A while back, I subscribed to this international feminist group on Facebook and I had posted something from an anti-Pornography organization to help fight and shut down pornographers. Many, many women came out of the woodwork to post their opinion to my call to fight pornography.
Most of the reaction wasn’t in support of my post, mind you, as one would think. But the most vocal of them were young pro-sex feminists trying to intimidate anti-porn feminists about how prudish and wrong we are for even thinking about fighting pornography; that we are just silencing women.
How can one think that pornography helps women and children, or men for that matter? And that by shutting down or limiting pornography will simply harm women more in the long run? Is it the fear about being silenced like the women of Islam and others in similar cultures?
In my own experience, I know the effect of pornography as well as having witnessed the prostitution culture growing up outside Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. I was coerced/brainwashed to believe that to have a healthy sexuality is to accept pornography into your repertoire as sexual freedom beliefs.
Think me prudish and a finger-waving old nun who is not having fantastic sex! LOL But that is far from the truth. I just don’t welcome the negativity of porn into my world and do not surround myself with men who consume it as well. I am actually experiencing sex on my own terms without graphic images, fantasies and fetishes. To me, that is liberating.
Pornography has become so evasive and so rampant in our culture that it is inescapable. Therefore, as one of the few anti-porn feminist, I remain standing and request that others who believe the way I do to be more vocal. This is not about religion. This is a human issue. Women are more than their bodies and the more we view sex as a commodity, the more inhuman we will continue to exist in this world.
Being an anti-porn feminist is not anti-sex at all! Yes, I am a sexual being but my body also holds my heart, my imagination and my intellect. I am not going to be forced to believe that pornography is a good thing and it is a healthy part of freedom of speech in a democratic society when it continues to harm our collective psyche and soul.
