The Anti-Feminist Movement

During the early 1970s, a heightened awareness about incest and sexual abuse developed within radical feminism and eventually produced robust movements to end violence against women and children as well as to end pornography, which radical feminists saw as anti-woman propaganda and a source of sexual violence. This collided with but did not merge with the demands of a growing conservative movement to police sex more rigorously and also incited opposition within the feminist movement as some activists were concerned about a return to state censorship and the intensification of an anti-sex backlash for women. Debates most salient within the movement were engaged around contentions of pornography, sex work and gender expression of butch/femme
Beginning with the anti-pornography movement, which constitutes the more conventional side of the binary around sexuality, opinions surrounding the debate stemmed from certain key concepts of lesbian feminism in the late 1970s, such as arguments of male sexuality and patriarchal sexual relations. Feminist journalist and activist Ellen Willis states in her essay “Feminism, Morality, and Pornography”, that this includes the argument that “patriarchal sexual relations are based on male power backed by force” and since pornography is mainly produced by men and for men, it in turn reveals the dominant male paradigm surrounding sexual relations (Willis, 464). This phallocentric perspective on sex in the porn industry denies any sexual autonomy for women and is therefore unable to accurately represent female sexual desire. Willis, along with many other anti-porn feminists, would argue that pornographic imagery continually objectifies women as depersonalized bodies or receivers of sex that must passively submit to the sexual demands of men.
Some argue that sex positive feminism has its historical roots in reformers of sexual morality such as Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger, both of whom challenged traditional ideals of love, sex and marriage as sexually nonconforming women, birth control activists and supporters of sex education. The modern sex positive movement came around in the early 1980s and contested anti-porn feminist values with the belief that regulation of porn would just lead to greater sexual oppression for women and instead they insisted that pornography could be reclaimed and used as a tool to educate women about sex as well as grant them opportunity to explore their own sexual interests. As a result, pro-sex feminists coined the concept of “Feminist Porn”, which involves the inclusion of all gender identities and sexual orientations as well as ethical and consensual working conditions whereby performers were in control of the production of the scene and fairly compensated for their work. They also advocated for women’s right to free love and argued that women’s sexual liberation was central to women’s liberation as a whole. Since pro-sex feminists claim that the patriarchal nature of our society has negative effects for everyone, they did not accept the demonization that was common among anti-porn feminists and