introduced earlier, the notion of women's value being reduced to “enhanc[ing] men's lives” was identified. While women enhance men's lives as mothers, wives, lovers, and carers, a central concern for radical feminists is women doing this commercially through prostitution: as Thompson contends, “the only reason for the existence of prostitution is to service male sexual desire” (Thompson 2001, p. 42). Radical feminists are abolitionists and “view the industry of prostitution as a cause and consequence of inequality, not as work like any other” (Mackay 2015, p. 214).
The radical feminist opposition to prostitution is multilayered. First, the sex industry is viewed as another contribution to the maintenance of patriarchy. Ginette Castro argues that prostitution is symbolically oppressive, contending that “It is through the act of purchase that patriarchal man humiliates the prostitute whose services he acquires” (Castro 1990, p. 82). Thompson takes this further, saying that “Its sole reason for existence is so that men can pay money to have their penises stimulated to ejaculation by strangers who they hold in contempt” (Thompson 2001, p. 41). Symbolically, prostitution is viewed as a commercial encapsulation of how women are treated in broader society, as valued exclusively for the degree to which they enhance men's lives. Theorists like Jeffreys contend that rather than the sex industry being merely a way to capitalize on men's sexual desires, rather, “men's behaviour in choosing to use women in prostitution is socially constructed out of men's dominance and women's subordination” (Jeffreys 1997, p. 3).
While the misogyny that Castro, Thompson, and Jeffreys allude to is enacted symbolically through the bodies of prostitutes, radical feminists like Mackay quoted earlier, also argue that these acts should also be construed as physical acts of sexual violence. Atkinson, for example, describes prostitution as “institutionalized rape in its most public, brutal form” (Atkinson 1974, p. xlix). Evelina Giobbe articulates a similar argument:
The fact that a john gives money to a woman or a child for submitting to these acts does not alter the fact that he is committing child sexual abuse, rape, and battery; it merely redefines these crimes as prostitution.
(Giobbe 1991, p. 146)
Kathleen Barry takes this same position in her book The Prostitution of Sexuality:
Prostitution is sex bought on men's terms. Rape is sex taken on men's terms. The sex men buy in prostitution is the same they take in rape – sex that is disembodied, enacted on the bodies of women who, for the men, do not exist as human beings, and the men are always in control.
(Barry 1996, p. 37)
While the growth of the industry – fueled by globalization and the internet – keeps prostitution a concern, connected issues like trafficking have made radical feminist positions even more salient.
Pornography
In light of the radical feminist opposition to prostitution, it is no surprise that pornography is viewed similarly: the two topics are routinely coupled in academic discussions (Sullivan 1997; Whisnant and Stark 2004; Spector 2006; Weitzer 2009); both are reliant on women's sexual labor and both considered as products for male consumption. Equally, if one looks at the origins of the word pornography – porne&c.macr; meaning prostitute; graphein to write or record – there has always been a link: a number of writers have in fact made the point that pornography is just filmed prostitution (Heldman 2010; Banyard 2016). Several theorists also couple prostitution and pornography as similar types of abuse: Christine Stark and Carol Hodgson claim that both are “forms of violence against women and girls” (Stark and Hodgson 2003, p. 28).
While pornography has always been a concern for radical feminists, the activists of the 1960s and 1970s, could never have imagined the ubiquitousness of pornography resulting from the Internet nor the subsequent pornification (Rosewarne 2016, 2017), in turn making the debates had nearly half a century ago every bit as potent today; in fact, as Gail Dines contends “the porn question has, since the 1970s, been the most controversial and divisive issue in the women's movement” and argues that “radical feminists see porn as a major producer of sexist ideologies that normalise, condone, legitimise and glorify women's subordinate status” (Dines 2012, pp. 18–19).
While radical feminist opposition to pornography lies in the opposition to the existence of commodified sex in any form, there is also a series of more medium‐specific concerns raised.
Many radical feminists put strong emphasis on the harm of pornography: on both its production and consumption. The case of Linda Marchiano – who appeared in the pornographic film Deep Throat (1972) with the name Linda Lovelace – is often used by radical feminists as a case study to reflect the often‐coerced participation of women in pornography: in Marchiano's book Ordeal (1980), she reveals that she had performed in the films under physically duress. Other radical feminists have written about the physical coercion of women into pornography and their subsequent abuse (Dines et al. 1998; Lederer 1980; MacKinnon 2001).
In terms of consumption, radical feminists consider pornography as a tool that teaches viewers about sex – what it looks like and sounds like – and, more specifically, about women's subordinated role. In Feminism Unmodified, for example, MacKinnon argues “Pornography is ideas; ideas matters. Whatever goes on in the mind of pornography's consumer matters tremendously…” (MacKinnon 1987, p. 22). Some of these ideas center on abuse and subordination, something Diane Russell addresses where she presents a multiple causation case between pornography and rape:
My theory, in a nutshell, is that pornography (1) predisposes some males to want to rape women and intensifies the predisposition in other males already so predisposed; (2) undermines some males' internal inhibitions against acting out their desire to rape; and (3) undermines some males' social inhibitions against acting out their desire to rape.
(Russell 1997, p. 158)
MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin present similar ideas in Pornography and Civil Rights:
The more pornography men see, the more abusive and violent they want it to be; the more abusive and violent it becomes, the more they enjoy it, the more abusive and violent they become and the less they see in it. In other words, pornography's consumers become unable to see its harms because they are enjoying it sexually.
(Dworkin and MacKinnon 1988, p. 47)
It is these arguments that led Morgan to argue that “pornography is the theory, rape is the practice” (Morgan 1978, p. 169) and for Dworkin to go that little bit further and argue “pornography is the theory, pornography is the practice” (in MacKinnon 1997, p. 53). The enormous growth of pornography fueled by the internet only makes the concerns held by radical feminists even more relevant today.
Radical feminism was born over half a century ago. While the movement morphed, and fractured and, ultimately, downsized, hot button issues like the sex industry, sexual violence, and the transgender issue keep the activism and theory produced just as relevant today. Equally, the legacy of scholarship – the increasing presence of sexual political analyses in disciplines that had historically been ignorant of the power relations between men and women – as well as public policy successes in realms such as domestic violence and rape – are testimony to an important legacy.
References
1 Abrar, S., Lovenduski, J., and Margretts, H. (2000). Feminist ideas and domestic violence policy change. Political Studies 48: 239–262.
2 Atkinson, T.‐G. (1974). Amazon Odyssey. New York: Links Books.
3 Banyard, K. (2016). Pimp State: Sex, Money and the Future of Equality. London: Faber
