Johanna Fateman, who recently co-authored an anthology of Dworkin’s work,
told the
New York Times that “Dworkin lost the sex wars so decisively that we can now see beyond her most extreme rhetoric. . . . You don’t have to be afraid that Andrea Dworkin is going to take your pornography away.”
Instead, the “sex positivity” movement has won. Since at least 2013, colleges across the U.S. have hosted
hundreds of “sex-week” seminars. While individual feminists’ views on pornography may vary, a 2015
study of data from the U.S. General Social Survey from 1975 to 2010 showed that both men and women with pro-feminist attitudes are more likely to watch porn.
Far from boycotting the industry, however, the more progressive corners of the feminist movement
encourage watching pornography. “Viewership is notably growing among women, some of whom are giving porn a second look through a sex-positive lens,” Lucia Graves
wrote in the
Guardian. (To be sure, some lonely feminists are
still challenging the porn industry.)
Academics such as Madita Oeming, a self-proclaimed “public porn scholar” and “sex-work-inclusive feminist,” go so far as to claim that the notion of porn addiction is a fallacy invented by “the media, church and self-help industry.” As Oeming wrote in
Vice, “To pathologize certain sexual identities or practices is almost a tradition for us. Porn addiction continues this tradition.”
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