Link: https://dartreview.com/feminism-pornography-and-a-culture-of-hedonism/

I'm presenting this article for discussion, not because I agree with anything written in it. This is from an independent college newspaper and most likely written by a student.

Key points include:

...pornography does more than merely degrade women; it degrades sex and all human participants. The feminist perspective only seems to denounce degradation if it happens to show women as inferior within a hierarchy.

Determining when women are explicitly depicted as sex objects (in pornography) for the enjoyment of men would be impossible on a widespread scale.

It is impossible to depict women as anything more than sex objects in any form of pornography.

They (feminists) must admit that hedonistic depictions of human beings can have negative effects. The feminist who admits this puts himself/herself into a daunting political position that must simultaneously defend hedonism and seek to address its clear negative effects.

Feminism defends hedonism. Pornography is hedonistic. Pornography also produces harmful, unequal results in which women are naturally objectified more than men. Feminism must come to terms with this harmful product (pornography), which has arisen from its own culture of hedonism. This is why, ironically, the feminist movement will not contribute meaningfully to any political discussions aimed at creating a society in which women are given the dignity they deserve. The feminist has yet to learn that you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Wow, there's a lot to unpack here.

Intrinsically tying feminism to hedonism and then tying feminism to pornography is too clumsy to be taken seriously imo. Feminism and pornography are not two sides of the same coin.

They must admit that hedonistic depictions of human beings can have negative effects.

I don't think any feminist has argued that pornography has zero negative effects. Almost everything has some negative effects and particularly hedonistic activities are full of them. It's ignoring the potential positives of pornography here and casting all feminists as fulling embracing pornography, which I find is mostly in choice feminism anyway.

I've got more thoughts, but I'm going to leave this here for now.

Rather than condemn pornography in and of itself, Prof. Langton only condemned a subset of pornography: that which is said to degrade women. She concludes that what is harmful about pornography is that it promotes a sort of “inequality” between the sexes. In principle, it can be an expression of the supposed inferiority of women. In practice, it can lead to a more generalized misogyny amongst men – particularly young men – who are exposed to pornography.

Does the author purposefully pretend that there is only 1 type of pornography that exists? Yes, pornography depicting women in degrading scenarios is common. There's also a lot of loving couples having sex on camera. There's pornography that specifically is degrading to men. Pornography is as varied as the human existence to be perfect honest and I don't think a productive conversation can happen if we're going to pretend that there's 1 and only 1 type of pornography.

Ah yep, the author is not arguing in good faith:

Rather than condemn pornography in and of itself, Prof. Langton only condemned a subset of pornography: that which is said to degrade women. She concludes that what is harmful about pornography is that it promotes a sort of “inequality” between the sexes. In principle, it can be an expression of the supposed inferiority of women. In practice, it can lead to a more generalized misogyny amongst men – particularly young men – who are exposed to pornography.

Prof Langton can recognize there's differences in pornography and the author blasts past that and continues to conflate one type of pornography with ALL pornography smh

I can’t get this article to load on my phone at the moment, so I’ll look at it on my pc when I get home. I’m sure I’ll have a few strong opinions on it.

I agree, this person has clearly not seen enough porn. He hasn't seen any man/woman on sexbot porn, female solo porn, sexbot on sexbot porn, hyper-realistic pikachu porn, he probably hasn't even seen the cult classic: balls in ass porn.

balls in ass porn.

Booyah!

I don't have an issue with porn... i have issues with the way the industry is right now. There's a lot of consent violations, disturbing content, and minority groups are portrayed badly. That is all bad

It is impossible to depict women as anything more than sex objects in any form of pornography.

Seems like a pretty vile take to me. Dangerously close to saying that women can't be anything other than sex objects. As a bonus it seems to contradict:

Determining when women are explicitly depicted as sex objects (in pornography) for the enjoyment of men would be impossible on a widespread scale.

Surely it would be dead simple if, as the author goes on to claim, it's impossible to depict them as anything else.

I am not fucking here for anything that tries to take puritanical views on sex and dress them up as feminism.

Does the pornography industry have massive issues with exploitation? Yes. But don't fucking sit there and act like it solely exists to reduce or degrade women when that is an outright lie.

I wish I could upvote your comment more than once.

Iirc THE biggest genre of pornography by popularity is amateur. Just two people going at it with no agenda but having sex.

Also apparently in this article's world queer pornography doesn't exist

This is an opinion piece dressed up as analysis. It starts with the premise that all pornography is bad. Then ties feminiam to pornography because feminism only sees porn that is specifically degrading to women as bad, and therefore feminism is bad. It's morality policing and condemning all feminism for not adhering to a puritanical view of sex.

Thought I’d have some thoughts on this. The author reminds me of my mother, who was very anti porn to the point she almost kicked me out of the house when she found it on my computer in my early 20s.

If the feminist wants to see results toward a more just and equal society, he/she must admit that any and all depictions of women engaged in pornography are harmful to society. They must admit that hedonistic depictions of human beings can have negative effects.

I do not disagree that there are aspects of porn that are harmful to society, but humans are still animals and most of us like to fuck. That’s just human nature. Many also like to watch people fuck, also human nature. I also do not like his opinion on women being depicted as submissive being only negative. Some of us ladies enjoy being submissive and find respectful men or women or nonbinary partners to assist with this. Not all submission or hedonism is bad. Some of us like kinky shit and that’s ok!

This dude needs to broaden his horizons and watch different types of porn because it doesn’t seem like he’s watched much.

Appreciate you sharing this Wren!

Edit: corrected some pronouns because the author is male and I have issues with his article

Oh look. Another "feminist" who thinks feminism means women controlling other women's choices instead of men! That never gets old!

This is exactly the point. The hot take in the linked article is like having problems with the concept of farming in general in the middle ages because farming was done by serfs.

Fix the problems with the industry. Don't shut down the industry.

I don't think this author is even trying to be feminist, unless you're talking about the speaker he's criticizing?

He?

...

Oh. The picture and the name made me think the writer was female. TIL that Vittorio is a man's name.

Oh no, his article is a rant about a subject the speaker brought up.

Yeah, I got that on a second reading after the penny dropped. Oops!

No problem. Just found it on my daily news hunt.

I would like to find her entire speach because I have no doubt the writer takes it out of context, since he built an entire opinion piece off a few sentences. He goes from her statement that "porn can be degrading to women" to "Feminists don't know what they want" in one page of false statements and strawman arguments, each one building off the last.

It seems like the writer himself has a much bigger issue with porn that the speaker.

Agreed. It feels like he wanted to whine more about feminism than porn imo