Thoughts on Pornography, Writing, and Feminism: Revisiting “Sexual Commodities and Sexual Subjects” (vol. 25, 2004)

The article revisits my paper, “Between Sexual Commodities and Sexual Subjects: The Feminist Pornography Debate,” printed in volume 25 of Theory and Criticism. It reflects on the cultural, political, and intellectual context that shaped my research on pornography, and it examines what has changed in the feminist discussion of pornography in the intervening years. The text offers an appendix to the original article that brings it up to date. It identifies the attributes of the second wave of anti-porn feminism that crystalized in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, comparing them to those of the anti-porn movement of the 1980s and 1990s. I argue that contemporary anti-porn discourse distances itself from the gender-conflict paradigm that characterized the first wave and grounds itself in the discourse of “healthy sexuality.” On the other side of the feminist divide, I note the emergence of the category of “lesbian porn” and the founding of the academic field of porn studies. I find that today, as in the past, the two feminist camps portray irreconcilable pictures of the field of pornography, and that the challenge of creating a framework that can acknowledge women’s sexual vulnerability while recognizing their sexual agency remains as pressing as ever.