Suzanne
Prior to this reading, had you ever really thought about pornography in such a negative light or was it always just something some people (mostly men) enjoy viewing?
Lauren B.
How can you differentiate between sex and the sex that takes place in pornography? Besides a camera, how is it different?
Cara
Do you believe that pornography conditions male orgasm to female subordination?
Matt
The author states that pornography harms women because it directly leads some men to act out the scenes, including violent ones, that they have witnessed. Does this mean that these men are unable to distinguish between reality and the fantasy space created by pornography?
Marie
How does the following quote relate to what we just studied about women and sexism in the hip-hop industry?: "Pornography codes how to look at women, so you know what you can do with one when you see one."
Katy
MacKinnon asks "Why don't women believe our own experiences?" At Lafayette, we all receive Clery notices in our mailboxes when there is an incident of sexual assault or harassment. Almost always these notices reveal that the female victim did not wish to press charges, and I have witnessed many people glance at these notices before tossing them in the trash. Would this change if more women took the initiative to press charges? How might pornography have an effect in this situation?
Katie
How come domestic violence, rape, and all other things that pornography indirectly or directly causes are illegal and have consequences that follow, but pornography still seems to be produced as some sort of male fantasy?
Lauren H.
Mackinnon writes "They hypothesize that pornography leads some men to abusiveness out of fear of loss of control that has come to mean masculinity when real women won't accept sex on the one-sided terms that pornography gives and from which they have learned what sex is." Why do men choose this realm specifically to reclaim the control or power that they believe that they have lost?
Laquan
If slave masters claimed that they were not racist because they love their slaves, have men claimed that they are not rapists, or physical and sexual abusers because they love their wives? So ideally has prostitution and sexual abuse been made legal and called marriage?
Zach
How do we as a society confront this problem of pornography? Does the sexual assault that takes place caused by bad people watching bad things, or is pornography powerful enough to cause a good person to do wrong things?
Collin
In both articles, the definition of pornography takes up a substantial part of the page. Why has so much thought been put into what is "defined" as pornography and what is not? What does having a detailed, all-inclusive definition do for these authors' stances on porno?
Peter
If pornography were outlawed, distribution and all, would societal problems disappear, or would pornography persist as a function of men's desire for it?
Dan
Could there be such a thing as non-sexist ethical pornography?
Jarred
Is it safe to assume that all women in the porn industry suffer from low self esteem for one reason or another?
Greg
The quote "These women will not abandon the meaning of their own experience. That meaning is: pornography is the orchestrated destruction of women's bodies and souls; rape battery, incest, and prostitution animate it; dehumanization and sadism characterize it; it is war on women, serial assaults on dignity, identity, and human worth; it is tyranny" captures the main problem with pornography towards women. If pornography was reshaped in a way that did not destruct women's bodies, but presented females in a good way, would pornography be more acceptable in society, or will men not tolerate the ways in which women should be treated?
Beth
Do celebrities and other images in popular culture undermine and belittle the argument that some women make about damaging effects of pornography?
Jennifer
is it only men who are becoming more abusive through the act of watching pornography, or are women becoming increasingly abusive as well by allowing themselves to be violated?
Meredith
Do you believe that, due to the physical aspects of pornography, the realms of civil rights and free speech should be approached differently? Why or why not?
Marquis
Besides porn what else hurts men's capacity to relate to women?
Ashley
Both Dworkin and MacKinnon make a solid case that pornography is bad for women, but is it also bad for men? What about society as a whole?
Brandon
Do you think the overall power men excerise in the pornography industry strengthen the social barriers in which women are skepical of all mens intentions?