Reading Pornography: Men Possessing Women was tricky. Its large-print title attracted unwanted attention on a Greyhound bus trip, and it made me slightly and entirely unjustifiably apprehensive of the friend I was on said bus trip to visit, simply because he happened to be male. Nonetheless, I was glad I read this treatise against pornography by one of the major thinkers of second-wave feminism. She's passionate, angry, and articulate against what she sees as the essence of patriarchal society and how it harms women in fundamentally entrenched ways. However, reading Dworkin drives one into an us-against-them mentality which I don't find constructive or reflective of my daily life. Pornography is pornographic, as Dworkin graphically describes specific examples of pornography before dissecting what is wrong with it. Her analysis is very literal, taking images on at face value, against which third-wave feminists try to inject more subtlety and complexity. I thought the chapter on the Marquis de Sade and her criticism of left-wing men especially intriguing as these escape how Dworkin could be summarized in a nutshell. Ultimately, I am glad how reading this furthered my feminist self-education.

Share/Like this Review?