Free XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography by Wendy McElroy Page B

feminism and pornography have been fellow travelers on the rocky road of unorthodoxy. This partnership was natural, perhaps inevitable. After all, both feminism and pornography flout the conventional notion that sex is necessarily connected to marriage or procreation. Both view women as sexual beings who should pursue their sexuality for pleasure and self-fulfillment. Indeed, most of feminism's demands have been phrased in terms of women's sexuality: equal marriage, lesbianism, birth control, abortion, gender justice....
    In the nineteenth century, critics of feminism yelled from pulpits and soapboxes that feminists were corrupting the sanctity of the family and motherhood. Similar charges were also hurled at pornography, then called "obscenity." A century later, rightwing critics of feminism and pornography sound strangely similar to their early counterparts. Perhaps this sort of criticism endures because it contains truth. Both feminism and pornography do call the traditional institutions and assumptions of sexuality into question.
    The similarity does not end here. Both feminism and pornography flourish in an atmosphere of tolerance, where questions are encouraged and differing attitudes are respected. Not surprisingly, both feminism and pornography are suppressed whenever sexual expression is regulated.
    The current backlash of censorship is an alliance between the Moral Majority (the Right) and the politically correct (the Left). This alliance is threatening the freedom of both women and sexual expression. The Right defines the explicit depiction of sex as evil; the Left defines it as violence against women. The result is the same.
    The censorship net has been cast so widely that feminist classics, such as Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will, are in the same peril as such porn icons as Debbie Does Dallas. This is inevitable. Both works address the same theme: sexual freedom in a sexually repressive world.
    They merely arrive at antagonistic conclusions.
    Why are feminists linking hands with the Right? Perhaps they believe themselves to be in a position of power, at last. Perhaps they dream of having their view of sex become the status quo.
    It is a realistic hope. Radical feminists have been successful in establishing sexual correctness as a form of orthodoxy in the university system, where no one currently dares to question concepts like sexual harassment. The media now censors itself to avoid sexually incorrect references. The workplace has turned into halls of paranoia. Antipornography feminists have good reason to believe they have a shot at becoming the new power structure.
    Meanwhile, pornography is left as a lonely voice to depict the less popular sexual choices that women have available to them. Feminists desperately need to reacquaint themselves with their own history. What passes for feminist scholarship these days has too often been filtered through ideology. Feminists must come to terms with two of the important lessons that history has taught over and over again:
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    1. Censorship-or any sexual repression-inevitably rebounds against women, especially against those women who wish to question their traditional roles. Freedom of sexual expression, including pornography, inevitably creates an atmosphere of inquiry and exploration. This promotes women's sexuality and their freedom.
    2. Censorship strengthens the position of those in power. This has never been good news for women, who are economically, politically, and socially among the weakest members of society.
    Freedom of speech is the freedom to demand change. It will always benefit those who seek to reform society far more than those who wish to maintain the status quo.
    A CAUTIONARY TALE
    Recently, some scholars have seemed more receptive to the rather commonsense idea that there could be a connection between sexual liberty and women's rights. They have considered the possibility that denying one may hinder the other. A proximate cause for this may be the