Pro Pornography Quotes

“People in the industry kept telling me intimate and unsolicited details about their sex lives. I realized that pornography was as much an attitude or lifestyle as it was a business. The line between private and public was sometimes blurred to the point of being erased.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“The real question to ask is: Why not simply let women enjoy their fantasies? Why shouldn't a woman entertain the wildest sex her imagination can generate? What damage is done? Who has the right to question it?”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“This book provides pornography with an ideology. It gives back to women what anti-porn feminism has taken away: the right to pursue their own sexuality without shame or apology, without guilt or censure.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“For over a decade, I have defended the right of women to consume pornography and to be involved in its production. In 1984, when the Los Angeles City Council first debated whether or not to pass an anti-pornography ordinance, I was one of two people -and the only woman-who stood up and went on record against the measure. I argued that the right to work in pornography was a direct extension of the principle "A woman's body, a woman's right.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“Sexually correct history considers the graphic depiction of sex to be the traditional and immutable enemy of women's freedom. Exactly the opposite is true.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“What makes ejaculating on the outside degrading... while ejaculating inside... sacred? Do guys learn to come on a woman from porn or from premature ejaculation? [...] For that matter, masturbating guys ejaculate on their own bodies all the time, and not one says, 'Oh God, I just degraded myself.”
― James R. Petersen

“Pornography allows a woman's imagination to run wild. And nothing on earth is more human than wondering "what if.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“As recently as the fifties, respectable women were given the sexual choice of marriage or celibacy. Anything else meant ostracism. Women who demanded pleasure in sex were condemned as "nymphomaniacs," much as they are pitied today as "victims of male culture" by anti-porn feminists.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“On a personal level, every women has to discover what she considers to be unacceptable. Each woman has to act as her own censor, her own judge of what is appropriate.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“Anti-pornography (or radical) feminists will consider me a heretic-fit only for burning. Or, to put it in more politically correct terms, I am a woman who is so psychologically damaged by patriarchy that I have fallen in love with my own oppression. My arguments will be dismissed. In other words, if I enjoy pornography, it is not because I am a unique human being with different preferences. It is because I am psychologically ill.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“The majority of people are not fully committed to either the right or the left. Nor either to censorship or to absolute freedom of speech. People are too caught up in the daily struggle for survival to pour a lot of energy into ideology.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“The message of this book is: There's nothing to be afraid of. Pornography is part of a healthy free flow of information about sex. This is information our society badly needs. It is a freedom women need.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“Sexual freedom-especially pornography, which is sexual free speech-is an integral part of the battle for women's freedom. The censoring of sexual words and images does not simply lead to the suppression of women's sexual rights. It is an attempt to control women themselves. For women's rights have traditionally been phrased in terms of their sexuality: marriage, abortion, and birth control. To surrender one iota of women's control over their own sexual expression is to deny that it is their sexuality in the first place.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“As pornography flourished, it became part of the changing view of sexuality. Sex was no longer tied, with a nooselike knot, to procreation, marriage, or romance. Pornography presented a kaleidoscope of sexual possibilities: as pleasure, with a stranger, as self-exploration, as power, with groups or with another woman...

The old stereotypes of pornography began to fade away. The caricature of the type of person who enjoyed pornography e.g., dirty old men and nervous perverts-was superseded by the sight of millions of people subscribing to Playboy. Couples viewed pornography together; explicit sex manuals, such as The Joy of Sex, became best sellers, which were prominently stocked by mainstream bookstores.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“Moving away from studies, what of real world feedback? In West Germany, rape rates have slightly declined since 1973, when pornography became widely available; meanwhile, other violent crime has increased. In Japan, where pornography depicting violence is widely available, rape is much lower per capita than in the United States, where violence in porn is restricted.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“This is the second way in which women in the industry are said to be victims of violence. They are said to be so brainwashed by white male culture that they cannot render consent. Thus, they are de facto coerced.

Consider how arrogant this statement is.

Although women in pornography appear to be willing, anti-porn feminists see through this charade [...] If a woman enjoys performing sex acts in front of a camera, it is not because she is a unique human being who reasons and reacts from a different background or personality. No. It is because she is psychologically damaged and no longer responsible for her actions. She must, in effect, become a political ward of radical feminists, who will make the correct choices for her.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“Refusing to acknowledge the contracts of women in pornography places them in the same legal category as children or mental incompetents. In Indianapolis, the anti-pornography ordinance argued that women, like children, needed special protection under the law:

"Children are incapable of consenting to engage in pornographic conduct.... By the same token, the physical and psychological well-being of women ought to be afforded comparable protection, for the coercive environment ... vitiates any notion that they consent or `choose' to perform in pornography." [2]

This attitude of "I'm a helpless victim" could easily backfire on women who may be required to prove they are able to manage their own finances, or to handle custody of their own children. Moreover, the idea of men "emotionally or verbally coercing" women re-enforces the concept of men as intellectually and psychologically stronger than women. It is the old "Man of Steel/ Woman of Kleenex" myth.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“To blame words or images for the actions of people is simplistic. It retards any real examination into what motivates violent crimes, such as rape. Radical feminists are handing a "pornography made me do it" excuse to rapists. Nothing should be allowed to mitigate the personal responsibility of every man who physically abuses a woman.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“The mere fact that some women are upset by the presence of pornography tells us very little. It tells us nothing about whether porn is right or wrong, valuable or useless. After all, feminism distresses a great many people. Yet feminists would argue that the movement should not only be tolerated, it should be nurtured. They consider women's rights to have a positive, rather than a negative effect on society-even if it causes distress. Perhaps the same is true of the graphic depiction of sex.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“Through much of their history, women's rights and pornography have had common cause. The fates of feminism and pornography have been linked. Both have risen and flourished during the same periods of sexual freedom; both have been attacked by the same political forces, usually conservatives. Laws directed against pornography or obscenity, such as the Comstock laws in the late 1880s, have always been used to hinder women's rights, such as birth control. Although it is not possible to draw a cause-and-effect relationship between the rise of pornography and that of feminism, such a connection seems reasonable to assume. After all, both movements demand the same social condition-namely, sexual freedom.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography