Smirk -- another porn post...

Anti-pornography feminists have created some rather extreme language and argued for some rather extreme controls on sexual expression. For them, zoning laws and censorship do not go nearly far enough, because they merely control the outlets for porn and not its very existence.

“If pornography is part of your sexuality, then you have no right to your sexuality,” writes Catharine MacKinnon, the grand dame of feminist anti-pornography crusaders.

This kind of hard-line rhetoric has done no favors to feminism. It feeds stereotypes about feminists’ intellectual rigidity and dour demeanors. And it drove many activists from the movement in the 1980s during the incredibly divisive “sex-wars” when some feminists tried to wrest the issue of pornography out of MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin’s hands. The MacDworkinites prevailed, however. Mainstream American society came to accept their views as the feminist stance on the issue and for the last 20+ years, they have been recognized by the mainstream press and far too many public officials as the “experts” on what pornography does to women.

In some ways, MacKinnon (Dworkin died in 2005, but MacKinnon soldiers on) is the consummate radical. She goes hard to the extreme and stays there, giving no ground. Pornography is always bad for women: it not only objectifies and degrades them, but it perpetrates violence against them. She is doing, as a radical, exactly what she is supposed to be doing. And while feminism has suffered for it (and I am unwilling to let her off the hook there), pornography may have benefited from it. Pro-sex feminists and others who strode out onto the field of battle to challenge the MacDworkinites have done much to redefine sexual expression in our society. Sure, much porn is still “bad” in its production values, lack of character development, script writing, costuming, etc. but there is now, in contrast to the bad ol’ 1980s, much more variety of porn – who makes it, who it is for, and the kinds of situations, relationships, and people it portrays. Changing technology has contributed greatly to this, but it should not be lost that MacKinnon pissed off a lot of people and got them out there making lesbian porn, female-dominated porn, and much, much more just to prove she was wrong. And that has been a good thing.

So this morning, I am pondering what MacKinnon would say about all this. She has conceded nothing on this front. There is no indication that she went for the outrageous on the far end of the spectrum in the hopes of making smaller changes in the middle. Being who she is, I would be surprised and disappointed if she had. But I wonder, if I asked her about all this on her death bed many years from now, would she go out with a little smirk on her face?