National Feminist Antipornography Movement

We are grateful to one of our supporters for calling our attention to the National Feminist Antipornography Movement. This organization focuses on the harms of pornography by challenging the industry and the increasingly pornographic sexuality of the culture. Grounded in a feminist analysis of the sexist, racist and economic oppressions in contemporary society, their goal is to end the demand for pornography and other forms of men’s sexual exploitation as part of a progressive movement. They affirm sexuality rooted in equality and free of exploitation, coercion, and violence.

Here are some of the resources and articles available on this site:

“Pornography as a Cause of Rape”
Excerpted from Dr. Diana E.H. Russell’s book, Against Pornography: The Evidence of Harm (Berkeley, California: Russell Publications, 1994)

Stop Demand

one angry girl

“Making Women’s Place Explicit: Pornography, Violence, and the Internet”

“Just a prude? Feminism, pornography, and men’s responsibility”

“The Porn Debate: Wrapping Profit in the Flag”

“Pornography and the First Amendment”

“Not Tonight, Honey. I’m Logging On”

“The Anti-Pornography Feminist Movement”

“A cruel edge: The painful truth about today’s pornography–and what men can do about it”
Excerpts:
“As Jerome Tanner put it during a pornography directors’ roundtable discussion featured in Adult Video News, ‘People just want it harder, harder, and harder, because like Ron said, what are you gonna do next?’ Another director, Jules Jordan, was blunt about his task: ‘[O]ne of the things about today’s porn and the extreme market, the gonzo market, so many fans want to see so much more extreme stuff that I’m always trying to figure out ways to do something different. But it seems everybody wants to see a girl doing a d.p. [double penetration] now or a gangbang. For certain girls, that’s great, and I like to see that for certain people, but a lot of fans are becoming a lot more demanding about wanting to see the more extreme stuff. It’s definitely brought porn somewhere, but I don’t know where it’s headed from there.’

“…even the toughest women–women who at rape crisis centers routinely deal with sexual violence–find the reality of pornography so difficult to cope with. No matter how hard it may be to face the reality of a rape culture, at least the culture still brands rape as a crime. Pornography, however, is not only widely accepted but sold to us as liberation….

“[Pornographers] would prefer that none of these issues even be discussed in public. In recent years, their strategies for cutting off that discussion have been remarkably successful. When we criticize pornography, we typically are told we are either sexually dysfunctional prudes who are scared of sex, or people who hate freedom, or both. That works to keep many people quiet. The pornographers desperately want to keep people from asking the simple question: What kind of society would turn the injury and degradation of some into sexual pleasure for others? What kind of people does that make us–the men who learn to find pleasure this way, and the women who learn to accept it?…

“To criticize pornography is not repressive. To speak about what one knows and feels and dreams is, in fact, liberating. We are not free if we aren’t free to talk about our desire for an egalitarian intimacy and sexuality that would reject pain and humiliation.

“That is not prudishness or censorship. It is at attempt to claim the best parts of our common humanity–love, caring, empathy, solidarity. To do that is not to limit anyone. It is to say that people matter more than the profits of pornographers and the pleasure of pornography consumers. It is to say, simply, that women count as much as men.”