Pornography Men Possessing Women - 1614 Words

In 1981 Andrea Dworkin, a radical feminist, a supporter of the anti-pornography movement, and writer, released Pornography: Men Possessing Women, later referred to here as MPW. In her book, Dworkin delivers an extensive and emotionally-charged critique of pornography as an industry that profits from the perpetuation of harm against women, analyzing examples of both historical and contemporary pornography to make her case. Key to this analysis is the declaration of male power. According to Dworkin, this power is maintained by men themselves as well as society as a whole through means of reinforcing a metaphysical assertion of self, physical strength, the capacity to terrorize, the power of naming, the power of owning, the power of money,†¦show more content†¦However, no explanation is given for how the connection between pornographic representations and beliefs or physical actions is made. As Demare, Lips and Briere note in their study of the relationship between pornography and violence, as much as we may want it to, correlation does not prove a causal relationship. While MPW demonstrates the prevalence of sexual abuse within pornographic material and within society, the only explanation as to how the consumption of pornography is directly related to violence against women amounts to little more than an extended, poetic variation of â€Å"monkey see, monkey do†. Dworkin’s information on pornography-based violence, as she states in the introduction of her book, is partially based on one-step-removed accounts of pornography by â€Å"only a few of the thousands† of women who she says to have known personally, all of which blame porn as the catalyst of their sexual assault. Other sources include novels, pornographic fiction, excerpts from the biographies of Marquis de Sade and Marilyn Monroe, and excerpts from ‘scientific’ works by Alfred Kinsey and his co-workers - none of which contain a sex-positive perspective on femal e sexuality. Dworkin’s sources, listed in the ‘Notes’ section of her book, are many, and paint a heart-wrenching image of pornography and female heterosexuality at the time of the book’s publication. One cannot deny the extent to which women endured family sexual abuse, rape, battery, and coercion during theShow MoreRelatedA Realm Of Pure Bliss1603 Words   |  7 Pagesoffensive, she immersed herself into the tacit realm of patriarchy, seeking to enlighten and expose the sinister sexual methodologies of man that preserve the role of women as besmirched objects of male indulgence and exploitation. 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