal regulation is an area where both sides have some very strong opinions (not to mention, as is often the case, there are more than two sides). Also, I think a "History" section is called for.
So it might be structured like:
There could probably be a better title than "Specific issues", but I can't think of it at the moment. Iamcuriousblue ( talk) 17:26, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
I tagged this, because this article is starting to become a bit of a quote farm. I admit I've been part of the problem here, since I've been using a fair number of quotes to quickly expand the article, and the article was already heavily reliant on quotes to begin with.
It is clearly the case that feminists on both sides of the issue have said many quotable things – "Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice", "In practice, attempts to sort out good erotica from bad porn inevitably comes down to 'What turns me on is erotica; what turns you on is pornographic.'", many of Dworkin's statements, etc. are often well-known and/or summarize certain strands of feminist thought on pornography very well and should be in the article. However, other things like MacKinnon's views on why women go into porn or Dworkin and MacKinnon's arguments concerning the effects of the Butler decision are the kinds of things that should be succinctly summarized rather than directly quoted. Iamcuriousblue ( talk) 15:58, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
I don't think there are too many quotes, anyway, instead of taking out quotes, why not adding more text? Anyway the article is incomplete.
This article is also poorly structured and it doesn't explain the issues clearly. This section: "Women reduced to sex objects: Anti-pornography feminists hold the view that pornography contributes to sexism, arguing that in pornographic performances, the actresses are reduced to mere receptacles—objects—for sexual use and abuse by men. They argue that the narrative is usually formed around men's pleasure as the only goal of sexual activity, and the women are showed in a subordinate role. Some opponents believe pornographic films tend to show women as being extremely passive, or that the acts which are performed on the women are typically abusive and solely for the pleasure of their sex partner.[2] MacKinnon and Dworkin defined pornography as "the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures or words". [3]" should be broken in two different sections: one about the issue of sexual objectification in pornography, in general, and another one about the type of sex that is shown in the movies (women shown in a subordinate role, narrative formed around men's pleasure as the only goal etc).
The section Harm to women during production should also be broken in two subsections: one about why women enter into porn (poverty, drugs, abuse, coerced by somebody else etc) and another one about the exploitation that happens during the filming of the scenes (harassment, women forced, coerced into performing etc). 123username ( talk) 16:57, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
This source looks promising:
I haven't seen it yet, but it looks like it might summarize several feminist views on pornography, at least, circa 1990. If so, then I might use it to help structure the article. Unfortunately, my university does not give me access to this article, so I'm going to have to make a trip to the library before I can read it and start using it here. Iamcuriousblue ( talk) 18:47, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
I asked for a source for her support for Porn Vics' Comp Act since I don't recall reading of that anywhere, the 1991 version of the bill did not remedy the porn considered as violating civil rights, it did penalize obscenity which many anti-porn workers did not oppose, and WAP was against the bill. I don't say she couldn't have supported it, but it seems dubious, unless she thought it was as much as could be gotten from Congress and unless also she disagreed with other anti-porn workers on obscenity. Thanks. Nick Levinson ( talk) 03:20, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Not OR in either case. Laws passed by Congress are well known to be nationally applicable (unless otherwise specified and that's rare for any subject). The point was important because the Dworkin-MacKinnon bill was introduced in localities only. As to the objections, the link in the section to the WP article on the FFP-supported bill gives readers access to the sources. A blurb on a topic that's also covered by an article shouldn't repeat all the sources lest it become a maintenance burden; thus the intra-WP link instead. Thanks. Nick Levinson ( talk) 08:00, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
"Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice." This statement is obviously rubbish for two reasons. In the first case a who has just masturbated over some porn is incapable of rape. 'Porn is the theory, prostitution is the practice' would be more like it. Pornography has always been the poor man's prostitution as prostitutes are expensive while porn is cheap. Also if, as is claimed, pornography is central to the oppression of women then presumably these feminists would rather live in countries with no pornography? Then logically they would rather live in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan (no porn) than Holland or Denmark (porn freely available). Thought not. And these important arguments deserve mention in the article in my opinion. SmokeyTheCat •TALK• 11:45, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
The truth about the porn industry
She seems to give a mundane view on the feminist anti-pornography point-of-view. I don't know how to elaborate this into the article. -- Komitsuki ( talk) 17:11, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
The impression given here that feminist thinking about pornography started with the 1970s is misleading. There is no shortage of sources that show otherwise. See Militant Discourse, Strange Bedfellows: Suffragettes and Vorticists Before the War, and Crying 'the horror' of Prostitution: Elizabeth Robins's 'Where Are You Going To … ?' and the Moral Crusade of the Women's Social and Political Union for example. (And, while I'm at it, a few moment's Googling also finds Jeffreys, S. (1982). "'Free from all uninvited touch of man': Women's campaigns around sexuality, 1880–1914". Women's Studies International Forum. 5: 629–645. doi: 10.1016/0277-5395(82)90104-2.).
It's also quite possible that there may have been feminist pro-pornography views expressed during that time period; but so far, I haven't found any documented examples. -- The Anome ( talk) 16:33, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
{{ Unbalanced}} {{ Disputed}} {{ expert-subject}} {{ expert-subject}}
These tags have been up quite a while, and they are pretty much uglifying the top of the article. It's been unbalanced and disputed since the fall of 2009, the last activity of any type on the talk page here was last summer, so whatever is unbalanced and disputed doesn't seem to be going away. I don't know what it is, am not familiar with the article, but I think the idea of these particular tags is to facilitate some discussion and not just hang around on the top of the article for years after discussion has died away. Expired. Herostratus ( talk) 03:36, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
I propose deleting tags from two sections, Sex-Positive and Anti-Censorship Feminist Views and References.Two tags claim a shortage of sources. The one section has 13 and the article has 36, so that doesn't seem to be a problem today. And one tag also says it's incomplete and inaccurate, but I don't see how and it's been a while, so please tell us how now or do the editing you have in mind. Nick Levinson ( talk) 17:06, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
My view is: globalize this article or change its name to "American feminist views on pornography"! More than 90% of the views in here are of American feminists, and the rest are from a few select countries. And btw 75% of the world population lives in Asia&Africa! And the views outside the Western World are way more negative, with very much support among mainstream feminists for strict legal prohibition of pornography, let alone overwhelming and strong opposition to it.
The following text comes from the section "Rape of children" which I removed for NPOV and factual issue: Rape of a prepubescent child followed "habitual" consumption of child porn "within six months" although the men were previously "horrified at the idea", according to men in prison interviewed by Gail Dines. [1]
The above text suffers from the problem that comes across to me as endorsing the argument that viewing child porn leads to child rape among men who would not have otherwise commit child rape. If someone think sit belongs back in the article then I think it needs to be rewritten to clarify that this is Gail Dines argument and not necessarily accepted by everyone. -- Cab88 ( talk) 05:59, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
References
I noticed the feminist pornography section could use more detail and I was thinking of making it a standalone article. Any thoughts on this idea?
Also - should it be called feminist pornography and erotica?
( Adelle Frank ( talk) 15:31, 14 July 2012 (UTC))
Hello I noticed there could be more added to this section. I would like to add more info and a few changes to inform more audiences about what feminist pornography and what it is. What do you think, let me know. Thanks. HannahSims ( talk) 21:40, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
Maybe we should make a page about Catholics' views on whale fishing? Or perhaps Teachers' views on Golf? Seriously, this article should be deleted. Wikipedia isn't a political platform. Why should a set of opinions get their own heavily biased article in what is supposed to be an impartial Encyclopaedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.145.165.125 ( talk) 10:46, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
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This section should be removed or rewritten. It relies far too heavily on what is obviously original research. This is due in part to the lack of citations but also because it reads as if a conclusion was already settled upon and we are now seeking information that can support that conclusion. The claims made in the section are subtly biased in favor of a pro-pornography point of view. I also object to the gratuitous use of "anti-" and "pro-" labels for which there are no citations. These are placed in such a way to suggest these viewpoints are the general consensus of the feminists they describe. They aren't. The way this section is particular is written makes it sound as if being against pornography is harmful and sexist against women, which is a strange way to paint prominent feminists without giving any references. It is not agreed-upon in any of the few sources that are provided that anti-pornography is synonymous with being anti-sex, pro-censorship, or in favor of the sexism against women who work in the sex industry. The whole of the article suffers from this editorializing language, and I would like to discuss improvements that can be made and if such bias claims need be included at all.-- Ongepotchket ( talk) 21:00, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
We need to include a section on this. Feminists have been largely silent about it and that is notable, since a feminist ban on pornography includes gay porn, even though there are no women involved. JRhorstman ( talk) 19:01, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
There are a bunch of tags above the article, but I'm not seeing any issues raised on the talk page. Could someone clarify? In general it isn't helpful to tag things like this without an explanation of the perceived problem in a bit more detail. Hobit ( talk) 18:26, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
The following was at the beginning of a section titled "The industry and production," which is about feminist pornographers. I am preserving this here, in case it has a due place in this article.
-- Lightbreather ( talk) 22:29, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
/info/en/?search=User:Jljones7/sandbox
I find the second paragraph directly under "Anti-pornography feminism" somewhat biased, for mainly two reasons. First, in
the word "censorship" is probably used in the rhetoric of the cited author to incite certain negative feelings in the reader (which we probably don't want to replicate on Wikipedia if we want to be neutral). Since "we all know that censorship is bad" so to say. Not only am I unaware of Dworkin and MacKinnon having asked for outright censorship, reading their book "Pornography and Civil Rights" makes it clear that their position is that at select times (even if almost always), select publications of pornography (even if almost all), cause direct harm to select individuals, or to women as a class, and the drafted law gives said harmed individuals, or an individual representing women as a class, a legal means to ask for retaliation against these harms, given they can prove these harms in court. This is very different from the concept of censorship, which is a wholesale criminalization of a category of publications on the grounds that they are all intrinsically bad, irrespective of whether they do or don't cause harm to any real person or group of people in any given circumstance. This is a subliminal yet deep distinction; it may seem hogwash to a layperson, but it's in fact made concrete in the fact that the proposed law is a civil one and not a criminal one. Each case of claimed harm needs to be proven in court in the case of the proposed civil law; the state cannot outright criminalize (ban) a publication just because it fits in the given definition of pornography (which as defined by Dworkin and MacKinnon is rather rigorous and concrete, by the way). And secondly,
The clause "though she supplied no evidence to support this assertion" once again seems to be something the author of the cited work wants to emphasize to make their point. It's redundant in the strict sense for a Wikipedia article, since the lack of proof is implicit in saying that Dworkin claimed or stated (or estimated...) so and so.
Zooming out a bit from these details, I find it overall questionable to use a source supporting the "sex-positive" side of the debate when explaining the anti-pornography side's perspective. Are Dworkin and MacKinnon's own publications not the best citations for when we want to explain their perspective? Why are we explaining their perspective through a publication arguing for the opposite perspective? Am I making sense, or does it sound like I'm biased myself? TaylanUB ( talk) 18:30, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
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This article states that many feminists oppose pornography, but the word many is hard to pin down. Does it mean a large number or most. The determiner definition of Many is "a large number." while the noun definition simply means "most." I tried asking for polls on feminism and pornography, but got nothing. Can someone please give me advice on what we can do to make this article more direct. Unless most feminists state that pornography is harmful to women(which may be the case since I can't find statstics on their opinions), the term many is easy to misinterpit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Graylandertagger ( talk • contribs) 21:36, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
Hmmm, the two main sections are titled
whereas a parallel construction would be something like
or else
which we probably don't want the latter, but the name of the second section implies that meaning for the first, and if that's a bad title for the first section, then its a bad title for the second section. (Kind of like if we had article "Abortion controvery" with two sections, "Pro-Life Views" and "Pro-Death Views" or something.) So let's fix it. Herostratus ( talk) 15:06, 20 April 2017 (UTC)
Hello everyone. I'm currently working on a Dutch translation of this article, as I find the topic to be very important. However, a lot more references are needed in this article, it's unclear where several statements and claims come from. I may provide some of these required references later myself as I go forward (e.g. I added some about Boreman's claims, which seem to be covered in reliable sources). Another concern is the 'Women reduced to sex objects' section. Most of this section depends on the Shim/Paul study alone, which had a relatively small sample size of 84; this may be in violation of WP:UNDUE, so I added a Single source template. Since this article is behind paywalls everywhere, it's hard to verify the claims, and it seems that a Wikipedian has added their own original research (own conclusions/extrapolations) in between the referenced sentences. The most notable example of this is the unsourced sentence: 'This implies that these men would be less likely to view the pornography which harshly objectifies women if they know others would be aware if they do so, due to the perceived social consequences.' It is unclear whether this implication is mentioned by Shim/Paul or a Wikipedian's original research. The same goes for the last two unsourced sentences on the Webber study: 'Performers are usually aware of what their audience expects from them and what viewers enjoy. Webber could theorize that women use this knowledge and personal intentions to produce pornography in which men anonymously consume, which then authenticates the normality of such depictions of sex as being appropriate and desirable.' The words 'Webber could theorize' are indicative that Webber hasn't actually theorised this, merely that she could. This seems to be a Wikipedian's personal conclusion or extrapolation that cannot be found in the study itself. Again, because the study is behind paywalls everywhere online it's impossible for me to check, but perhaps someone else could prove me right or wrong. In the meantime, I don't trust these two statements and suspect them to be original research. Nederlandse Leeuw ( talk) 09:16, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
While anti-pornography feminism is addressed in this article, and Catharine MacKinnon’s theories are mentioned numerous times, I would encourage the editors to elaborate on the relationship between pornography and the sex trafficking industry. “Pornography undoubtedly perpetuates the commercial sexual exploitation of women and girls in America,” (Lillie, 2014). There is relevance to this article in the topic of pornography perpetuating the sex trafficking industry and also in what scholars like Catharine MacKinnon argue—that pornography can actually be a form of trafficking.
Intersectionalfeminist Intersectionalfeminist ( talk) 20:36, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
References
Camille Paglia should be added as a supporter of porn and prostitution and her critics of anti porn feminists like Catharine Mackinnon and Andrea Dworkin 169.255.184.202 ( talk) 17:17, 27 November 2021 (UTC)