Pornography

Pornography and feminism are uneasy bedfellows, but bedfellows they are. Yes, porn often replicates and exaggerates power relationships between men and women. Yes, porn often exploits female participants who perhaps have troubled personal histories. Yes, porn encourages objectification of women.

And yet. And yet...

Porn across all it's varied forms - at least in theory - acknowledges and enables the expression of female sexuality. It may not always see female sexual desire as a priority to be met, but neither does it cover women up and deny their existence as sexual beings.

An individual experience of pornography is just that, individual. Many women enjoy porn in whatever form it takes, and in some cases have more 'extreme' tastes than many men. Do we judge those tastes as being somehow illegitimate because they belong to a woman? If so we are setting a standard that will eventually deny women their sexuality. Beware the first principles of any puritanical mindset, even if it is dressed in liberal clothes.

Yes, pornography is problematic. Yes pornography is edgy for feminists. But pornography is also part of human expression, part of what makes us what we are.