The "Anti-Antiporn" Feminist Countermovement, 1983-1985

Kess Carpenter, Wilfrid Laurier University

While historians have shown that the feminist movement fractured in the 1970s over issues such as race, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and lesbianism, less is known about the shattering impact of the division over pornography. This paper seeks to illuminate the porn wars’ significance within American feminism, particularly through the lens of an anti-antiporn countermovement that emerged in the mid-1980s. It looks to uncover how competing ideologies over pornography led to deep schisms within the women’s movement by the mid-1980s. It also acts as a piece of the larger project that aims to uncover how the porn wars reached a national boiling point during the mid-1980s, culminating in the Meese Commission and even deeper divisions over pornography by decade’s end. It asks how feminists outside of the anti-pornography movement responded to a growing, national anti-pornography feminism and its alliances in the 1980s. Secondly, if pornography symbolized patriarchal power imbalance and the male objectification of women, then why did feminists form such a strong, anti-antiporn countermovement? I examine feminist reactions to the Anti-Pornography Civil Rights Ordinances as a case study to help answer these questions. Examining the backlash through the lens of the 1980s Anti-pornography Civil Rights Ordinances opens an understanding of women’s relationship to pornography beyond “pro” and “anti” pornography binaries. I also look to problematize how scholars have labeled feminists within this countermovement as having “pro-sex” or “pro-pornography”. Although several individuals explicitly labelled themselves as such, as well as “anti-censorship”, feminists within the countermovement did not always adhere to a unified stance regarding pornography. Many within the women’s movement expressed their complicated relationships with pornography, while others openly embraced it. Much like the feminist movement itself, feminist relationships with pornography were not monolithic.

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 Presented in Session 198. Marriage Laws, Sex Positivity, and Negotiations over Bodily Autonomy under Patriarchy