The idea that pornography gives feminists of differing opinions this middle ground that they can meet on and see how to articulate the different desires of feminism and what they want to turn it into is one of the main reasons Catherine Lumby argues that feminists need pornography (par 60). As Lumby writes in “Why Feminists Need Porn,” chapter five of her book Bad Girls, “the notion that you can draw a cause and effect line between fantasy and social practice is disturbing and distasteful to some feminists,” (par 60).
Feminists, by questioning that line, can find the need reevaluate their political position and how they relate the issues of feminism to other ideas and movements. The realization that feminists should constantly question their stances on social and political issues hasn’t become clear to everyone, but Lumby believes that the debates between feminists over the issue of censorship and pornography (issues that go hand in hand according to the chapter) will bring the realization out in the open (par 60).
Lumby’s beliefs and many of her arguments are reiterated in two other articles over the relationship between feminism and porn. In A Feminist Defense of Pornography by Wendy McElroy readers can find the different positions in the argument detailed and described, albeit with a bias towards one standing over the others. McElroy’s bias and position agrees with Lumby’s belief that porn and feminism need each other in a way, but McElroy takes the idea a bit farther by stating that it’s not just feminists, but all women that porn benefits (McElroy, par 27).
While McElroy and Lumby have clear views on wether or not porn benefits women and feminists Natalie Purcell takes a neutral stance in her article Feminism and Por...
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...ment. Either way Lumby, McElroy, and Purcell effectively caught the reader’s attention and made their opinions clear in context to all of their audiences.
Works Cited
Lumby, Catherine. Why Feminist Need Porn. Bad Girls: the Media, Sex and Feminism in the '90s. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1997. 94-116. Web. 16 Oct. 2011.
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McElroy, Wendy. "A Feminist Defense of Pornography." Council for Secular Humanism. Web. 29 Oct. 2011. .
Purcell, Natalie. "Feminism and Pornography: Building Sensitive Research and Analytic Approaches." Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality 12 (2009). Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality. 11 May 2009. Web. 29 Oct. 2011.
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