Is supporting porn and prositution anti feminist?

[DisabledDem]

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. A better question would be is it anti-women

Self proclaimed feminists are on all sides of those issues depending on context

[Scuba]

2. I'm sure everyone will agree that...

... everyone has different viewpoints.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

3. Most porn and prostitution are most assuredly the antitheses of feminism.

But so is the way women are portrayed in nearly everything.

[procon]

4. If you have to ask

you probably won't find an answer that validates the question.

[saras]

5. It depends...

Supporting porn that is made by exploiting women - no duh.

Supporting porn whose images degrade women - no duh, EVEN IF you and your SO get off on it.

Supporting porn whose business model and/or owners are anti-femininst - gotcha there, too.

If you can find porn that doesn't actively, directly, give money and power to anti-women forces in those ways, more power to you. Spread it around.

Prostitution is a different matter - like violence, it is abandoning human culture to solve problems in pre-human ways. Its existence is harmful to all of us who want a world in which people aren't compelled to sell themselves for mere survival.

Personally I have no problem with public sex, but am totally creeped out by the implication, common to much porn (common to most EULAs, for that matter) that one's consent is a toy for others to play with, and not worthy of respect. So all S&M porn makes me feel the way that child porn seems to make most Americans feel - perhaps because I don't use the conservative "babies good, adults bad" model. I think EVERYONE deserves the freedom from sexual coercion that our society offers as normal to kids.

[laconicsax]

6. Is the Pope Catholic?

[Name removed]

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[redqueen]

8. Yes.

If we lived in a world in which women weren't subjugated it might be possible to view these things differently. As it is, they exist within the reality we have today, in which women are reminded constantly that their primary value is in their looks and their ability to please men.

[seabeyond]

9. yes, as is the objectification of women

we like to get around it by saying we are sex positive feminist, but that too is a cop out to feminist because you are saying if women view porn as anti female then you dont like sex. again, using a womans sexuality to attack, shame and humiliate her to be quiet. no different than what the patriarchy does to women in objectufying and porn.

[PhoenixAbove]

10. For 3 decades I've been all over the place on this question...

and I've yet to find a position I can stick with. I read a pro-porn article and I think; well... yes she's right. What's wrong with free speech, a woman's choice and being positive about sex?

Then I read an anti-porn article and I think; well... yes she certainly has a valid point as well.

I've gone round and round with it never finding a comfortable answer in my mind and then I read Red Queen's post which said: "If we lived in a world in which women weren't subjugated it might be possible to view these things differently. As it is, they exist within the reality we have today, in which women are reminded constantly that their primary value is in their looks and their ability to please men."

Yes, that is exactly the place I keep ending up. You summed it up perfectly. There would be nothing wrong with some of the porn that exists out there if women weren't subjugated in the first place. I think this is why I go round in circles with this question but in the end I think I'm falling into the camp that finds porn anti-feminist.

Prostitution is another hard question for me. I think; well... if she wants to do it, it's her choice. And it is her choice. But the thing is, would she be doing it if she could make a decent wage at a job that doesn't require her to have sex? I think most women would answer no. Maybe I'm wrong but gut instinct tells me I'm not so I'm starting to fall into the camp that thinks prostitution is also ant-feminist.

Sorry for the long winded book but I needed to get that confusion in my head out.

[Feldspar]

11. Yes. n/t

[backtoblue]

12. Yes.

The portrayal of women as objects of sexual gratification is demeaning. It implies (perhaps even subconsciously) that a women's role in the world is that of servitude to the male dominance of our society.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

13. No and yes, respectively, but supporting legalised prostitution is not.

Supporting pornography is not in any way antifeminist (although specific forms of pornography may well be).

Supporting prostitution probably is, but supporting the *right* to be a prostitute is not (compare and contrast "supporting voting Republican" vs "Supporting the right to vote Republicans").

[yael.theworld]

14. YES

yes! its time people stopped looking at womens bodies one-dimensionally