Pornography

Pornography is writing, graphics, or imagery depicting sexuality. The word comes from the Greek, meaning "writing about prostitutes".

There is debate over the difference between pornography and erotica: whether one exists at all, and what it would be.

History of pornography within the women's movement

Within feminism and the women's movement, pornography has been a subject of significant controversy. State and religious regulation of pornographic and erotic imagery has often been tied to state and religious regulation of female sexuality and reproductive rights. The "Free Love" movement, a western feminist movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries, was a political movement that argued for the liberation of sexuality; in the US and England, censorship of this political literature was done along with censorship of so-called pornographic or obscene literature.

Feminist critiques of pornography as an industry and as a cultural practice in the 1970s (see especially Andrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon; see also Kate Millett) were accompanied in the west by significant change in access to contraception, the "sexual liberation" movement, and the "Gay Liberation Movement", leading to the "feminist sex wars", which were an often contentious debate in the movement about pornography and sexual practice. (See the Barnard Conference; Gayle Rubin.) Women's bookstores and women's centers sometimes refused to carry materials they deemed sexually exploitative of women, such as SAMOIS' lesbian SM anthology. Proposals to create new regimes of legal regulation of sexuality led to some implementations of Catherine MacKinnon-style legislation. These have led to state interception and censorship of some feminist and lesbian works on sexuality; their effectiveness in redressing their feminist authors' critiques has yet to be evaluated. (US Minneapolis; Canada Little Sisters)

In the 1990s, the so-called feminist sex wars largely died out; "sex-positive feminism" largely replaced them, and queer, leather, and sex worker activist movements often worked together to improve working conditions for sex workers, safe sex practices in communities, legal rights of sex workers or sexual minorities, and to study sexual history and practices. However, while the "feminist sex wars" as a discrete historical debate ended, feminist interrogation of sex practices and the sex industry continue.

Some issues of current interest include:

• Legal status of sex workers and sex work
• Unionization of sex workers

Some commentary on the pornography industry

In the real world, the pornography industry keeps close ties to prostitution, inasmuch as it is largely comprised of videos and images of actual people being paid to have sex, and both industries thrive on the exploitation of women as sexual objects for men's consumption.

There are some attempts at creating less exploitative pornography, or making pornography designed to appeal to women consumers (and there is a large amount of male-on-male pornography marketed towards men, in which women do not appear), but this does not cancel out the overwhelming oppression of women within the industry, and cannot revolutionise the industry in its wider context as an expression of patriarchy.