Pornography and Feminist Fight for Women’s Rights

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Pornography and Feminist Fight for Women’s Rights

There was a complaint in 1992 about having The Nude Maja in a classroom. The complaint came from a feminist English professor who stated that the painting made her students, as well as herself, uncomfortable. Another incident occurred at the University of Arizona when a female student’s photographic artwork consisting of self portraits in her underwear was physically attacked by feminists. There was also an occurrence at University of Michigan when some of their law school feminists organized a conference “Prostitution: From Academia to Activism”. This group removed a feminist-curated art exhibition held in conjunction with the conference. They felt that videos showing prostitutes at work was pornographic and unacceptable(Faigley & Selzer, 539).

Major Claim

The influential feminist pro-censorship movement threatens the women’s rights movement it professes to serve. It is led by law professor Catharine MacKinnon and writer Andrea Dworkin. The feminist movement thinks that sexually oriented expression-not sexist concepts of marriage and family, sex segregated labor, or pent-up rage is the cause of discrimination and violence of women. Their solution is to suppress “all” pornography. These are not the beliefs of Nadine Strossen, President of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is an organization that is famous for defending the rights of U.S. citizens in the First Amendment. She is claiming that pornography is a way to strengthen womens rights. I don’t see how displaying women as objects, and putting them in films portraying the abuse of them in a sexual manner is helping to protect their rights(Faigley & Selzer, 540).

Minor Claims

Strossen also st...

... middle of paper ...

...ealize that there are men out there who have sick minds and the use of pornography adds to the power of their horrifying acts. I think women should stand up and fight for the rights they know they deserve. Women should be able to see themselves in a sexual matter without having to feel submissive, used, and dehumanized at the same moment. We women are powerful and I hope more powerful women like MacKinnon and Dworkin stand up, for then men will have no choice but to face the fact that it’s wrong and it’s going to change forever.

References

Dworkin, A. (1997). Life and Death.

New York, NY: The Free Press

MacKinnon, C. (1993). Only Words.

United States of America: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Faigley, L., & Selzer, J. (2001). The Perils of Pornophobia. In Good Reasons.

(pp.539-543) Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon

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