CICLITIRA, Karen. Pornography Women and Feminism

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DOI: 10.1177/1363460704040143
2004 7: 281 Sexualities
Karen Ciclitira
Pornography, Women and Feminism: Between Pleasure and Politics
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Abstract This article draws on a qualitative research study which
set out to explore womens experiences and views of pornography
within the broader context of conicting feminist positions on
pornography. The research methodology posed an implicit
criticism of the kind of ndings familiar from mainstream
psychological research: semi-structured interviews were
conducted with women from diverse backgrounds in the UK,
and feminist theory and discourse analysis were used to inform
interpretation of their accounts. Although the question of
feminism was not explicitly raised by the interviewer, it emerged
as a recurrent theme in interviews, with interviewees suggesting
that the feminist anti-porn stance in particular has inuenced
their perspective on pornography. Their accounts show that
womens experiences are variegated, individual and complex, and
that discourses of pornography and feminism may be negotiated
in unpredictable ways.
Keywords anti-porn feminism, feminism, pornography,
qualitative, women
Karen Ciclitira
Middlesex University, UK
Pornography, Women and Feminism:
Between Pleasure and Politics
Introduction
In more overtly political terms, it is feminism which has done most to
politicise heterosexual pleasure so that contemporary sexual pleasure is
difcult to imagine outside of, or as an alternative to, feminist politics. In
this respect, post-feminist representations of sex (and readings of them)
will inevitably bear the traces of both a feminist past which will insist that
there are no spaces outside of unequal heterosexual power relations and a
contemporary desire to move beyond that impasse into a place where
womens enjoyment and pleasure are paramount.
(Sonnet, 1999: 184)
Article
Sexualities Copyright 2004 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol 7(3): 281301 DOI: 10.1177/1363460704040143
www.sagepublications.com
02 Ciclitira (ad/t) 29/6/04 1:56 pm Page 281
How has feminism shaped the way women in the West think about
pornography?
1
Feminist preoccupation with pornography has been
ongoing since the 1970s, although there has been a perceptible lessening
of interest during the past decade. Within the academy and in political
activism, feminists who have written and spoken about pornography have
adopted widely differing positions. In the main, they have taken either a
vehemently anti-pornography position or a strongly anti-censorship
position. Few feminists have actively promoted a middle ground. This
schism within feminist debate, dating from the late 1970s, has been
likened to previous splits such as those between redstockings (such as
Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman), who were seen as pro-sex
feminists, and bluestockings who campaigned against prostitution and
alcohol (Crosson, 1998).
Public debates between feminists have accordingly been polarized, and
the ambivalence of the issues involved has not always been acknowledged.
Anti-porn feminists and political and legislative activists such as Andrea
Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon have attracted particular attention by
virtue of their campaigns, books, and legislative efforts. Anti-censorship
feminist activists and writers such as Carole Vance and Avedon Carol, and
those who have written scholarly non-polemical texts on the history of
pornography (e.g. Kendrick, 1996; McNair, 1996, 2002; Williams, 1991)
have not attracted the same general interest and media coverage.
US anti-porn feminists activities
In the 1970s Andrea Dworkin, a long-time feminist activist, became the
major theorist of the US anti-pornography camp. Fierce feminist debates
were triggered by such events as the 1976 release in the US of the lm
Snuff, in which a woman was shown being dismembered for viewers
sexual gratication. Mistakenly believing that the eroticized torture scenes
in Snuff were real, Dworkin organized nightly vigils at locations where the
lm was being shown, sparking related protests by women in other US
cities (as well as in the UK). Prominent US feminists, including Susan
Brownmiller and Gloria Steinem, joined Dworkin to found the campaign
group Women Against Pornography (WAP). The anti-porn campaign
escalated with Take Back the Night marches through areas such as Times
Square, which contained adult book stores, massage parlours and strip
shows.
Dworkin and other prominent feminists arranged conferences and
lecture tours, showing slide-shows featuring hard- and soft-core porn to
womens consciousness-raising groups. Educational tours of Times
Squares X-rated theatres and sex shows attracted more than 2500 anti-
porn participants annually. Support was drawn from various quarters,
Sexualities 7(3)
282
including from psychologists investigating the effects of pornography (such
as Ed Donnerstein and Neil Malamuth), as well as from religious groups
and conservative politicians. In 1981, Dworkin published her inuential
book Pornography: Men Possessing Women, which argued that devaluation
of women in pornography served to maintain mens power over them.
Other feminists voiced disagreements about the anti-porn campaign,
criticizing anti-porn feminists for being racist, indifferent to class privilege,
and for showing no concern for sex workers (e.g. McIntosh, 1992). From
1980 on, US feminists such as Ellen Willis and Pat Calia started to oppose
the anti-porn movement (Brownmiller, 2000). Anti-porn feminists were
accused of hypocrisy and bias in showing sexually graphic and unrepre-
sentatively violent sexual images in their campaigns. Disagreements also
arose about the rights of women of diverse sexual orientations to practise
sadomasochistic sexuality (Vance, 1992). The US anti-porn feminist
debates resonated in the UK and other countries, and have had a lasting
impact on feminism. Feminists in the UK such as Catherine Itzin (1992)
replicated activities taking place in the US, including attempts to persuade
legislators to strengthen the censorship of sexually explicit materials.
Current debates and legislation: Child
pornography and sexual abuse
During the 1990s, many feminists who had devoted their energies to
combating pornography turned their attention to other issues. Welfare,
poverty, racism, and worldwide social inequalities became more pressing
concerns than the actions of adults who choose to make and view pornog-
raphy. The voices of feminists who continued to engage with pornogra-
phy were drowned out as politicians, law enforcement agencies, the media
and the general public turned their attention to the issue. There has been
a change in emphasis, with child pornography and its availability on the
Internet now considered a far graver concern than adult pornography
(Weitzer, 2000).
Between 1995 and 2001, there were around 2000 convictions in the
US as a result of police entering virtual chat rooms in the guise of children
to identify people who might try to solicit them for sexual purposes
(Boggan and Peachey, 2001). Anti-censorship feminist Avedon Carol
opposed the setting up of the Internet Watch Foundation in 1996 in the
UK, arguing that the US precedent, which sought to catch Internet
paedophiles, amounted to entrapment and was an infringement of civil
liberties (Carol, 2001, personal correspondence).
On BBC radio on 16 August 2000, as mobs in several English towns
were driving alleged paedophiles (many of whom were entirely innocent)
Ciclitira Pornography, Women and Feminism
283
from their homes and in at least one case to suicide, Dworkin advocated
the castration of offending paedophiles and defended the mob behaviour
with the claim that in Britain women and children are not protected by
the law (McNair, 2002). Although some feminist academics apart from
Dworkin have turned their attention to these issues (e.g. Itzin, 2000;
Lederer, 1996), the media and the public have generally become more
vocal than feminists, condemning child pornography and the lenient
sentences passed on sex offenders.
Feminism and the proliferation of pornography for
women
During the past decade many women appear to have become disenchanted
with Dworkin and her anti-porn views, perceiving them as unduly polar-
ized and anti-sex. Feminists continue to disagree about whether or not
pornography is harmful. MacKinnon argues that the harms are no
different online than anywhere else, and that in whatever form porn exists,
it attacks the equality of women and plays a central role in institutionaliz-
ing a subhuman, victimized, second-class status for women (1994, 1995).
However, the ever-accelerating commodication of sex has involved the
creation of womens porn/erotica and its promotion as a clear alternative
to mens pornography. Feminists have highlighted the way cybersex
provides opportunities for identity-bending, as users are able to take on
different characteristics (e.g. gender, age, sexuality, race, and physical
appearance). They have also noted a number of other benets from new
technologies, such as improved access to sex education and safe sex,
and opportunities for women and for minorities to make contact, and
to produce and distribute their own representations (Ciclitira, 1998;
Williams, 1991).
Recent innovations in technology, many of which are due to the vast
and protable commercial porn industry, have facilitated both the produc-
tion of and access to pornography by women of different races, ethnicities
and sexualities. This has not only enabled women to have easy access to
porn from the privacy of their homes, but it has also enabled them (as well
as men) to produce and distribute their own non-professional porn rela-
tively cheaply (McNair, 2002). By breaking down the distinction between
producer and consumer, interactive sex entertainment has enabled indi-
viduals to write their own sexual identities, and to accommodate diverse
desires and cultural meanings (Kibby and Costello, 2001). Increased
Internet access is evidenced by the rapidly increasing number of sites for
amateur porn productions, and websites such as cliterati.co.uk being run
by women for women.
Sexualities 7(3)
284
Inevitably the type of texts produced and circulated affects consump-
tion. Most pornography shown on adult channels continues to focus on
womens breasts and bodies, with little sign of mens erect penises or male
penetration and ejaculation. It may be because of the Internets anarchic,
anti-authoritarian qualities that the UKs restrictive censorship of such
images began to dissolve from 2000 on, so that such images have become
legally allowable in media such as R18 videos, lms and magazines
(McNair, 2002).
However, women continue to be the primary object of porn in both the
written and visual text, with female sexual willingness as the premise of
pornographic scenarios. A range of visually signied social distinctions of
race, age and class are superimposed on the gender/power dichotomy
(Hardy, 1998). There are almost no women of colour on adult cable
programming, which is an indication of the uneven distribution of access
according to patterns of race and class privilege (Juffer, 1998). Much of
the pornography that has entered mainstream culture through such
channels as car advertising, cinema, music, the Internet, and TV, continues
to be male-oriented to the point of misogyny, as many pro-porn feminists
will admit. However, the sexualization of culture from the pornosphere
to the public sphere has included within it a democratization and diversi-
cation of sexual discourse. The commodied cultures of advanced capi-
talist societies have come to function as spaces for the articulation and
dissemination of diverse sexual identities and radical sexual politics
(McNair, 2002: 205).
The improved nancial status of many women in the West has
contributed to the creation of what Jane Juffer (1998) calls domesticated
pornography: texts marketed to women and couples such as literary
erotica. Unlike most visual pornography, this erotic literature is mainly
produced by women. Domestication has increased access to sexually
explicit material to women of all classes and sexualities, including women
of colour as well as white women. Erotic ction for women has become a
mainstream genre for publishers such as Virgin, whose Black Lace series
was launched in 1993. Promoted as an alternative to pornography and
aimed at a female readership, it is widely available in newsagents in the UK
and is marketed in Europe, the US and further aeld (including China and
South Africa).
Black Lace positions itself as feminist but draws on conventions of male-
oriented pornography, and although it allows for female erotic subjectiv-
ity, the old forms of eroticism remain largely intact (Hardy, 2001). It
constructs a female heterosexuality in which the pleasures offered embody
contradictions around sexual pleasure and female desire, which resist being
positioned in terms of pro-or anti-pornography politics. Although it is a
genre which promotes a sexuality in which women can demand equal
285
gratication to men, such erotica fails to provide any analysis that connects
the power relations enacted in male-dened porn to the broader
continuum of male-dominated culture (Sonnet, 1999). Furthermore,
although most erotic ction is marketed as being produced by women, the
owners and main beneciaries of the companies involved, as in the case of
Black Lace, are invariably men.
Pornography research
Most psychological research has not considered the possibility that women
may enjoy pornography, nor considered the possible impact on women of
feminist anti-porn activities and debates. Although much of the research
in this area has been carried out either by anti-pornography feminists or
by researchers sympathetic to their views, there has been little empirical
work which has elicited womens own accounts about their experiences of
pornography.
Traditional psychological effects research which attempts to establish
a causal relationship between pornography and violent behaviour has
been a dubious ally of anti-pornography feminism (Boyle, 2000). Most
psychological research has been laboratory-based, focusing on the atti-
tudinal and behavioural effects of pornography on sample populations of
largely white, middle-class male undergraduates (see Linz and Malamuth,
1993 for an overview). Research questions include whether viewing
pornography causes men to be more sexually aggressive to women,
whether it affects women and men differently, and whether the circu-
lation of pornography is linked to the incidence of sexual crimes. A typical
example of such research features a group of male participants being
exposed to different types or levels of sexually explicit material, for
comparison with a control group viewing non-sexual material. The
general assumption has been that men are the only porn users, and that
women suffer the effects of negative attitudes and aggressive behaviour
resulting from mens exposure to porn.
Pornography is often dened pejoratively: words like violent, degrad-
ing, and humiliating may be used with no acknowledgement that such
descriptions are subjective and contextually relative (e.g. Cowan and
Dunn, 1994). Psychologists have attempted to clarify the issue of de-
nition by distinguishing between non-violent pornography, violent
pornography, and erotica (e.g. Senn and Radtke, 1990). Non-violent
pornography is described as objectifying, degrading or dehumanizing
to distinguish it from erotica. Researchers apparent bias about the
negative effects of pornography on male and female consumers appears to
have inuenced how pornography is dened. Terms such as degrading
and violent are imprecise and subjective: for example, violence may be
Sexualities 7(3)
286
determined by the violent manner in which women routinely are pene-
trated (Jensen and Dines, 1998: 69), or by the number of whips and
chains or whatever else may be arbitrarily assigned as representing
violence (Hardy, 1998: 29).
Some empiricists have subsequently retracted or weakened their claims
that viewing pornography causes men to be violent. They have complained
that anti-pornography feminists have misappropriated their data to
strengthen censorship laws, and that only pornography that combines
violence and sex has been shown to be harmful and then only in the
sense of immediate effects in a laboratory (e.g. Donnerstein et al., 1987).
They accept that research on pornography cannot be denitive (e.g.
Zillmann, 1989). Researchers have also tried to establish causal links
between the circulation of porn and the incidence of sexual crimes, but
some have confused correlation with cause and effect (e.g. Russell, 1992).
The following study was carried out in response to the perceived lack
of the kind of research which might allow women to talk directly about
their positive and/or negative experiences of sexually explicit material.
The study
I interviewed six women for a pilot study, and a further 34 women in the
main study (Ciclitira, 1998). Those interviewed in the main study were
recruited through advertisements in the Guardian, Ms London, The Voice
magazines, and snowballing (word-of-mouth). All those interviewed
were selected according to the criterion of their having viewed, read, or
had some involvement with pornography. A screening questionnaire was
designed and sent to 200 women, 108 of which were returned completed.
In the screening questionnaire, 20 of the women interviewed described
themselves as feminist, 10 as somewhat feminist, and four as not
feminist. Given that I had not sought to interview women specically
aligned with feminism(s), the number of self-declared feminists in the
sample was high: 82 per cent of the women who had completed a ques-
tionnaire described themselves as either feminist or somewhat feminist.
This suggested that they saw a possible link between feminist issues and
pornography.
There are practical and epistemological problems with regard to gener-
alizing the ndings from qualitative research of this kind to women in
general. Rather than seeking a representative group of participants, I
took into account the (socially constructed) self-denitions of the partici-
pants in terms of their race, class and sexual orientation. The ages of the
34 interviewees in the main study ranged from 23 to 52, and they came
from diverse educational and socio-economic backgrounds. Fourteen had
a university degree, and a further six had postgraduate qualications.
287
There were nine interviewees who were earning in excess of 15,000 per
year, but most were part-time workers, unemployed, students, or running
the home. There were four women who described themselves as lesbian,
six as bisexual and 24 as heterosexual, while 25 women described them-
selves as white, four as Asian, one as mixed race, and four as black
Afro-Caribbean.
The semi-structured interview questions were designed to reect
neither an anti- nor pro-pornography stance. Pornography was not
dened for participants, and interview questions were worded so as to
cover both visual and written material. Participants were encouraged to
discuss how they would dene pornography; their experiences of viewing
pornography; whether or not pornography had affected their self-image;
their sexual fantasies and behaviour; their likes and dislikes about pornog-
raphy and erotica; and their views about the censorship of sexually explicit
material.
All of those who agreed to an interview and were willing to travel to
University College London were offered an interview; one who was
unable to travel due to disability was interviewed in her home. All the
interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and analysed drawing on a
methodology of discourse analysis (Banister et al., 1995) whereby the
interview data could be treated as texts for exploring a range of views held
by the women concerned at a given time and place, rather than as a means
of arriving at scientic truths about the effects of pornography or of deter-
mining womens experience of porn. The analyses aimed to explore the
broader sociocultural meanings of pornography constructed by these
women, rather than focusing on individual conversational styles or psycho-
logical explanations of their views.
The dilemmatic approach outlined by Billig et al. (1988), which
attempts to refuse or displace assumptions about an inner unity or
consistent schema of beliefs and ideology, offered a useful means of noting
and interpreting contradictions within and between the participants
accounts. Analysis of the womens interviews illustrated the presence of
ideological dilemmas, which may be obscured by the usual social psycho-
logical procedure of focusing on the answer. Dilemmas created by oppo-
sitions such as those between individual and society or between freedom
and control were notably evident in some of the womens accounts.
Analysis
Although feminism was not raised by the interviewer in the interviews (but
had been topicalized in the screening questionnaire), 20 of the 34 partici-
pants (mostly self-dened feminists) mentioned it, 16 of these in the
context of anti-pornography views and campaigns. Anti-pornography
Sexualities 7(3)
288
feminism in particular seems to have had a powerful impact on those
participants who aligned themselves with feminist views. Questions about
the historical contexts of feminism and pornography, and about the inter-
action of US and UK feminist activities regarding pornography, arose in
many interviewees narratives. Among the range of explanations that
participants drew on to account for their views and experiences with
pornography, many were linked to an individual involvement with
feminism.
The historical contexts of the feminist debates in the US and the UK
were considered during the analysis of data and the research for this study.
Verbatim excerpts from interviews are reproduced in this article; words
spoken with special emphasis are presented in italic.
The impact of Dworkins anti-porn writings
Some participants cited Dworkins writings as having had a more powerful
effect on them than porn itself. The interviews suggested that strong anti-
porn views could arouse fear and anger even among some women who
had not seen any porn, or none of the kind described by Dworkin. In using
words such as degrading, abused and exploited, Belinda-Jane
2
(42,
cohabiting, white, heterosexual) drew on anti-porn discourses of moral
distress and exploitation:
Theres nothing that would be unpleasant or degrading, or whatever, its not
something Ive seen, but something Ive only read about. Cos years ago I read
um tch um Andrea Dworkins book about pornography, I remember reading
that and feeling really upset, very kind of upsetting because shes talking a lot
about I dont know people being abused really, exploited and um, and you know
lots of the images and things from that are very disturbing.
Patricia (30, married, black Afro-Caribbean, bisexual) commented on
how disturbing she found anti-porn feminists books such as Dworkins,
and how she felt this affected her relationships with men:
When I was reading a lot of books about pornography by sort of people like
Andrea Dworkin, and people like that, where she sort of mentions things the
you know the Story of O and everything like that, and Ive read it a little bit but
I just like nd it so very, very, very difcult to read, and you know I nd that I
get very, very, very angry, and its difcult for me to sort of, to sort of you know
to read it, I mean Ive read it but stuff like that that is so very, very debasing, I
nd I nd quite difcult. I think ech I think also when I do read stuff like that
it makes me, it makes me sort of a harder person in terms of my relationships
with men.
Dworkins writing may be found particularly powerful and shocking
because it does not just analyse violent pornographic texts but effectively
289
reproduces them (Segal, 1997: 222): her Pornography: Men Possessing
Women (Dworkin, 1989) gives graphic and detailed depictions of
sexualized violence. The notion that sexual desire is an expression of
irrational and unconscious wishes, which are not easily changed, may also
partly explain the emotional impact of porn on women: sexist pornogra-
phy is obnoxious because it both degrades and titillates us (Segal, 1994:
127).
Dworkins autobiographical Life and Death (1997) gives a vivid account
of how she was battered and raped, and of her own experiences of pornog-
raphy. In an article in the New Statesman of 5 June 2000, she claimed that
she had been raped by a hotel waiter at an unnamed location. Dworkins
own life experiences inform her enormous energy and anger about hetero-
sexual sex, men and the porn industry, and indicate why she feels that
women ghting porn are ghting for their lives. She and others are effec-
tively saying that they cannot take porn to be symbolic: it is as if the acts
portrayed were actually being performed upon them. For women who
have suffered abusive and traumatic violence the space for symbolization
is destroyed, so that it is not surprising if fantasy and reality are elided
(Benjamin, 1995).
Hilary (31, single, white, and heterosexual) spoke of the disturbance she
felt at her ambivalent reaction to Dworkins descriptions, which she both
hated and found arousing:
I read years ago Andrea Dworkins book on pornography, and um it was when
I was at university, anyway, there was eight, eight women in a group, and we all
read this book, and it caused, I hated that book, I really hated it, and that was
it, we discussed how it was disgusting, it was exploitative, it was everything, it
was everything, but actually thinking about it, in the context of your work I
reckoned that part of the reason that I hated it so much was I actually found it
quite exciting. I dont know if youve read it but theres some theres some fairly,
disturbing scenes really. I mean, I dont even know what they were, but I
remember reading it and being rationally this is terrible, but I, I will now
accept that there were other parts of me that were absolutely fascinated by this
seedy grotesque little world, which she was talking about. So I dont know, I
dont know what thats about, I suspect its possibly true for all of us cos the
reactions were wild really wild.
Olivia (35, single, white, and heterosexual) argued that polarized
positions in the feminist porn debates do not represent the complexities
of the issue, nor do they reect how many women may feel:
Going back to my current boyfriend, um he hes always had loads of magazines
of um girlie magazines, and hes got a couple of hard-core things um but Ive
kind of changed my views again, um about pornography, because there was a
time when I read sort of Andrea Dworkins work and that made a lot of sense,
and I thought yes, yes that ts in with with you know other views of women
Sexualities 7(3)
290
and how women are controlled, but then at the same time as like reading Andrea
Dworkin there was new kind of movement for me it was new, that new way of
thinking about you know pornographys for women as well tch and when I read
the material about that that made me I, I agreed with some of it, cos you know
Ive got sexual feelings as well, so I kind of believe in both bits of both schools
of thought. I know there might be a bit of a contradiction there but I do ich it
made me change my views, so I now dont feel its wrong completely to use
pornography, um both men and for women.
Olivias words indicate how the way people deal with dilemmas is often
not xed. She claimed to have had sympathy with different schools of
thought about porn at different times. Contemporary writings by women
who believe pornography is for women as well as men seem to have
allowed Olivia to accept her sexual feelings, and perhaps to change the way
she handles the dilemma of having a boyfriend who views porn.
Anti-porn feminism is too extreme
Carol (36, cohabiting, white and lesbian) reported that feminists anti-
porn views made her question her involvement with feminism:
Im a feminist and been sort of quite up the radi-kind of the spectrum of
feminism um where a lot of women are really anti-porn and Im not, and all my
mates are going on an anti-porn action and Ive insisted on saying I cant do
this, cos I dont agree with you, I dont believe that pornography causes rape
or any of these kind of arguments, um I dont even agree with their denitions
of what is pornographic half the time, um, so that its actually made me review
the whole of my feminist thinking, and what kind of a feminist am I.
Hilary made the familiar discursive distinction between anti-pornography
and anti-sexuality:
In a way theres a, a mood of ideas was changing anyway, I think. And also this
maybe a purely personal response, I dont know, but I suspect a lot of the reac-
tions that I was having in the 80s, were all this really absolute blanket censor-
ship, which was like, it was almost about just just cutting off from sex, I dont
actually think it was simply a reaction to pornography, in retrospect I believe it
was um a reluctance to really accept sex, and yeah and not change, but that could
be completely bogus, but thats how it feels to me.
Dilemmas of politicizing the personal
Nine of the participants in this research indicated past or current conicts
between their feminist anti-porn views and their enjoyment of porn. Some
no longer agreed with anti-porn feminism, but said that they felt anti-porn
views impinged on their sexual enjoyment. Many participants had obvi-
ously given these issues a great deal of thought, such as Quinta (35,
291
cohabiting, white, and bisexual), who reported having looked at porn
frequently, both on her own and with a boyfriend, until she discovered
feminism in her late teens. She explained that she could not view pornog-
raphy in a historical vacuum, emphasizing how its meanings for her were
partly inuenced by womens lower social status. She continues to buy and
look at porn on her own, but said that it makes her really uncomfortable:
The most signicant things that, that feminism did for me, that it completely
cut off that, that angle in our relationship, which may or may not be a positive
thing, but I, I stopped, we, we stopped sharing pornography at that point, and
Ive never done so since . . . I felt that I was colluding with something which,
which I was uncomfortable about, women being subjugated in, in positions of
powerlessness and abuse, and I didnt want to be part of that, and I felt I was
fullling his fantasy about women fancying other women . . . It was a bit like
reclaiming my own sexuality I suppose, it was like saying well in fact if it turns
me on then you know thats okay, then thats, thats for me, but Im not gonna
be part of his fantasy about it, because I didnt feel that that was equal anymore.
I felt it was unequal whereas in the past I believed, I think rather that it was
equal, and so when I was, when we were doing it together I believed that you
know I had as much power in the, in that situation as he did and then I suddenly
realized that wasnt the case. That there was too much history that had gone
before it, that womens position in society, and in relation to their sexuality was
not powerful, and so you know it could it couldnt be equal, and thats why it
made me uncomfortable . . . I dont feel that I want to be or have to be avail-
able, or sexual all the time, or wear suspenders, or masturbate with candles, or
you know be any of that stuff.
Some viewers commented explicitly that they personally enjoyed porn
despite disagreeing with it politically. Quinta discussed being aware that
porn might oppress women as a group and that she might be colluding
with this by viewing it, yet she was unable to change the nature of the
porn that was available and which she occasionally enjoyed.
Betty (28, married, white, and heterosexual) highlighted the complex-
ities of these issues. She talked of worrying about the porn industry, and
of avoiding porn lms, which reminded her that pornographic behaviour
was real, unlike magazines with still photographs, which seemed less
real. She drew on confessional and essentialist discourses to articulate her
desire to explore her sexual potential, alongside her discomfort and
ambivalence both with her own sexuality and with the porn that was avail-
able to her:
I have this real porn dilemma, which is probably why Ive never been into it in
a big way anyway, because half of me wants to look and um explore and desire
and, and go as far as I can go, an and another half of me is very aware that the
people who make those kinds of images lms, or whatever, are maybe not doing
it out of a free choice, an I and I you know, Id like to think that I am aware of
that, and so because I dont want to support an industry that is you know er
Sexualities 7(3)
292
abusing people, then I dont want pornography, but because I want to explore
my own sexuality, I want to reassure myself about my own sexuality. I want to
explore my own potential then I do want it. So I have this kind of half of me
does and half of me doesnt thing, the whole time Im, Im watching it, and
that thats why I dont like lms very much, because at least with magazines I
kind of feel to a certain extent, that um that thats all that went on and I can
close it and put it back under the bed, and, and thats it gone, but with lms
they just seem much more real to me. I mean its, its a very, kind of, and I
mean I know Im fooling myself by, you know cos even though I do disagree
with it I am supporting it by buying the magazines. So I feel and its something
I feel quite strongly about because also I feel that most of the material that Ive
seen uh is completely male orientated, and doesnt satisfy me really, and and I
kind of dont like the way that the women in it are portrayed, and I dont like,
you know the fantasies that are kind of in there.
Betty draws on discourses of personal desire/satisfaction that conict
with her discomfort at being complicit with the porn industry. This is
resolved through a subscription to a position of conscious foolishness.
She suggests that the dilemmas involved in exploring her own potential
lead to compromises and contradictions: she wants to use porn to explore
her sexuality but feels unhappy about women being degraded.
The feminist debate about the ways women should respond to pornog-
raphy is bedevilled by an ignorance of how they actually do (Bower, 1986).
A woman can be clear that she is anti-pornography and that she does not
enjoy viewing it, and yet she can still be sexually aroused by it. Geraldine
(42, cohabiting, white, and heterosexual) commented: I feel angry and
demeaned by the whole, you know, experience of seeing pornography, and
yet also being aroused by it.
Similar problems expressed by other participants show that there are no
tidy conclusions to be drawn from politicizing the personal. Anti-porn
feminists suggest that women who enjoy porn are coerced by men into
doing so, or that their sexual arousal has been socially constructed to enjoy
abusive material (e.g. Russell, 1993). But porn can have resonances for
women for other reasons (Smart, 1994). Women in this study who do not
agree with porn politically but enjoy viewing it talked about their experi-
ences of discomfort at the contradictions between their beliefs, feelings
and actions. Women may feel identied with both oppressed and oppres-
sor, seeing themselves outside and yet within the terms of others who
dictate their condition.
Anti-porn feminism and sex workers
Wendy, a former sex worker (43, single, black African and English, Eco-
Womanist and heterosexual), voiced anger and disillusionment with anti-
porn feminism and its political activities. She discussed anti-porn feminism
293
as insisting on allegiances and orientations, which have created unnecess-
ary dilemmas, categories and oppositions (including that of feminist/non-
feminist):
Theres loads of meetings, pornography, lets, lets do a march, take back the
night march, and all this crap, in bloody Tottenham, go and march in bloody
Hampstead, you cheeky buggers, and throw a brick through a pornography
magazine window. They really think theyve done something. You know I nd
that amusing, and Im being cynical there. And they call, these so called
feminists, I am not a feminist, and then again what is a feminist? But theyve
dened it, what its supposed to be, number one youve got to be a lesbian,
number two youve got to be this, well it seems that way to me.
Wendy highlights the difculties that the category feminism has caused
her, and reproduces many stereotypical representations of what feminists
are and do. In her view, middle-class white (lesbian) feminists marching in
Tottenham against pornography and rape were no help to her, a black
working-class sex worker. Her own womanist stance indicates her
personal dilemma of wanting to be politically aligned to womens issues
and yet feeling unable to accept some of the dogmas and practices that she
identies as feminist.
Issues of race, colour, and class for women in the sex industry, which
have too often been ignored or understressed by anti-porn feminists, were
often highlighted by participants remarks. Wendy ran away from an insti-
tution as a teenager and became a sex worker to survive. Her account of
working as a prostitute and her experiences of pornography were far from
positive. She talked about how she had seen two snuff movies in the
1970s, made using, so far as she could tell, sex workers like herself:
But then the police were bent, they were all into vice and everything, and every-
thing else. I mean Im entitled to say that, because we all know that now 20
years later, but um, may be if she, if these girls had been secretaries, or students,
then maybe something might have been done, but these girls were killed. This
was not special effects you dont get shot in the face, and lose an eye, and
watch as the eye comes out, they didnt have those effects in those days, plus
these were blue lms, theyre not going to spend money on that sort of stuff,
yeah . . . you can pretend to do lots of things, but you cannot have an eye on your
face exploding under a shot gun. You cannot um be strangling a woman, tied up,
beating her, taking off her esh and tell me thats special effects. There are drugs
now where they need that that shit, crack and all them things, theyve got to
have things that are so lasting. You know, so I dread to think whats being done
now, you know I really do, but then again theyre only prostitutes, who cares?
. . . It was, a, a, a, it was like a feature lm, not feature lm, a glossy movie.
There was no crappie stuff there, it was all well done and everything, it was
dreadful. But the other one, where the woman was beaten up, sliced her skin,
Sexualities 7(3)
294
strangled her, tied up and all the rest of, you could hear her screaming. I mean
there is a way of screaming, you know what I mean?
Yet another dilemma for Wendy was that even though she expressed
very negative views about porn, she did not agree with porn censorship:
I dont think itll work, I really dont, because when you ban something, when
you try and do that, plus half of it is in the mind anyway, you cannot control
peoples minds, but the magazines, the books, and the lms, the more you try
and suppress that the worse it becomes.
Some participants discussed the dilemma of wanting more censorship
of porn yet recognizing that this may cause sex workers conditions to
deteriorate. Ann (23, cohabiting, Asian, and bisexual) said:
The whole industry is basically exploiting a lot of women, although, from what
Ive heard, there are you know, there are women in the industry that enjoy the
whole thing, they just love and making very good money out of it, so theres
also that element, er, but, I dont no I dont think it should be completely
censored, because it will only, you know just be driven underground, wont it,
with all those cheap companies anyway, and that would probably lead to more
people being exploited and getting hurt and the whole thing becoming more
abusive probably.
The prostitutes rights campaign insists that only the decriminalization
of the sex-trade industry will allow women to use the legal system to obtain
fair contracts, improved working conditions, and more control in their
dealings with pimps, strip-show managers and pornographic modelling
agents. This is something which some of the women who enjoyed porn
found to be an insoluble dilemma. Betty observed:
You cant have pornography and not have the industry, you cant have pornog-
raphy and not um acknowledge that there may be a link, between sexual abuse
and pornography.
Broader feminist acceptance of sexually explicit
material
A dilemma evident in some participants accounts concerned feeling guilty
about being feminist and yet enjoying porn. A few noted the more recent
acceptance of sexually explicit material by feminists, which they saw as a
positive change. Jane (45, cohabiting, white, and lesbian) explained how
her views started to change at the same time as lesbian feminists started to
produce erotica, which gave her implicit permission to enjoy porn:
It made me feel less guilty I think, um but it could have been a combination of
two things viewing pornography, um having an X [nationality] girlfriend um,
295
and also things were beginning to change, I think, feminists were, you know
starting to, lesbian feminists were starting to write, you know their own erotica
and, everything was becoming less strict.
Discussion
The various dilemmas about pornography and feminist politics reported
by participants in this study are rarely addressed in feminist literature and
by psychology researchers. Yet they demonstrate that it is possible for the
same women both to defend and criticize pornography, and that the
polarized feminist pornography debates have caused some women to re-
evaluate whether or not they want to be a part of the feminist movement.
The feminists sex wars, as they have been called, have clearly had a
lasting impact on some womens views about pornography and about
feminism.
Some participants who voiced concerns about the actions and views of
prominent anti-pornography feminists like Andrea Dworkin seemed to
feel that oppositional feminist voices were drowned out. To this extent it
is unfortunate that extreme feminist views such as Dworkins have domi-
nated. Ironically, anti-porn feminist discourses, while overtly seeking to
repress pornography, have served to disseminate pornographic discourses.
Judith Butler (1990: 111), drawing on Foucault, warns that censorship of
representations such as porn can end up inadvertently reproducing and
proliferating them:
The effort to enforce a limit on fantasy can only and always fail, in part because
limits are, in a sense, what fantasy loves most, what it incessantly thematizes and
subordinates to its own aims. They fail because the very rhetoric by which
certain erotic acts or relations are prohibited invariably eroticises that prohibi-
tion in the service of a fantasy. These prohibitions of the erotic are always at the
same time, and despite themselves, the eroticization of prohibition.
Politicizing the personal has been usefully employed as a rhetorical tool
by feminists for highlighting issues such as sexual harassment and violence
within the home, but it has also had negative effects. Relying on patriar-
chal institutions to legislate and protect women risks bringing about a
narrowing of sexuality, not just for lesbians, bisexuals, gays and other
sexual minorities, but for heterosexual women as well. The politicization
of such an intimate and emotive issue as pornography has emerged as
problematic. Feminism and pornography are linked by multiple personal
and political agendas. As indicated by this analysis, the decline of the popu-
larity of anti-porn feminism, the acceptance of the need to assert womens
sexual pleasure, and the increase of mediated sexual discourses, mean that
agendas have shifted and diversied.
Dworkin and MacKinnons legislative strategy for porn lays weight on
Sexualities 7(3)
296
the public/private dichotomy. They accept that the relevant regulator is
the state, but the state is also charged with the maintenance of the status
quo:
A sexual culture which emphasises the private, the privileging of male sexuality,
heterosexuality, and the nuclear family makes feminist articulatory principles for
state intervention currently difcult to envisage. (Cooper, 1993: 270)
If the power which has reinforced the negative aspects of public/private
thinking inheres in a variety of institutions and discursive practices, the
resort to state/legal reform as a way of undermining public/private
divisions looks less promising than their legislative strategy assumes.
Dworkin and MacKinnon argue that it would not constitute censorship
because it does not involve any prior restraint on expression (Strossen,
1996). However, the fact that it aims at civil rather than criminal enforce-
ment has helped to some extent to defuse the accusation that it amounts
to censorship; but if injunctions were to be awarded and enforced, the
argument that the law is not a form of censorship would be hard to sustain
(Lacey, 1993).
As an expression of the tense convergence between feminist and liberal
discourses of the public/private relation, the womens accounts highlight
how censorship and the politicization of porn as negative can also exacer-
bate womens guilt, shame and confusion about their own sexuality. Most
of the interviewees retrospective accounts of their guilt about enjoying
pornography and yet being feminists date back to the 1970s and 1980s.
This indicates their susceptibility to feeling guilty about their sexuality,
and shows how enduring such guilt can be. Alternatively, this could be
viewed as a discursive indication of how these women need to account
for such inconsistencies using psychologistic notions. Some of the partici-
pants in this study who talked of using and enjoying porn also suggested
that it may socially determine what should be normal sex for women
and men.
The fact that most porn remains a male discourse, representing sexual
activities impossible or difcult for viewers to mimic, was also viewed as a
problem by most participants. Presumably experimental psychologists can
no longer continue to ignore the evidence that some women enjoy
pornography. In view of womens increasing access to new sources of
erotica, the different meanings available for women in mainstream porn
need to be considered. However, given their methodological and theor-
etical parameters, it seems unlikely that experimental psychologists will
recognize the inadequacies of decontextualized experimental research, and
the importance of sociocultural and historical factors (Ciclitira, 2002).
Germaine Greer (2000) argues that the cool, post-liberal consensus on
pornography misses the point. Pornography has nothing to do with
297
freedom of expression: it is primarily a business, a ruthless impersonal
industry. It uses and abuses those who provide the imagery, but also the
fantasy-ridden sub-potent public, mostly male, that pays for its product. In
an unfree society, most of the activities called consensual represent the
capitulation of the powerless to the demands of the powerful. Power comes
in various guises: money, status, patriarchy, and emotional invulnerability.
The feminist goal of achieving sexual freedom for women continues.
Many feminists argue that facilitating sexual freedom for all women, includ-
ing lesbians and bisexuals, must remain a central concern of the feminist
movement. While the historical tendency to emphasize only two sides of
the issue, anti-porn feminism and anti-censorship feminism, is unfortunate,
it should be remembered that feminism developed within a social and
historical context that impinged on its development and contributed to its
defensive predicament. Indeed, Lynne Segal (1999) has argued that anti-
porn feminism was largely a reaction to the setbacks faced by many forms
of feminist activism, especially in the US. Isolating sexuality and mens
violence from issues of poverty, social inequality, and domestic overload in
womens lives was a defensive tactic in the face of the conservative backlash
against radical politics generally. The polarization of feminist positions over
pornography has continued, with anti-porn feminists such as MacKinnon
refusing to debate publicly with feminists who hold opposing views. The
demonization of MacKinnon, Dworkin and others has at times been exces-
sive, yet there is concern that they have exacerbated an already repressive
atmosphere of sexual conservatism in the US (Duggan, 1995).
Many feminists continue to characterize the porn debate as having two
sides. But perhaps the pattern is less likely to be rigidly perpetuated in the
future if feminists acknowledge its inuence in the past. Pornography
affects women of diverse sexual orientations, colour, and class women
who may be consumers and/or workers in the industry. Feminists have
recognized the importance of considering differences and not just
commonalities, addressing the interests of all women across class, race,
age, and sexual orientation, and considering the strictures of masculinity
and issues of economic impoverishment on different groups of men
(Chancer, 1998).
Hardy (2000) suggests that the juridical impulse of anti-porn feminism
should be resisted. Instead, women should concentrate on power
relations, developing an ethical critique which works within rather than
against eroticism. The liberal commitment to the freedom of individuals
obscures the power relations in the production and consumption of porn.
Liberal feminist critics of censorship, while rejecting myths of victim-
hood, revive the myth of the self-made woman/man rather than strug-
gling to ensure the kind of social guarantees needed for women to ourish
in society (Herzig and Bernabe, 1998).
Sexualities 7(3)
298
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Erica Burman for her comments on an earlier draft of this
article and for her continual encouragement and support for this research. I
would also like to thank the two reviewers for their constructive comments. I
gratefully acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research
Council, Manchester Metropolitan University, and Middlesex University.
Notes
1. Pornography and porn are used in this article to refer to mainstream
heterosexual pornography i.e. sexually explicit (visual and written) materials
designed to sexually excite viewers/readers.
2. Participants names and identifying factors have been changed.
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Biographical Note
Karen Ciclitira is a Senior Lecturer in the Psychology Department at Middlesex
University. She teaches qualitative research methods, psychoanalytic theory and
clinical psychology. Her research interests include psychoanalysis, sexuality and
gender, womens health, feminist research and discourse analysis. She is also a
psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Her academic publications include a special issue
on the body in The Psychologist, 15(4): 18098. Address: Psychology Depart-
ment, Middlesex University, Queensway, Eneld, Middlesex EN3 4SF, UK.
[email: k.ciclitira@mdx.ac.uk]
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