Anti-Porn: The Resurgence of Anti-Pornography Feminism
Julia Long
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 1780320256
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Anti-porn feminism is back. Countering the ongoing "pornification" of Western culture and society, anti-porn movements are powerfully re-emerging among a new generation of feminist activists in the UK and worldwide.
Anti-Porn: The Resurgence of Anti-Porn Feminism examines the ways in which the new feminist arguments and campaigns around pornography are articulated, deployed and received. Drawing on original, ethnographic research, it provides an in-depth analysis of the ideological stance, tactical repertoires, impact and significance of campaign groups challenging the pornography industry.
This unique and inspiring book explains the astonishing comeback of anti-porn feminism and challenges liberal perspectives and the mainstreaming on pornography of pornography that changes the nature of our intimate relationships.
a concern that many women, especially young women, do not identify with the term ‘feminist’ (Whelehan, 2000; Gill, 2007b; Tasker and Negra, 2007; McRobbie, 2009; Woodward and Woodward, 2009). The emergence of anti-porn feminist groups seems to offer important new information with regard to these questions. Second, it is apparent that until recently there has been a marginalisation of feminist voices resisting pornography, with discourses of individual ‘empowerment’ and ‘pleasure’ becoming
academic debates on pornography betrays a curious and anomalous lack of sophistication in theorising the political and social functions of media and culture. Free speech and censorship The answer to bad porn isn’t no porn … it’s to try and make better porn! (Annie Sprinkle)10 The growing power of the pornographers significantly diminishes the likelihood that women will ever experience freedom of anything – certainly not sexual self-determination, certainly not freedom of speech.
(Dworkin, 1988: 225) As we saw in Chapter 1, pro-porn feminists, including those who are critical of some aspects of the porn industry, are opposed to legal interventions that would increase the censorship of pornography. In making this argument, they appeal to the liberal notion of free speech as a supreme social value to be upheld (Strossen, 1995), apparently accepting the highly problematic conceptualisation of pornography as ‘speech’. This unproblematised notion of free speech is one that is
been recognised by feminists, and is neatly illustrated by the feminist slogan ‘the personal is political’: through this slogan, feminists helped to frame what might have been experienced as issues of personal unhappiness, misfortune or failing as issues of sexual politics. Within social movement theory, the concept of framing has been extended in several ways (Benford and Snow, 2000; Snow, 2007). ‘Frame bridging’ refers to ways in which groups reach out to potential constituents, informing them
anti-capitalist events. This afforded the opportunity for ‘frame extension’ through aligning itself with other social justice issues and presenting its arguments to diverse constituents. The success of such discussions was rather limited, due to the male-dominated leftist audiences tending to be unreceptive to a feminist analysis of the sex industry. Nonetheless, these more discursive approaches contributed to the group’s project of framing pornography as a feminist issue; a project which