The Feminist 'Sex Wars' of the 1980s
- 18 hours ago
- 6 min read
Think the divide between radical feminists and mainstream feminists on sex capitalism is new? From Andrea Dworkin to Candida Royale to Women Against Pornography, feminists of the 1980s were divided on sex work and pornography.
The written post below includes details spliced from another video
To believe that women deserved equality with men did not mean you and all other feminists saw eye to eye on every other issue. As rape culture discourse gained new legitimacy, one of the biggest splinters among feminists, predictably, was about sex. Women Against Pornography, or, WAP, was founded in 1976 by Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, and through the 80s, the group organized rallies and attempted to claim that pornography was a civil rights violation against women. By extension, women in all forms of sex work were infantilized as incapable of choosing to participate, and told that their occupations — strip tease, phone sex, escorts, etc— should be eradicated, if not completely criminalized. Their reasons for being in sex work— escaping abuse, paying for healthcare or college, providing for loved ones, etc.- were too often irrelevant to sex-negative feminists. Class was often stripped from the conversation, as were sex workers themselves.
Like everyone else in the 80s, the realities of female sex workers were undergoing several changes. For starters, recessions and economic downturns, like the one in the late 70s/early 80s, are historically accompanied by women entering into sex work— from stripping at the local club to deciding to have a casual John here and there to make rent. Secondly, the HIV/AIDS crisis put full-service sex workers more at risk, and made it more clear than ever before that they needed regular access to condoms and medical care. Changes in technology, like the fax, cell phone, car phone, and pager, meant escorts seeing upper class clients could do more screenings, be more selective, and stay off of the streets, leaving them often to operate on their own without a pimp or madam if they chose, although high price escort companies would flourish in urban centers like New York. As for the rise of VHS and video rentals, more full-service sex workers found themselves turning from the streets to doing porn as a main source of income.
Child stars seemed to represent many of the core issues that cultural warriors gathered over. Take Brooke Shields. Her controversial print and TV ads for Calvin Klein beginning in 1980 overshadowed an incident involving Playboy that further represented what anti-pornographers warned about: the exploitation of children. When she was just 10 years old, her mother consented to have Brooke pose for a set of nude photographs by photographer Garry Gross, whose name is quite appropriate. The photos were published in a 1976 Playboy publication called Sugar N Spice, and her mother must have had a change of heart because in 1981 she sued Gross and Playboy. Ultimately, a loophole in New York law sided with the photographer.
As we discussed in Lexual Does The 70s, laws regarding the creation of child sex abuse media, erroneously referred to as “child pornography” and conflated with consensual sexual activity between two paid adult actors, started popping up after 1977. But the Brooke Shields incident shows why conservatives, and their radical feminist allies (atleast in this scenario), were so concerned. In 1984, radical feminists Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon proposed legislation defining porn as a violation of women’s civil rights, and the resulting “sex war” among feminists is something we’ll come back to in the next episode. That same year, Reagan ordered a new examination of pornography to be overseen by tax evader Edwin Meese. Meese stacked the commission with well-known anti-porn crusaders, like James Dobson from Focus on the Family.
The commission was supported by republicans and anti-ERA citizens, as well as anti-pornography feminists. The Meese Report on Pornography was issued in July 1986, and noted that since the 1970 report on Obscenity by the Nixon administration, there had been technological advances like cable and VCR that made the threat of obscene material more pernicious. The report was based on the interpretation and study of 2,325 magazines, 725 books, and 2,370 films. Claiming the nation was “pervaded by sexual explicitness”, the report called for the government to “strictly enforce the prohibition of child [sex abuse media]”, but also rejected the idea that consenting adults should have access to pornography.
Only two commission members issued a dissenting opinion, saying the study had been rushed and the findings were based on the most violent and degrading examples of porn. Funnily enough, one newspaper had warned that “If Meese’s smut commission goes on an anti-pornography rampage, it will have the effect of driving the debate back into black and white terms and nothing will be achieved.” Basically, if the commission focused on consensual adult porn, legitimate concerns about child sex abuse media and poor working conditions would be drowned out. Or for example, how poor industry standards allowed the 16-year-old Traci Lords to have a porn career while underage in the early 80s. The fallout varied. Several chains of convenience and drug stores, notably 7-11 and Wal-Mart, got rid of Playboy and Penthouse magazines, leading to the two publishers to sue the Attorney General. Porn producers vowed to have better vetting practices and set standards. And while the Meese commission continued the practice of conflating child sex abuse media with consenting adult pornography, it did help lead to child sex abuse media cases taking federal precedence over adult obscenity cases from the late 80s onward. And as we all know, porn has continued to flourish, with questionable practices and conditions like every capitalist industry.
Despite the findings of the Meese Commission (considered a waste of time by people across the political spectrum for going against adult porn), simply denouncing the hardcore stuff was not enough for hardcore conservatives. Beginning in 1986, groups that dealt with concerns of obscenity, porn, homosexuality, antifeminism, and abortion organized to pressure the FCC into having stricter standards about what was broadcast on TV.
Andrea Dworkin wrote, ''Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman." When she testified before the Meese Commission, rather than endorsing obscenity laws, Andrea proposed five solutions for what she considered to be the porn problem. They included keeping records of when porn was used in violent crimes, banning porn in prisons, enforcing laws against pimping and pornographers, enforcing RICO against porn producers, and creating anti-porn civil rights legislation with payouts for harm done to women. Andrea Dworkin, along with other anti-porn activists, faced opposition from groups like Feminists Against Censorship Taskforce. Rather than listening to the women who worked in the porn industry and wanted safer working conditions and fair pay, anti-porn feminists focused solely on those who had been brutalized, coerced, or simply regretted their time in the industry.
A lot of anti-porn rhetoric dwelt in old-fashioned and sex-negative views of women, despite emerging evidence that women in the 1980s were experimenting, sexually curious, and looking for healthy ways to express their sexuality. In 1980, Cosmopolitan magazine published the largest ever study on the sexual habits of American women, using the responses of over 100,000 of its readers for a deep analysis. The details were surprising. 37% of respondents masturbated several times a month, and another 25% masturbated several times a week. 25% of the women had sex with 11-25 people at the time of the survey. 15 percent had been with over 25 people. Only 10% had been with one person. 54% of married women admitted to cheating during their marriage. 84% of the women regularly participated in cunnilingus and fellatio.
Such open attitudes towards sexual behavior, once deemed immoral, would no doubt trickle over to porn consumption. So unsurprisingly, anti-porn and sex-negative feminists also faced opposition from women who enjoyed pornography, especially lesbians who desired to see and/or create erotic representations of themselves. On Our Backs, a San Francisco-based magazine riffing off of the 1970s feminist newspaper Off Our Backs, published feminist literature and lesbian erotica. In 1984, porn performer Candida Royalle, aka Candice Vadala, founded the first feminist porn production company, Femme Productions, to focus on female desire not centered around the male gaze or the proverbial cum shot. What constituted the male gaze, and whether or not women should be interested in attracting it, rejecting it, ignoring it, or capitalizing on it, extended outside of porn.
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