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Feminism, Pornography, and a Culture of Hedonism - A short article for discussion (dartreview.com)
submitted 1 day ago by Wren@lemmy.today to c/womensstuff@piefed.blahaj.zone
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I'm presenting this article for discussion, not because I agree with anything written in it. This is from an independent college newspaper and most likely written by a student.

Key points include:

...pornography does more than merely degrade women; it degrades sex and all human participants. The feminist perspective only seems to denounce degradation if it happens to show women as inferior within a hierarchy.

Determining when women are explicitly depicted as sex objects (in pornography) for the enjoyment of men would be impossible on a widespread scale.

It is impossible to depict women as anything more than sex objects in any form of pornography.

They (feminists) must admit that hedonistic depictions of human beings can have negative effects. The feminist who admits this puts himself/herself into a daunting political position that must simultaneously defend hedonism and seek to address its clear negative effects.

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[-] velma@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 day ago

Feminism defends hedonism. Pornography is hedonistic. Pornography also produces harmful, unequal results in which women are naturally objectified more than men. Feminism must come to terms with this harmful product (pornography), which has arisen from its own culture of hedonism. This is why, ironically, the feminist movement will not contribute meaningfully to any political discussions aimed at creating a society in which women are given the dignity they deserve. The feminist has yet to learn that you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Wow, there's a lot to unpack here.

Intrinsically tying feminism to hedonism and then tying feminism to pornography is too clumsy to be taken seriously imo. Feminism and pornography are not two sides of the same coin.

They must admit that hedonistic depictions of human beings can have negative effects.

I don't think any feminist has argued that pornography has zero negative effects. Almost everything has some negative effects and particularly hedonistic activities are full of them. It's ignoring the potential positives of pornography here and casting all feminists as fulling embracing pornography, which I find is mostly in choice feminism anyway.

I've got more thoughts, but I'm going to leave this here for now.

[-] velma@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 day ago

Rather than condemn pornography in and of itself, Prof. Langton only condemned a subset of pornography: that which is said to degrade women. She concludes that what is harmful about pornography is that it promotes a sort of “inequality” between the sexes. In principle, it can be an expression of the supposed inferiority of women. In practice, it can lead to a more generalized misogyny amongst men – particularly young men – who are exposed to pornography.

Does the author purposefully pretend that there is only 1 type of pornography that exists? Yes, pornography depicting women in degrading scenarios is common. There's also a lot of loving couples having sex on camera. There's pornography that specifically is degrading to men. Pornography is as varied as the human existence to be perfect honest and I don't think a productive conversation can happen if we're going to pretend that there's 1 and only 1 type of pornography.

[-] Taleya@aussie.zone 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Iirc THE biggest genre of pornography by popularity is amateur. Just two people going at it with no agenda but having sex.

Also apparently in this article's world queer pornography doesn't exist

[-] Wren@lemmy.today 6 points 1 day ago

I agree, this person has clearly not seen enough porn. He hasn't seen any man/woman on sexbot porn, female solo porn, sexbot on sexbot porn, hyper-realistic pikachu porn, he probably hasn't even seen the cult classic: balls in ass porn.

[-] velma@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

balls in ass porn.

Booyah!

this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2026
21 points (100.0% liked)

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