Feminists Against Pornography
Women’s First March Against Porn, Broadway and Columbus, 1977, photograph from San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library
by Carolyn Bronstein
Beginning in the mid-1970s, many American feminists viewed pornography (and its presumed causal relationship to violence against women) as the single greatest threat to female autonomy. Ideological changes in the Women’s Liberation movement, specifically the rise of radical feminism, combined explosively with feminist outrage at the disappointments of the sexual revolution and the discovery of an epidemic of male sexual violence, and led women to identify heterosexist media as a teaching tool of patriarchal violence. Women organized around the nation to fight the proliferation of advertisements, films, magazines and other popular media that glorified a link between female sexual arousal and male violence, arguing that these depictions enslaved women in the role of passive victim and taught men that it was normal and desirable to behave like brutes. Grassroots organizations of women developed a feminist analysis of sexually violent images and argued that they promoted the continuation of sexist attitudes and behavior, and male power and control. These groups targeted a range of media images, some featuring physical violence, others psychological violence; all were believed to be degrading, objectifying and dangerous for women.
In my new book, Battling Pornography, I explain the evolution of the American feminist anti-pornography movement from 1976-1986 by charting the development and actions of its three most influential grassroots groups: Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW, Los Angeles); Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM, San Francisco); and Women Against Pornography (WAP, New York). In so doing, I show how and why the movement transitioned from a broad concern with sexually violent images in popular media to a focus on pornography, which included sexually explicit images that did not feature overt violence. This shift created tremendous controversy among American feminists—many of whom did not accept the depiction of “male-identified” sexual behaviors such as penetrative sex as inherently oppressive– and triggered the formation of a counter-movement led by feminists who dubbed themselves “pro-sex” to challenge the conservative sexual beliefs that underlay anti-pornography theory and activism. Their conflict formed the basis of the sex wars, the bitter struggles over sexuality that consumed American feminism throughout the late 1980s and 1990s. It also cemented the reputation of second wave feminists as anti-sexual and anti-male, described by some postfeminist critics as a group of women who regarded rape, battering and sexual harassment as prototypical heterosexual interactions.
The members of the grassroots feminist anti-pornography groups shared much common ground, particularly in terms of their radical feminist orientation and the belief that media images offered powerful normative messages about gender roles. They regarded one another as belonging to “sister organizations” dedicated to eradicating the cultural and commercial exploitation of violence against women in mass media. However, the groups also differed in important ways not previously elucidated.
Cover of Hustler magazine, June 1978
As I studied the groups’ unpublished manuscript collections and spoke to former activists, I discovered significant variation in members’ beliefs regarding the best course of action to deal with the pornography problem. In both academic and popular literature, the anti-pornography movement is often portrayed as a monolith, united in opposition to pornography and in support of the legal ordinances proposed by author Andrea Dworkin and law professor Catharine MacKinnon in the 1980s. These ordinances, struck down in 1986 by the U.S. Supreme Court as unconstitutional, made pornography actionable in U.S. courts as a form of sex discrimination and would have enabled individuals to sue the producers and distributors of pornographic material that could be linked to a specific instance of harm. In reality, however, there was no simple agreement on this question; anti-pornography was a heterogeneous movement comprised of some feminists who agreed that eradicating pornography via new laws was the ultimate goal as well as others who saw this as a treacherous path.
WAVAW rejected the emphasis on pornography outright—consciously avoiding the term when describing the organization’s work—out of concern that such a focus might erode speech rights and endanger sexual freedom while absolving mainstream media, especially advertising, of its role in perpetuating violence against women. WAVPM functioned as a bridge group, trying to capture in its name and actions members’ commitment to fighting violence in mainstream media and pornography, and was the first group in the movement to endorse the use of new legal strategies. WAP, in identifying themselves as solely against pornography, seemed to jettison the broader public project of reforming popular media in favor of a singular focus. Yet even within WAP there were members who concentrated their attention on sexist advertising and warned that feminists would not be the ones to define what pornography was—or was not (e.g. graphic material about abortion or lesbianism)—should new laws be passed. One goal of Battling Pornography, then, is to challenge dominant constructions of the American feminist anti-pornography movement and to offer a nuanced portrait that reveals the extent to which feminists struggled to find meaningful ways to object to the growing influence of pornography in American society.
In studying the intricacies of the movement, I also discovered a rich and undocumented history of media reform activity that I sought to preserve in Battling Pornography. WAVAW, WAVPM and WAP borrowed tactics from Civil Rights and New Left organizing, such as pickets and boycotts, and argued that women working together to raise public consciousness could achieve media reform and social change. WAVAW protested the advertising campaign for the 1976 Rolling Stones album Black and Blue, which portrayed a bruised, trussed woman wearing a ripped bodice and a look of extreme sexual arousal while straddling a photograph of Mick Jagger and his bandmates. “I’m Black and Blue from the Rolling Stones and I Love It!” she proclaimed from a billboard high above Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. The organization initiated a national consumer action to demand corporate social responsibility and pressured the entertainment giant Warner Communications, which carried the Rolling Stones albums on its Atlantic Records label, to ban the use of images of violence against women on all of it products and ancillary marketing materials.
Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems in Deep Throat, Plymouth Distribution, 1972
WAVPM persuaded the cosmetics company Max Factor to cancel a 1978 ad campaign for its Self-Defense brand of face cream, which the group interpreted as mocking women’s deeply felt need to protect themselves from rape and other forms of sexual assault. WAVPM also demonstrated against Hustler that year for running a cover illustration of a naked woman being fed through a meat grinder head first, legs waving helplessly in the air. The groups led a creative and innovative campaign to improve media representation, relying on consumer action tactics as well as performance art, conferences, marches and demonstrations to call attention to their cause.
Prior to 1980, as the above examples illustrate, the central movement concern was the glorification of violence against women in mainstream media and the dangerous gender myths that such images popularized. Over time, however, the emphasis on media violence and public education diminished as movement leaders made a strategic decision to subsume the violence problem under the banner of pornography. The new emphasis on pornography, engineered most forcefully by WAP, brought the desired media spotlight. It also attracted powerful new allies from the business community and government officials whose support movement leaders sought, as well as members of the burgeoning New Right, who were decidedly less welcome. WAP focused its efforts on pornography, initiating a national boycott of the X-rated Deep Throat in 1980, when Linda Lovelace revealed in an autobiography that her abusive husband coerced her performance and thus the sex scenes in the film constituted rape. In this period, members of WAP also developed and led guided public tours of the adult establishments in Times Square that enabled women to confront the pornography industry firsthand and see the kinds of images and behaviors that the organization opposed.
In chronicling this history, I believe that Battling Pornography makes several important contributions to the history of late twentieth century feminism and challenges us to rethink dominant constructions of the feminist anti-pornography movement. The book offers a compelling account of the social, political and cultural conditions affecting American women’s lives in the mid-1970s that allowed sexually violent media images and later, pornography, to emerge as a key concern for feminists. It explains how and why a grassroots consumer action and public education campaign against sexual violence in mainstream media transformed over time into an anti-pornography movement that sought to bring pornography under greater state control. And, it restores the intent of early activists to eradicate the socially constructed gender differences that were prominent in popular media—woman as passive, willing victim and man as aggressive, lustful brute—because such depictions encouraged gender-based violence against women, including rape.
About the Author:
Carolyn Bronstein is Associate Professor of Media Studies in the College of Communication at DePaul University. Her research investigates questions of media representation and social responsibility, with an emphasis on gender, and her work has been published in such journals as Violence Against Women, Camera Obscura, and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. Her new book is Battling Pornography: The American Feminist Anti-Pornography Movement, 1976-1986.
