Why I'm anti-anti-porn

So I've previously tackled why exactly I'm "pro-porn" (someday I'll get my hands dirty analyzing that term specifically, it's a slippery one) but now: Why be anti-anti-porn?

After all, the feminist anti-porn folk at least have some good points. There is misogynistic mainstream porn out there. There are, I'm sure, some compulsive users of porn whose porn use is not healthy (though personally, I think "porn/sex addiction" has officially become a moral panic, so it's hard to know whether this is truly common or not. Either way, though, I'm sure it does exist.) There are people who use porn to prop up their misogynistic worldviews and see women as dirty and as sluts for what porn "reveals" about women. There are people who learn about sex from porn and who have a difficult time differentiating between what's unrealistic fantasy on a screen or in a picture and what most women want. There are people who are in the sex industry because they lack other options and who feel stuck and want out. There are abusers who use porn to train or shame their victims. And for many people, sex performed as labor is different from other labor: more personal, more internal. To do it and be exploited doing it is particularly damaging to the psyche of these people at the very least.

So... why not respect that? I can, after all, disagree that political action to end the industry is, on balance, a wise idea or an attainable goal without having any enmity toward people who think differently than me. I actually know several anti-porn folks with whom my disagreement is exactly that. They see being anti-porn as an attempt not to feed a big, sexist, harmful machine, so they don't use the stuff, don't date people who do, etc.

All of that's reasonable and makes sense and that's not who I take issue with.

Who do I take issue with then?

Well, for starters there are the people who are against porn for religious reasons or politically conservative beliefs. I doubt I have to go into too much depth about these people and why I feel their opposition to pornography stems from an anti-sex and anti-woman perspective. I'm not for people who think of lust as a dirtying force, and not for people who think that what all people view or do should be limited based on one perspective. Especially if that perspective is based on the idea that sexual desire corrupts men, or that women who "incite" it (or admit to having it themselves!) are dirty.

That leaves us with the anti-porn left, usually feminist.

The first point against them is that quite a few of them are willing to ally with, or look the other way from, the people I've already mentioned. These people see pornography as so terrible, so godawful, that it doesn't matter whether other anti-porn groups have an explicitly anti-gay or anti-feminist agenda.

Which makes no sense to me. If the goal is to create a better world for women by eliminating an inherently sexist form of media, I have difficulty understanding why we need sexists to do it for us.

Relatedly, there are people out there who are not specifically concerned about protecting women, but who use the feminist viewpoint to bolster their arguments. They're not interested in protecting women so much as they're interested in their own agenda. Feminist copy about harms to women sounds good, so they use it. I'm against this because I think it dilutes any truly feminist message, allowing people who really aren't for women to toss in some lines from MacKinnon or whomever to sound concerned and serious. This further muddies the waters.

But, anti-porn feminists will say, all that has nothing to do with real feminism. The Wheelock conference wasn't, for example, about conservatives or about how best to ally with people who are anti-porn for non-feminist reasons. It was about radical feminist opposition to porn, a view which many radfems see as in the minority anyway.

So why take issue with that? Well, for one thing, they radically misinterpret and misunderstand what some porn is. They use sensationalistic comparisons to make pornography upset and bother people. After a while, this sure looks to me not to be about "raising consciousness" nearly so much as it is about inducing a shocked or enraged reaction that will swing people over to their side.

This impression is further bolstered, at least in me, when they actively limit exposure to other points of view. Why is it threatening to allow others to respond? What is it that so many don't want people to hear?

Sounds less about raising consciousness and more about creating selective hearing to me.

And then there are the really horrid tactics, the bullying and threats. Complete nonsense like this. Leave and don't come back, you're not radical enough. Oh, it all serves you right, you should know that what you do means women need protection from you.

It's a vile cesspool of not listening to women in the name of protecting them. It's a vile cesspool of things like vandalism. If you make one issue the holy grail of feminist freedom, you can justify doing anything at all in the name of the freedom of women. (And can someone please tell me what posting stickers calling Playboy misogynist is actually supposed to accomplish? Who does that cause to close his store, or to "see the light"?)

That to me isn't feminist. That's just disturbing, sometimes violent.

I'm anti-anti-porn because, while I know not every anti-porn person or anti-porn feminist is willing to compromise principles, good sense, and basic courtesy for the sake of destroying the Porno Monster, I see it entirely too often to remain neutral.