Pornography

by Andrea Dworkin

‘Pornography is the orchestrated destruction of women’s bodies and souls … it is war on women’

Pornography, Andrea Dworkin argued in this landmark work, is about power: the power of owning, of money, of sex. It is not merely violence against women, but the essential DNA of male dominance. As images of women’s bodies continue to be manipulated and consumed, her searing, fearless critique of pornographic media is more urgent and discomfiting than ever.

‘A major text for our time’ Adrienne Rich

‘Dworkin writes with power, anger, daring – and from a great care and love of womankind’ Alice Walker

‘The woman who showed us the dark core of pornography, the punishing hatred of women that pervades it’ Guardian

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Politics, Philosophy, Womens, Theory, Gender

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Andrea Rita Dworkin was an American radical feminist and writer best known for her criticism of pornography, which she argued was linked to rape and other forms of violence against women.

An anti-war activist and anarchist in the late 1960s, Dworkin wrote 10 books on radical feminist theory and practice. During the late 1970s and the 1980s, she gained national fame as a spokeswoman for the feminist anti-pornography movement, and for her writing on pornography and sexuality, particularly in Pornography - Men Possessing Women (1981) and Intercourse (1987), which remain her two most widely known books.

Reviews

[Warwick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women, 1989
Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography, 1995


It's difficult to talk about porn. It's hard not to speculate on the hidden motives of the people involved in any discussion, I find. Those arguing against it tend to come across as though they merely find it distasteful on a personal level. Those arguing for it are presumed to be avid consumers.

Then again, you often see people defend it on free-speech grounds while, as it were, holding their own nose: ‘Censorship is bad – though of course I would never look at that stuff.’ I find these arguments unsatisfactory, so if I begin now by saying that I really like porn, it's not to make everyone uncomfortable but to connect cards with table and also to establish my own set of dubious credentials in this area.

I like it, but I've never viewed it uncritically. I find a lot of things about it problematic – though, admittedly, not usually at the time. In fact I've spent a ludicrous, quite unjustifiable amount of time analysing how exactly I feel about porn. Perhaps, I suppose, this is because I'm looking for some kind of intellectual absolution, but also I think it's because it concerns so many areas – free expression, gender relations, sexual psychology – that I have always found utterly fascinating.

In some cases the argument about porn is framed in terms of raw legality. Just last month, British MPs banned a whole load of ‘extreme’ pornography (including – bizarrely – depictions of face-sitting, an amendment which led to protesters' gathering in front of parliament for a joint singalong of Monty Python's ‘Sit on my Face and Tell Me that You Love Me’). Andrea Dworkin herself famously drafted a set of anti-porn laws with Catharine MacKinnon, ordinance that was enacted in certain US jurisdictions and also written in part into Canadian law; though it's usually considered to have been a disaster for women and minority groups.

Anyway, this debate is still live in many places, but for me it's tangential. I consider it too easy to argue that porn should not be against the law. What interests me far more is whether it can be considered moral and ethical in feminist terms, and I'm open to the idea that the answer might be ‘no’. In fact that's exactly the line taken by some famous porn fans like David Baddiel, who said (I'm quoting from memory here), ‘I know porn is revolting and misogynistic. The point is, so am I.’ Which is disarming, but I'm not sure I'm prepared to surrender that much ground.

Criticism of porn generally takes two forms: the argument that it is fundamentally abusive in its production (a manipulative industry run by men, coercing women with damaged backgrounds into humiliating sex acts); and the argument that, no matter how ‘free-range’ its production, it is damaging in its effects on society (promoting a grossly unhealthy image of women, sexualising violence, distorting young people's sexual education).

One of the things I wanted from Andrea Dworkin's Pornography (as opposed to Andrea Dworkin's pornography, which is something else entirely) was an elaboration of these anti-porn arguments. So I was disappointed to see that she spends really very little time on either of those lines, instead using the bulk of the book to describe what she sees as the male psychological context from which pornography arises.

For Dworkin, ‘[m]en are distinguished from women by their commitment to do violence rather than to be victimized by it’, and therefore – in all cases – ‘male sexuality is expressed as force or violence’. ‘The penis must embody the violence of the male in order for him to be male. Violence is male; the male is the penis; violence is the penis’ – on such simple (or facile) equations she builds her argument. Rape, on this view, is not an anomaly but ‘the defining paradigm of sexuality’, and Sade (whose excesses of cruelty I consider to be different in kind, not just degree, from modern pornography) is taken to embody ‘the common values and desires of men’. Indeed Sade's central evil is that he is ‘utterly and unredeemably male’.

I suppose it makes sense, if you subscribe to this outlook, that you would spend little time examining the actual circumstances of making porn, or the people involved in it. Dworkin dismisses the women on screen in a couple of lines; she considers them to be rape victims and certainly doesn't bother talking to any. Wendy McElroy, in XXX, is more hands-on: one of the most interesting parts of her book (which is less well-written than Dworkin's but just as heartfelt) is a chapter consisting of extended interviews with several actresses in the adult industry.

McElroy wanted to know primarily whether any had been coerced into anything, or seen evidence of coercion in the industry (all said they hadn't, though some spoke about seeing on-set ‘peer pressure’ on certain low-budget productions). She was also interested in what they got out of it personally, and here the responses varied widely from financial to sexual reasons. Nina Hartley (something of a legend, she's still involved in the industry twenty years after this book was written) observed that – as with many careers – those who enjoy their work tend to do better than those who are driven solely by the paycheck. Her own philosophy: ‘Sex isn't something men do to you. It isn't something men get out of you. Sex is something you dive into with gusto and like it every bit as much as he does.’

This is one aspect of the porn industry that has changed a lot even since McElroy was writing in 1995. As porn has become more mainstream, especially in the US, the route into the business has shifted; in the past, actresses mainly drifted into it from other kinds of sex work like dancing or modelling. Though this still happens, they've been supplemented by a growing number of women who set their sights on the business from the beginning. I think perhaps Jennas Jameson and Haze were a turning-point (though I'm no expert); certainly more modern stars like Asia Carrera and later Sasha Grey or Stoya have been very vocal about how much they enjoyed, and wanted to work in, the industry.

Now…I feel very cautious when I make this argument, because part of Dworkin's case is that men believe that all women ‘want it really’. In no way am I arguing – nor would it ever occur to me to think – that working in porn is something most women would want to do or enjoy doing. I am simply making the banal observation that some do, and they do not consider themselves victims of rape or anything else.

Dworkin can't accept that anyone could take part in porn of their own free will – or if they do, it must be a free will corrupted by male-supremacist society to the point where it can no longer be taken as their own. That means she's forced into what seems to me to be the absurd and antifeminist position of denying their agency completely: less sophisticated women may think they know what they want, but Andrea Dworkin knows better. Stoya or Sasha Grey might see themselves as intelligent and articulate businesswomen with a lot of sexual curiosity; Andrea Dworkin sees only ‘the dummy forced by the pimp-ventriloquist’.

Who's objectifying who now?

As for porn's effect on society and all of us, for Dworkin it couldn't be worse. She links it directly to rape, violence, incest, murder, and an assortment of related evils. Indeed to make her point, no comparison is too outrageous:

The Jews didn’t do it to themselves and they didn’t orgasm. In contemporary American pornography, of course, the Jews do do it to themselves—they, usually female, seek out the Nazis, go voluntarily to concentration camps, beg a domineering Nazi to hurt them, cut them, burn them—and they do climax, stupendously, to both sadism and death. But in life, the Jews didn’t orgasm. Of course, neither do women; not in life. But no one, not even Goebbels, said the Jews liked it.

No, that's true…it's almost as though porn isn't quite the same thing as the fucking Holocaust.

So a certain amount of bluster has to be picked through in order to reach the actual arguments. Her book opens by describing in detail several horrific cases of rape and sexual abuse, whose perpetrators Dworkin characterises as ‘acting out pornography’; the victims therefore are – follow the sleight-of-hand! – ‘women who have been hurt by pornography’.

I thought this was an astonishing way to describe victims of sexual abuse. Not only does this argument ignore the obvious fact that, even if a correlation could be shown between sexual abuse and porn consumption (unproven after several studies), that would in no way establish any causality – but also, as McElroy points out, it only serves to diminish the responsibility of the abusers themselves. (Indeed there have already been cases where defence lawyers have asked for a convicted rapist's exposure to pornography to be taken into account as mitigation.)

One of the things I liked about McElroy's book was that, unlike many defences of porn, she doesn't just defend against anti-porn arguments, she actually makes a case for its positive benefits. Porn and feminism are, she claims, natural bedfellows that share a common interest in exploding traditionalist views of women as wives and mothers with rigidly controlled sexual freedom. Pleasure – entirely absent from Dworkin's account – becomes a key concept. Far from corrupting women's idea of sex, porn can be, McElroy argues, a way for women to explore and expand sexuality in a safe and controlled environment:

Pornography presents women with their wildest fantasies – from voyeurism to wearing Bo Peep costumes to mock rape. This cornucopia is served up in the privacy of a woman's own bedroom, on a television set that can be turned off whenever she has had enough. She does not have to defend herself against persistent advances, or "give in" rather than be hurt by a man who will not take no. She is in absolute control of the timing, the content, the duration, the climax.

What remains in question here is the nature of pornographic depictions of women (and men), and what animates them. Dworkin is explicit: porn is ‘the elucidation of what men insist is the secret, hidden, true carnality of women, free women’. Perhaps more accurate, I'd suggest, is that it expresses a fantasy of women's ‘carnality’, rather than a secret belief – but implicit in both those descriptions is the problematic idea that women don't in fact have a hidden carnality that society has done its best to suppress, and many women have been trying to say exactly the reverse.

What I see at work underneath the contrasting porn theories of Dworkin and McElroy is a vast, raging argument over the nature of libido, an argument that's still just as fierce now. Do men simply want sex more than women? Some studies reckon they do, on average, and various dubious biological reasons have been suggested. Still, in my opinion it's a stupid question, because there is no ‘men’ and no ‘women’, only individuals, and averages tell you very little about a given man and a given woman.

McElroy wants to argue that many women have an interest in sex just as pressing and valid as that of men, though patriarchal society has worked to suppress it, and porn for her is both a symbol and a tool of this interest. Dworkin – though she doesn't exactly challenge this directly – has a more adversarial view of sex in general, and so she prefers instead to defend women's right to a so-called low libido:

For centuries, female reluctance to “have sex,” female dislike of “sex,” female frigidity, female avoidance of “sex,” have been legendary. This has been the silent rebellion of women against the force of the penis, generations of women as one with their bodies, chanting in a secret language, unintelligible even to themselves, a contemporary song of freedom: I will not be moved. The aversion of women to the penis and to sex as men define it, overcome only when survival and/or ideology demand it, must be seen not as puritanism (which is a male strategy to keep the penis hidden, taboo, and sacred), but as women’s refusal to pay homage to the primary purveyor of male aggression, one on one, against women. In this way, women have defied men and subverted male power.

I consider this paragraph to be, essentially, bollocks – but nevertheless I kind of agree with both of them, to the extent that I think every person has the right to whatever high or low drive they like. The reason I favour McElroy's argument is not just that I'd prefer her to be right (which, if I'm honest, I would) but also that she does not consider all women to be a monolithic class with unified desires in the way that Dworkin tends to, and I am at heart an individualist.

Libido aside, then, isn't porn just fundamentally degrading? For McElroy, degradation is in the eye of the beholder:

Usually, the term sex objects means that women are shown as "body parts"; they are reduced to being physical objects. What is wrong with this? Women are as much their bodies as they are their minds or souls. No one gets upset if you present a women as a brain or as a spiritual being. Yet those portrayals ignore women as physical beings. To get upset by an image that focuses on the human body is merely to demonstrate a bad attitude toward what is physical. If I concentrated on a woman's sense of humor to the exclusion of her other characteristics, would this be degrading? Why is it degrading to focus on her sexuality? Underlying this attitude is the view that sex must be somehow ennobled to be proper. And, for that matter, why is a naked female body more of an "object" than a clothed one?

All reasonable points, though a little disingenuous – I think it's unarguable that at least some porn is deliberately intended to be degrading, and sought out for that reason. This is something that's become both more marked and, conversely, more balanced over the last decade or so: while one part of the industry has become increasingly gonzo and extreme, at the same time there has been a rise in big-budget, high-production-value ‘couples porn’ like the wildly successful X-Art. Nor is it easy in practice to make out a gender divide in consumers for each type; women have become actively engaged with all areas of the porn industry in a way that mirrors, perhaps, the explosion of written genres like erotic romance which are overwhelmingly written and read by women.

For Dworkin, though, it is not enough to have a greater representation of female sexuality. Male sexuality needs to be excised entirely. Male sexuality is poison; it is violence, it is rape. And porn is just one means by which male society teaches men how to abuse and tyrannise women.

I find it hard to believe I'm the only man that does not relate to her idea of how men watch porn. My main feeling when I'm watching it, apart from the obvious arousal (assuming it's any good), is some kind of diffuse astonished gratitude, like I'm being given some disproportionate gift from a stranger. And I think even if you stopped me in the middle of watching the most degrading porn imaginable, I wouldn't see the slightest link between what was on the screen and the idea that women shouldn't also be high court judges and CEOs.

But for Dworkin, it is axiomatic that men take what they are seeing absolutely seriously: ‘Women do not believe that men believe what pornography says about women. But they do. From the worst to the best of them, they do.’ And I know she must be right sometimes, because I see the way some men talk about women and I have to accept that a lot of porn reinforces their ideas. For instance. When I was trying to work out what I was going to say about all this I watched a video where Sasha Grey talks about how she got into the business (this is a YouTube link, totally safe for work). I found it vaguely cheering in the sense that she's obviously a smart and balanced and articulate person; but then I saw one of the highest-rated comments underneath it was: ‘How did she get into porn? She sucked some dick. Because that's what whores do.’ And I have to reassess every time I read chilling things like this. I like to think that there's a distortion effect from the internet, and that people like this are in a minority, but I would be insane to pretend they're not out there.

For me it comes down to a distinction between how male and female sexuality is seen in theory and in practice. In theory, female sexuality is great and male sexuality is revolting: so erotica good, porn bad; a woman with a sextoy is strong and independent, a man with a sextoy – ew. But in practice, things are reversed. Men who actually have a lot of sex are celebrated, whereas we all know what happens when it's the other way around. Sucks to be all of us!

I wondered if my own attitude to porn would change when I had a daughter. It didn't, really (except obviously for the fact that the amount of free time anyone had to look at porn, or anything else, disappeared). What has become more acutely obvious to me is how the exercise of female sexuality is derided from some quarters. After we watched the documentary After Porn, Hannah and I had a conversation about what we'd do if our daughter ever went into porn. I can't say I'd be enthusiastic about it, but I know for sure I wouldn't think any less of her, and I would be furious about the way some people talk about these women. In this regard Dworkin's arguments don't help at all, because ultimately she still considers everything to do with (male) sexuality disgusting and corrupting.

Perhaps it's true, in the end, that you can't consider porn to be exactly a boon for feminism. To me, McElroy is straining a touch too hard to make her case. Still, I think her instincts cut to the heart of the division in feminism to this day:

As a teenager, I struggled with who I was sexually. (This, despite the fact that my sexual preferences fall well within statistical norms.) I turned to feminism for encouragement and enlightenment. I was lucky. Back then, feminism still offered a vision of sexual liberation, not of sexual oppression and bitterness. Feminism still had a sense of rollick and raunch, which was invigorating. I met women who were as confused as I was by sex, men, and their responses to both. We had late-night sessions over wine during which we hashed it out.

I worry about the younger generation of women who have to go through the same sexual angst that confronts us all. If they turn to feminism, will they find a sense of joy and adventure? Or will they find only anger and a theory of victimization? Will antiporn feminists call their deepest desires "degrading"? Will their fantasies of rape or being dominated be labeled in political terms as "the eroticization of oppression"? How much of themselves will they have to disown in order to be sexually correct?

And there's the essential problem. Porn is fantasy enacted: if much of it is sexist or politically incorrect, that's because it comes from your subconscious, which, as I've said before, could not care less about your social or political convictions. This goes for men and women equally. Indeed people often fantasise about things precisely because they're socially unacceptable. If you start by objecting to the expression, you end up by objecting to the thought-crime – and it's hard to see a way to square that circle.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dworkin was a radical and uncompromising feminist. Her views are clear. This is from a speech in 1983:
“The power exercised by men, day to day, in life is power that is institutionalised. It is protected by law. It is protected by religion and religious practice. It is protected by universities, which are strongholds of male supremacy. It is protected by a police force. It is protected by those whom Shelley called “the unacknowledged legislators of the world”: the poets, the artists. Against that power, we have silence.”
The most common approach to Dworkin’s arguments have been abuse and ridicule. She has been variously called a man hater, anti sex, ugly, overweight, hating sexual freedom, insane and following her death, a “sad ghost” that feminism needs to exorcise. I have read a few reviews of this book and can confirm this.
Dworkin believed that pornography led to violence against women:
“a celebration of rape and injury to women.” “Pornography incarnates male supremacy.”
Dworkin manages to draw from literature and art in this analysis. Here is a quote from D H Lawrence:
“And it is this that makes the cocksureness of women so dangerous, so devastating. It is really out of scheme, it is not in relation to the rest of things. So we have the tragedy of cocksure women. They find, so often, that instead of having laid an egg, they have laid a vote or an empty ink-bottle, or some other absolutely unhatchable object, which means nothing to them.”
Dworkin spends a whole chapter looking at De Sade. She shows he is still much admired by all sorts of thinkers, male and female. Dworkin portrays him as an Everyman type:
“Sade’s importance, finally, is not as dissident or deviant: it is as Everyman, a designation the power-crazed aristocrat would have found repugnant, but one that women on examination, will find true. In Sade, the authentic equation is revealed: the power of the pornographer is the power of the rapist/batterer is the power of the man.”
She also analyses Sade’s writings and the sort of things he ended up in prison for. Here is De Sade defending himself to his wife in relation to five fifteen year old girls whom he abused. He had procured them from a woman of his acquaintance:
“I go off with them: I use them. Six months later, some parents come along to demand their return. I give them back {he did not}, and suddenly a charge of abduction and rape is brought against me. It is a monstrous injustice. The law on this point is …. As follows: it is expressly forbidden in France for any procuress to supply virgin maidens, and if the girl supplied is a virgin and lodges a complaint, it is not the man who is charged, but the procuress who is punished severely on the spot. But even if the male offender has requested a virgin he is not liable to punishment: he is merely doing what all men do. It is, I repeat, the procuress who provided him with the girl and who is perfectly aware that she is expressly forbidden to do so, who is guilty.”
For De Sade raping a fifteen year old virgin was not an offence. Dworkin draws the links to modern pornography and provides examples in passages of descriptive analysis. The availability of pornography has changed since the advent of the internet, but maybe not its nature. For Dworkin pornography stems from patriarchy and the nature and role of men and this is also from the 1983 speech:
“Equality is a practice. It is an action. It is a way of life. It is a social practice. It is an economic practice. It is a sexual practice. It can’t exist in a vacuum. You can’t have it in your home if, when the people leave the home, he is in a world of supremacy based on the existence of his cock and she is in a world of humiliation and degradation because she is perceived to be inferior and because her sexuality is a curse.”
Dworkin is also very critical of the left:
"The most cynical use of women has been on the Left—cynical because the word freedom is used to capture the loyalties of women who want, more than anything, to be free and who are then valued and used as left-wing whores: collectivized cunts"
Ultimately I think that Dworkin is right in her assertion that until the fundamental inequality and injustice between men and women is addressed, nothing else is sorted out.

[persephone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Women being beaten, choked or called derogatory words in pornography only perpetuates male violence against women. While some may argue that engaging in violent sex is a matter of personal preference, the subjugation and humiliation of women—even if consensual—should not be mistaken for sexual liberation. Misogyny masked as sexual expression is still misogyny.

Enjoying depictions of rape, violence, and verbal abuse against women is akin to endorsing the belief that women should be subordinate to men. The pervasive spread of pornography has dangerously normalised the degradation of women under the guise of pleasure.

“...pornography is the orchestrated destruction of women’s bodies and souls; rape, battery, incest, and prostitution animate it; dehumanization and sadism characterize it; it is war on women, serial assaults on dignity, identity, and human worth; it is tyranny. Each woman who has survived knows from the experience of her own life that pornography is captivity–the woman trapped in the picture used on the woman trapped wherever he’s got her.”

Pornography affects boys and girls in starkly different but equally harmful ways; it desensitises men to violence and conditions them to be aggressors, while teaching women to accept victimisation and subordination.

[Cher · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I don't agree with Dworkin's position that the state should censor all pornographic images that depict violence or non-consensuality against women, I do agree that the issue needs to be brought up that pornography is often the pschological training camp for male sexuality. It's what boys can get their hands on before they get a chance to actually learn how to do physical intimacy. Somewhere in there lies the responsibility of male elders to teach that fantasy is okay but must not be confused with reality. And the fact that so much violent porn against women is consumed in disproportionate amount to other types does need to be examined. It signals a sickness in the culture that needs to be addressed. I don't agree with the people who are so upset with Dworkin for going legal that they refuse to even listen to her points. I don't agree with going legal about everything, but I do think she makes compelling arguments that address serious and seriously ignored issues.

[Rus Funk · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the first books that I read of Andrea and a book that mobilized me on my path from pornography consumer to anti-pornography activist and leader. One of the many brilliant and truly life-changing books I've read from Andrea!

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything in life is part of it. Nothing is off in its own corner, isolated from the rest. While on the surface this may seem self-evident, the favorite conceit of male culture is that experience can be fractured, literally its bones split, and that one can examine the splinters as if they were not part of the bone, or the bone as if it were not part of the body. This conceit replicates in its values and methodology the sexual reductionism of the male and is derived from it. Everything is split apart: intellect from feeling and/or body. Some part substitutes for the whole and the whole is sacrificed to the part. So the scientist can work on bomb or virus, the artist on poem, the photographer on picture, with no appreciation of its meaning outside itself; and even reduce each of these things to an abstract element that is part of its composition and focus on that abstract element and nothing else -- literally attribute meaning to or discover meaning in nothing else. In the mid-twentieth century, the post-Holocaust world, it is common for men to find meaning in nothing: nothing has meaning; Nothing is meaning. In prerevolutionary Russia, men strained to be nihilists; it took enormous effort. In this world, here and now, after Auschwitz, after Hiroshima, after Vietnam, after Jonestown, men need not strain. Nihilism, like gravity, is a law of nature, male nature. The men, of course, are tired. It has been an exhausting perioed of extermination and devastation, on a scale genuinely new, with new methods, new possibilities. Even when faced with the probable extinction of themselves at their own hand, men refuse to look at the whole, take all the causes and all the effects into account, perceive the intricate connections between the world they make and themselves. They are alienated, they say, from this world of pain and torment; they make romance out of this alienation so as to avoid taking responsibility for what they do and what they are. Male dissociation from life is not new or particularly modern, but the scale and intensity of this disaffection are new. And in the midst of this Brave New World, how comforting and familiar it is to exercise passionate cruelty on women. The old-fashioned values still obtain. The world may end tomorrow, but tonight there is a rape -- a kiss, a fuck, a pat on the ass, a fist in the face. In the intimate world of men and women, there is no mid-twentieth century distinct from any other century. There are only the old values, women there for the taking, the means of taking determined by the male. It is ancient and it is modern; it is feudal, capitalist, socialist; it is caveman and astronaut, agricultural and industrial, urban and rural. For men, the right to abuse women is elemental, the first principle, with no beginning unless one is willing to trace origins back to God and with no end plausibly in sight. For men, their right to control and abuse the bodies of women is the one comforting constant in a world rigged to blow up but they do not know when.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started writing down favorite lines from this and eventually realized I'd be copying damn near the whole book. But how can one resist with lines like this:

"A bible piling up its code for centuries, a secret corpus gone public, a private corpus gone political, pornography is the male's sacred stronghold, a monastic retreat for manhood on the verge of its own destruction."

and

"We will know we are free when pornography no longer exists. As long as it does exist, we must understand that we are the women in it: used by the same power, subject to the same valuation, as the vile whores who beg for more."

She describes pornography in here that's positively pedestrian by today's standards. If she were writing this today, she'd be describing our average fashion print ad or soda pop commercial. 4 stars because of the slow parts, which are made slow because she often repeats the same descriptors and/or ideas in multiple sentences in a row, like her brilliant, magnificent brain got stuck for a minute.

[Lost_Clown · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first introduction to feminist opposition to pornography. The details and the passion of her work are inspiring and paints a realistic portrait of the harm that pornography does to women and our culture.

[Melissa Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published in 1981, Andrea Dworkin's nonfiction masterpiece, "Pornography: Men Possessing Women," is one of the most powerful books I have ever read.

My local library doesn't own any of Dworkin's work, so in order to get my hands on her prose, I purchased a used copy of this book on Amazon. I am proud to say that this paperback edition of "Pornography" is going on my "own forever" shelf at home. After reading the first fifty pages, I immediately purchased copies of two more of Dworkin's books. This woman is amazing. I want to read her entire oeuvre.

My one great regret is that I came to this book so late in my life. I wish I'd had this book when I was in middle school. It would have helped me so much to have read this book when I was ten, eleven, or twelve. I'm incredibly grateful to have finally read it at all, at age 39. But it saddens me to know how much this book would have helped me as a child growing up.

In July of 2019, when my copy came in the mail, I read this book in about three days. This book healed broken things inside of me. Every page of this book washed over me like healing water poured over my oldest, deepest wounds.

Dworkin's insights, wisdom, moral rectitude, solidarity, and global acumen will certainly be utilized in my own work as an author of fiction. The clarity and strength I have already drawn from this book is profound.

Andrea Dworkin died in 2005. I'm so very sad that she's gone. I'm so very grateful for her life, and the truth she left behind.

All the stars. All the praise for this incredible gift of a book.

Highly recommended.

[Dna · Rating 5 out of 5]

It would be awkward to star-rate anything by Andrea Dworkin, since I don't think of myself as having enjoyed the subject matters she deals with. BUT, everything I read by her was disturbing, new, mind-bending, powerful, and sometimes plain ridiculous. I didn't and don't agree with everything Dworkin, but her writing definitely had a huge impact on my early interest in mass media and pornography's impact on the mainstream.

[Sofia Hossain · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Woman is not born; she is made. In the making, her humanity is destroyed. She becomes symbol of this, symbol of that: mother of the earth, slut of the universe; but she never becomes herself because it is forbidden for her to do so. No act of hers can overturn the way in which she is consistently perceived: as some sort of thing. No sense of her own purpose can supercede, finally, the male’s sense of her purpose: to be that thing that enables him to experience raw phallic power."

[Amy Layton · Rating 5 out of 5]

As if I needed another reason to hate pornography!  When I saw that this was the next in Dworkin's bibliography, I was overjoyed.  Finally--a text that I could refer to when I see people defending pornography.  But that happiness at finally having something that accorded with me soon turned into disgust and horror.  If you thought pornography was bad--well, you have no idea.  From Marquis de Sade to Hugh Hefner, Dworkin analyzes how and why porn came to be as well as how it's become so easily defended, how it keeps women from speaking out.

With her usual tone and manner of writing, she analyzes various aspects of pornography, from gender, to race, to sex.  She takes a look at both written and print pornography (alas, it hadn't hit its video hey-day yet--I would have loved to see what she had to say on that and it's later proliferation into our everyday and socially acceptable society) and picks apart every possible meaning--from gun-toting men and animalized women to forced woman and the woman who forces.  

All of it is about force.  Porn reflects what men believe to be true: that women want it--and if they say they don't, well, that's because they haven't unlocked their true whorish potential.  And if they do want it?  Well, it's in their nature.  There's no winning for women, for those pornographied, those who have been assaulted, those who have been in the industry.  This nonfiction is simultaneously informative and heartbreaking, but it's a text that reaffirms an important second-wave ideal for those who believe we are in the third or fourth (Ha!) waves of feminism.  Porn is not empowering, and it is not anything but absolutely harmful and detrimental.

Review cross-listed here!

[Chelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautifully written and sorely needed to be read and re-read today. there's so much here: phallic economies, racism and "sex" read: sexualized violence and dehumanization, the valuation of women in pornography and outside of pornography. really dworkin presaged a lot of feminist 'debate' decades before they were even hotly-debated issues and it's sad that she is written of as a man-hater or sex-negative (it's clear in the work that she has a lot of hope for men and doesn't think that sex has to be destructive) because i know a lot of people who need to read this book.

[Gabrielė Bužinskaitė · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s difficult to talk against pornography without being disregarded as a moralist. Frigid. Overly religious. A kill-joy. Anything that makes you unworthy to listen to but worthy to mock. And even those who hear you are quick to conclude: “Ah, what’s the point? Nothing will change.”

Yet things always change, for better or worse. In this almost 50-year-old book, Dworkin breaks down everything despicable about pornography and those who benefit from it. Like many second-wave feminists, she believes pornography to be degrading, abusive, and even dehumanising to women. No buts or maybes. Worse, she says it’s dangerous—not only for those involved but for every woman dealing with a man who consumes it.

It feels unsettling and sickening to read this book. Dworkin’s opinions are as extreme as the stories she shares. There’s no room for discussion. She doesn't consider the other view, for that view is the only one society ever considers (and caters to).

The book is worth reading to gain an uncomfortable perspective, the reality you would rather not know. It’s great as long as you avoid being consumed by radicalities—the author wants pornography banned, finds all porn to be harmful, and has a negative bias against men. After all, it’s an extreme opinion; those should always be taken with scepticism.

3.5/5

[Samuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stimulating read.

[Mahmoud Amr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blue pill: Pornography is used to be seen as the "objective" and truthful depiction of human desires.

Andrea Dworkin pill: Pornography is the ultimate representation of male dominated systems. It revels in misogyny and the debasing of women.
Through the course of human history, women have always been objectified and subjected to a certain form of control and humiliation. However, with the advent of capitalism, pornography turned things upside down, canonised and brought to the surface every kind of perversion imaginable. The constant, unchanging element is the debasing and humiliation of women. Objectification in it's ultimate forms. It is an industry created by men, for men. Even in our "sex positive" and pro sex work empowerment "feminism", this constant never had changed. Males are the highest consumers of pornography in all its forms even in the pseudo "safe" medium and faux liberation of the only fans camgirling.

Its somewhat of a vicious circle. You, a man, hitting puberty and start to get your knowledge abt yourself and women as sexual beings only through the hyper real and male centered and misogynistic medium of pornography. You start to think this is normal, that this is what boys and girls are made of, that they-women- are all whores, who want it to take deep inside every hole. She wants it. She likes it. She is a slut, bitch, whore. Or to put it more simply:she is a cunt.

I wont reiterate how or demonstrate in my crude manners what Dworken had shown elegantly and poignantly in her book, that every sexual fantasy or kink "depicted" in porn reeks of misogyny. I will just point out that basically 90% of porn consumers (males) are always slut shamers who would jerk off to porn starlets whom they despise @ heart and would go crazy if they found out that a gf or a sister is in one of them videos. That's the whole porno conundrum. We consume it out of hatred and disgust. The fare share of said hatred goes to the porn starlet, who personifies the "whorish" nature of all women who always need to be kept in check.
Indeed all this is not strange or a result of a chaotic coincidence believe you me. Etymologically speaking, the word pornography comes from the greek words pornei= whores(not only any whores, its the lowest of the low in greek hierarchy, those who are not even in public brothels and even a respected citizen would be frowned upon if he frequented them) and graphia= to write. Pornography means to write about whores not sex. So its not strange how every humiliation and subjugation imaginable on everything female are depicted 10fold in pornography.

Dworken, in this book-which is a continuation of the premises laid upon in Intercourse i.e,. Coitus in male dominated societies is always violence against women- dissects the pornography and what it entails. She also had shown how in literature(especially in Sade), psychology, medical discourse, philosophy etc it is assumed that women have but one function: to be fucked. That male desire is normal reality and females are its objects. That sex in and of itself is violence, that men are sadist and women are masochistic etc.
Whats really powerful in this book is how Dworken in the beginning of every chapter, will begin in a very long sentence that might take pages, describing in a very cold detached way written or photographic porn material to the point of not just boring your ass but also put you point blank face to face with the reality of all of this: the depiction of all women as disgusting little whores who wants it. Even if she says no, she wants it. They all do.

A must read in our lobotomized age by the uncle toms of the female sex i.e pro sex work and pro porn "feminism"

[Jax Gullible · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highlighted a passage every 2 pages. She was so daring in telling the truth, "The most cynical use of women has been in the Left- cynical because the word freedom is used to capture the loyalties of women who want,more than anything, to be free and who are then valued and used as left-wing whores: collectivized whores."

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Pornography is not a fantasy, it was my life, reality.”

A must-read classic for feminists to understand how the (extremely powerful and pervasive) porn industry exploits, dehumanizes, and demoralizes women. There is no freedom or “Women’s empowerment” in pornography. In present days, women allege they’re doing it “on their own terms,” but they’re still being exploited by the man. Additionally, the argument around sex work (aka, filming on an iPhone in a mansion) fails to acknowledge the actual dangers of sex work, especially in the Global South. Explored throughout this book is the illustration and power of the perceived and actual phallus which, thanks to a feminist studies class I took in college, will change the way you view sex and power dynamics. Trigger warning, through. She directly quotes acts of rape and molestation in great detail.

Dworkin states that “in cultural terms, pornography is the fundamental realism of male dominance. Its absolutism on women and sexuality, its dogma, is merciless…Pornography is the essential sexuality of male power: of hate, of ownership, of hierarchy; of sadism, of dominance.” I’d love to see this analysis today against the rise of OnlyFans content (Dworkin is correct in her male power argument). Later on, Dworkin describes women who conform and perform for men, even when men aren’t in the room. Performing for men in the room is emulated in pornography in the sexualization of lesbian sex and the camera lens peeping through the peep hole in a door, giving the illusion the men are watching and the women are still on display for them. Conforming to men by performing ideal beauty standards, such as breast enlargement/reduction, wearing makeup, surgically altering facial features, and other distortions of the natural body (her worlds). Additionally, she talks about the power men have just by naming things. An example of this is a man labeling a woman a whore. This single name can change her entire life and the men embrace this misogynistic term with glee because they view the woman as less than and know her reputation is damaged.

I can keep going on and on about how Dworkin makes great arguments for why porn is harmful and women won’t be free until pornography ceases to exist, but I’ll end it with one final comment. “The fact that pornography is widely believed to be “sexual representations” emphasizes only that the valuation of women as low whores…and that the sexuality of women is perceived as low and whorish in and of itself.” And “the fact that pornography is widely believed to be “depictions of the erotic” means only that the debasing of women is held to be the real pleasure of sex.” Men consume porn and then shame and humiliate the women who perform in the porn. I hope men who consume porn are lonely forever, and I’m being so serious.

A great follow-up to this is the book Pornland by Gail Dines.

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is incredibly difficult to read. Not so much because of the deeply fascinating but dark topic; but more because of having to slog through so many descriptions OF pornographic materials before getting to each essay which then dissects the "works". It's pretty brutal and meant I eventually had to begin skimming large sections so I could read the author's arguments and not each 5-10 page synopsis of the porn film or pornographic image they were about to analyze.

[lezhypatia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was incredibly challenging to read but is absolutely necessary. Dworkin’s articulation of the metaphysics and ideology of male supremacy (proselytized via pornography) is, as usual, arresting. As difficult as it is to read this book and its description of pornography and male violence on the whole, I cannot fathom the difficulty of researching it. Dworkin’s unflinching commitment to the exposure of male cruelty is truly an incredible feminist accomplishment.

[Pippa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank heaven for this clear sighted woman who could see the impact of porn, although I think she makes the mistake of thinking it is only women who suffer as a result of it. (Perhaps that is because we are now more informed.) This was an important book, even if, to me, written in a slightly woolly style.

[Sophia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Pornography: Men Possessing Women was tricky. Its large-print title attracted unwanted attention on a Greyhound bus trip, and it made me slightly and entirely unjustifiably apprehensive of the friend I was on said bus trip to visit, simply because he happened to be male. Nonetheless, I was glad I read this treatise against pornography by one of the major thinkers of second-wave feminism. She's passionate, angry, and articulate against what she sees as the essence of patriarchal society and how it harms women in fundamentally entrenched ways. However, reading Dworkin drives one into an us-against-them mentality which I don't find constructive or reflective of my daily life. Pornography is pornographic, as Dworkin graphically describes specific examples of pornography before dissecting what is wrong with it. Her analysis is very literal, taking images on at face value, against which third-wave feminists try to inject more subtlety and complexity. I thought the chapter on the Marquis de Sade and her criticism of left-wing men especially intriguing as these escape how Dworkin could be summarized in a nutshell. Ultimately, I am glad how reading this furthered my feminist self-education.

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book Dworkin breaks down the social context of various pieces of erotica, deconstructing the patriarchal, racist and often fascistic values underlying much of the porn the average male (and sometimes females) may consume. She gets to the root of the word, porneia, meaning "whore", and correctly illuminates the purpose of porn: a form a propaganda used to subjugate women. Her criticism of Sade was particularly useful and cutting. A highly recommended read.

[Hugo B. Hugo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used to think that pornography was a free speech issue. Now I know that it's a crime.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pairs well with matcha

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

violento na crueza com que relata a realidade das relações sexuais entre homens e mulheres. mas necessário. gostei sobretudo da desconstrução de livros como os do Marques de sade, ou story of O, classicamente adorados pelos homens intelectuais de esquerda.

[jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

a hard, long, sad read. it’s crazy how every sentence was facts after facts and it could not be any more relevant to our situation in the 21st century. this book made me want to smack every man sitting on the bus on the head with it and plead with them to stop watching and consuming pornography. the way pornography has had such an impact on the lives of women is truly remarkable and I genuinely don’t think i’ll be the same after reading this.

I truly do not believe I will exist in a time where pornography does not exist, and I think that the notion of pornography being a liberating career for women (a la onlyfans) will only worsen our situation. we are living in a domestic violence epidemic, I read comments on tiktok’s of 16 year old girls of men calling them sluts and bops, I overheard boys in my english class saying they’d roofie a girl just to loosen her up but “not rape her or anything”, I sat through a rape trial in children’s court. we live in scary desperate times and it’s time the men around us started realising that. importantly, start realising that their consumption of the dehumanisation and sexual battery (and often rape) of women via their screens has a direct impact on what happens to women in their lives.

andrea would be saddened by the state of our affairs me thinks

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

never has descriptions of something in a book made me feel this physically sick, a must-read for any woman who still thinks porn can be “feminist”

(reread) dworkin’s brain is something so revolutionary, reading this a second time has impacted me more than the first time, im so glad this has been re-published and hopefully it gets into the hands of more women! one of the most important messages is on the last page:

“We will know that we are free when the pornography no longer exists. As long as it does exist, we must understand that we are the women in it: used by the same power, subject to the same valuation, as the vile whores who beg for more. The boys are betting on our compliance, our ignorance, our fear. We have always refused to face the worst that men have done to us. The boys count on it. The boys are betting that we cannot face the horror of their sexual system and survive. The boys are betting that their depictions of us as whores will beat us down and stop our hearts. The boys are betting that their penises and fists and knives and fucks and rapes will turn us into what they say we are the compliant women of sex, the voracious cunts of pornography, the masochistic sluts who resist because we really want more. The boys are betting. The boys are wrong.”

[Ashley K. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started this book with the expectation that it would persuade me to be solidly anti-porn by the time I finished it, but surprisingly, somehow that didn't happen. I consider myself a sex-positive person and support free speech, etc. etc., but at the same time I can easily see how the porn industry has exploited women and likely damaged male-female interpersonal relations in ways that are difficult to quantify. But this style of writing didn't quite resonate with me. Detailed, graphic summaries of pornographic stories seemed like they were included for shock value; I would've liked to read something more along the lines of solid arguments about porn's negative repercussions. More data, more evidence, more statistics maybe, less raw emotional appeal. I read 1-2 paragraphs in Mary Roach's "Bonk" that (for me) provided a better anti-porn argument than this entire book.

[Josh Hornbeck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrea Dworkin's "Pornography: Men Possessing Women" is a weighty piece of feminist literature exploring the links between pornography, male power and entitlement, and rape. It's a difficult book - confronting the abuse and intellectual foundation inherent in a patriarchal society. While there are times Dworkin seems to engage in some of the same generalizations of which she accuses men, this is an essential part of the conversation about the links between pornography, patriarchy, and sexual assault.