Comella 2015

Review: Revisiting the Feminist Sex Wars
Author(s): Lynn Comella

Review by: Lynn Comella
Source: Feminist Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2 (2015), pp. 437-462
Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc.
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Lynn Comella
Revisiting the Feminist Sex Wars
In 2012 British author E.L. James’s romantic trilogy Fifty Shades

of Grey became an international best-seller, giving rise to the label
“Mommy Porn” and providing endless fodder to mainstream media out-
lets, which jumped at the opportunity to discuss women’s relationship
to erotica, pornography, and BDSM.1 While many people criticized Fifty
Shades for its heavy-handed prose and lack of literary merit— its popu-
larity confounding many reviewers — others focused on the sexual rela-
tionship between the trilogy’s two main characters: billionaire Christian
Grey and his romantic interest, the young and sexually naive Anasta-
sia Steele. As journalist Zoe Williams noted at the time, the sex scenes
in Fifty Shades, far from being incidental, are the “meat of the plot, the
crux of the conflict, the key to at least one and possibly both the central
characters.” 2 Fifty Shades “is not a book with sex in it,” Williams offered,
“it is a sex book,” one written to titillate and arouse its ostensibly female
readers through vivid descriptions of sexual domination and submission,
complete with blindfolds, riding crops, and wrist restraints.
1. See E. L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey (New York: Vintage Books, 2012); E. L.
James, Fifty Shades Darker (New York: Vintage Books, 2012); and E. L. James,
Fifty Shades Freed (New York: Vintage Books, 2012).
2. Zoe Williams, “Why Women Love Fifty Shades of Grey,” Guardian, July 6, 2012,
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jul/06/why-women-love-fifty-
shades-grey.
Feminist Studies 41, no. 2. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 437
438 Lynn Comella
Books Discussed in This Essay
Battling Pornography:
The American Feminist Anti-Pornography Movement, 1976–1986.
By Carolyn Bronstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Anti-Porn: The Resurgence of Anti-Pornography Feminism.

By Julia Long. London: Zed Books, 2012.
$pread: The Best of the Magazine That Illuminated

the Sex Industry and Started a Media Revolution.
Edited by Rachel Aimee, Eliyanna Kaiser, and Audacia Ray. New York:
Feminist Press, 2015.
Feminist writers and media critics were quick to jump into the cul-
tural fray to offer their opinions on, and analyses of, the Fifty Shades
phenomenon, often presenting an either/or scenario where the scales
tilted toward one of two possible scenarios: sexual peril or sexual plea-
sure. Were the depictions of BDSM in Fifty Shades harmful to women
or empowering? Were they examples of domestic abuse or consensual
sexual activity? Why, moreover, were so many women devouring the
books, one volume after the other?
Some feminists argued that Fifty Shades was yet another example of
the “pornification” of culture, where the versions of sex most frequently
promoted by pornography become part of the cultural mainstream.3
Fifty Shades, according to them, normalized cruelty and violence toward
women by turning a “sexual sociopath” who “delights in sexually tortur-
ing women” into a heartthrob.4 Anti-pornography advocate Gail Dines
described Fifty Shades as a “romance novel for the porn age in which
3. For a discussion of the pornification of culture, see Julia Long, Anti-Porn:

The Resurgence of Anti-Pornography Feminism (London: Zed Books, 2012).
4. Gail Dines, “Don’t Be Fooled By Fifty Shades of Grey— Christian Grey Is
No Heartthrob,” Guardian, October 25, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com
/commentisfree/2013/oct/25/fifty-shades-of-grey-christian-jamie-dornan-fall.
Lynn Comella 439
overt sexual sadism masquerades as adoration and love.” 5 Others, how-

ever, suggested that Fifty Shades’ popularity had given at least some
women permission to read erotica and explore their kinkier sides, offer-
ing them a resource that could inspire their fantasies and reignite sexu-
ally anemic marriages.6
Media discussions and descriptions about the Fifty Shades books —
and eventually the film — as either sexually dangerous or empowering
reveal just how difficult it is to talk about women’s relationship to erotic
literature, pornography, and BDSM without confronting the legacy of the
feminist sex wars of the 1970s and 1980s, battles over pornography and
sexual expression that caused deep and enduring rifts within the broader
feminist movement that are still felt today.7 Competing feminist con-
cerns regarding the politics of sexual fantasy, consent, violence, power,
and pleasure, such as those highlighted by Fifty Shades, are not relics of
a bygone era; rather, they are powerful constructs that generate inter-
pretive frameworks that many people use — consciously or not— for
making sense of everyday depictions of female sexuality in popular cul-
ture, from literature and film to pop music and Internet pornography.8
The success of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, which includes a
Hollywood movie, a licensed sex-toy line, and an official lingerie collec-
tion, among other products, has not taken place in a cultural vacuum.
Interest in erotica and pornography, it seems, has never been higher. In
5. Gail Dines, “Why Are Women Devouring Fifty Shades of Grey?” Counter Punch,
July 27, 2012, http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/27/why-are-women-
devouring-fifty-shades-of-grey.
6. See, for example Lynn Comella, “Fifty Shades of Erotic Stimulus,” Feminist
Media Studies 13, no. 3 (2013), doi:10.1080/14680777.2013.786269; and Julie
Bosman, “Discreetly Digital, Erotic Novel Sets American Women Abuzz,”
New York Times, March 9, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/business
/media/an-erotic-novel-50-shades-of-grey-goes-viral-with-women.html.
7. For further discussion of these battles, see Carole Vance, ed., Pleasure and
Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1984); and Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter, Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and
Political Culture (New York: Routledge, 2006).
8. For a recent example, see Gail Dines’s discussion of pop singer Nicki Minaj,
in which she draws parallels between Minaj’s artwork for the album Ana-
conda and representations of black female sexuality in contemporary
pornography. Gail Dines, “Nicki Minaj: Little More Than a Big Butt?”
Huffington Post, July 29, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/gail-dines/nicki-
minaj_b_5629232.html.
440 Lynn Comella
spring 2013, Routledge announced it would launch the first academic

journal devoted exclusively to the study of pornography.9 Courses that
examine the history of pornography as a popular film genre are offered
at colleges and universities in the United States and other countries, and
academic presses are clamoring to add titles about pornography and sex
work to their catalogs.10 Indeed, all one needs to do is enter the word
“pornography” into Google to see just how widespread interest in the
topic is among journalists, academic researchers, bloggers, and every-
day readers. From concerns about porn addiction and revenge porn to
the growing market for feminist and queer pornography, people want to
know more about who watches porn, why they watch, and what kinds of
effects pornography has on individuals and their intimate relationships.11
They also want to know more about the experiences of those who per-
form in pornography, dance at strip clubs, and work at brothels.12
Now, then, is a good time to revisit the history of feminist battles
over pornography, and sex work more broadly, not only because these
ideological divides endure — as the media discussions around Fifty
Shades suggest— but also because feminist history is so easily rewritten
or simply erased from public memory. In what follows I discuss three
recent books that either directly or indirectly engage with the history
and legacy of the feminist sex wars. First, I review Carolyn Bronstein’s book,
Battling Pornography: The American Feminist Anti-Pornography Move-
ment, 1976–1986. Battling Pornography is the most comprehensive account
to date of the origins and evolution of the anti-pornography movement
and is, therefore, deserving of a lengthy and detailed discussion. Next,
9. See Lynn Comella, “Why Pornography Deserves Its Own Academic Journal,”
Pacific Standard Magazine, May 17, 2013, http://www.psmag.com/culture
/why-pornography-deserves-its-own-academic-journal-57816.
10. See Chantal Braganza, “The Evolution of Porn Studies,” University Affairs
Magazine, January 14, 2015, http://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-
article/evolution-porn-studies. In 2014, I reviewed three separate book pro-
posals on the topic of pornography for three different academic presses. The
previous year I had reviewed none.
11. For a collection of recent, interdisciplinary research that addresses these
questions, among others, see: Lynn Comella and Shira Tarrant, eds., New
Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law (Santa Barbara, CA:
Praeger, 2015).
12. Cosmopolitan magazine has a weekly online series called “Sex Work” that
profiles women who have careers in sex-related fields, from porn stars to
sex researchers.
Lynn Comella 441
I review Julia Long’s book, Anti-Porn: The Resurgence of Anti-Pornogra-

phy Feminism, which highlights recent anti-pornography organizing and
activism in the United Kingdom. And finally, I discuss the anthology
$pread: The Best of the Magazine that Illuminated the Sex Industry and
Started a Media Revolution, a book that brings together writing by sex
workers and their allies. Together, these books detail the rise, decline,
and re-emergence of anti-pornography feminist organizing over the past
four decades, as well as the growth of a sex-positive counter-movement—
one that, importantly, centers and amplifies the voices of sex workers.
Although the cultural climate has changed considerably since the height
of the feminist sex wars in the early 1980s, the positions that anti-por-
nography and sex-positive feminists staked out during that time con-
tinue to occupy a dominant place in public conversations and academic
research on pornography and sex work and are thus worthy of renewed
scholarly attention.
Battling Pornography: The Emergence of a Movement

In Battling Pornography: The American Feminist Anti-Pornography Move-
ment, 1976–1986, media scholar Carolyn Bronstein precisely reviews
the feminist anti-pornography movement in the United States during
its early, formative years, when media images and their effects emerged
as a source of concern for the women’s movement. Bronstein focuses
on three of the most influential feminist media-reform organizations to
emerge during this period: Women Against Violence Against Women
(WAVAW); Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM);
and Women Against Pornography (WAP). Drawing extensively on archi-
val materials, including organizational memos, meeting minutes, cor-
respondence, and newsletters, as well as a select number of interviews
with activists, Bronstein details the activities and goals that defined
these organizations during the late twentieth-century feminist anti-por-
nography movement, highlighting how these groups converged and,
importantly, how they differed. According to Bronstein, “Anti-pornog-
raphy was a complex and multi-faceted movement made up of diverse
and overlapping feminist groups who articulated their own sets of ideas
and goals” (5). What factors compelled groups of women in the mid-
1970s to direct their attention to a “subset of media images and iden-
tify them as a major cause of female oppression” (6)? How, moreover, did
the movement evolve from a campaign to combat sexualized violence in
442 Lynn Comella
mainstream media, to a crusade against pornography and other forms of

sexual expression deemed “anti-feminist”?
Battling Pornography is an ambitious and well-researched book.
Bronstein takes what she describes as a “long view” of anti-pornography
organizing, an approach that provides much needed depth and nuance
to the story of a movement that is often presented as being far more
uniform and unchanging than it actually was. It is exactly this long
view that is missing from current debates about women and pornogra-
phy today. Bronstein seeks to redress absences in the historical record,
which, according to her, have resulted in an incomplete understanding
of the movement’s history. According to Bronstein, a great deal of aca-
demic scholarship on the anti-pornography movement ignores the initial
phase of feminist media activism, when groups such as WAVAW waged
successful campaigns against mega-corporations, such as Warner Com-
munications, in an effort to curb representations of sexualized violence
in mainstream media images. Scholars have instead focused largely on
the later period of organizing, characterized by the activities of WAP and
women such as Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, both of
whom called for legislation as a means to curb the spread of pornogra-
phy. This truncated view of the movement’s history, according to Bron-
stein, not only divorces anti-pornography from its cultural origins in
the anti-violence movement, but it also obscures important successes of
Second Wave feminist organizing and the women responsible for them.
Battling Pornography addresses these gaps and brings Second Wave fem-
inist activism to light in ways that are both engaging and instructive.
Bronstein devotes the book’s first three chapters to what can best
be described as historical scene-setting. In doing so, she reminds read-
ers that social movements do not materialize out of thin air, but arise out
of specific social and political conditions. In the mid-1970s, three over-
lapping factors informed feminists’ conclusions that violent and sexist
media imagery provided a pedagogical template that taught men to be
sexual aggressors and women to be victims: (1) the disappointments of
the sexual revolution, (2) growing awareness of the problem of male vio-
lence against women and radical feminist critiques of heterosexuality,
and (3) the newfound visibility of the commercial sex industry in the
United States.
Bronstein transports readers back to the early 1970s, when women’s
participation in feminist consciousness-raising groups was bringing to
Lynn Comella 443
light various issues affecting women’s intimate lives, including the fail-
ures of the sexual revolution. By the start of the 1970s, many women who
had been active in and influenced by the social movements of the 1960s,
including the ideas promoted by the sexual revolution, had become dis-
illusioned. While sex outside of marriage, nonmonogamy, and cohabita-
tion, combined with availability of the birth control pill, offered women
new ways of thinking about themselves as sexual beings, these new,
more open-minded sexual mores had done very little to fundamentally
alter unequal power relationships between women and men. Despite
all the hype, the promises of the sexual revolution had not material-
ized for most women — a reality that led some feminists to conclude that
the sexual revolution was “a male revolution” (37) that had left “sexism
largely intact” (30). Arguably, some of these same tensions remain well
into the twenty-first century.
In addition to feminist critiques of the sexual revolution, there was
another development that would greatly influence the anti-pornography
movement: a political analysis of heterosexuality that encompassed a
growing awareness of male power and violence, including rape and bat-
tering. As women sat in living rooms across the country and shared inti-
mate details about their personal lives and relationships, many women
opened up, often for the first time, about their experiences with sexual
assault, rape, and coercion. The stories were widespread and prompted
feminist responses in the form of legal remedies, antiviolence education,
and support for survivors. These efforts coincided with important theo-
retical work regarding male violence that was being developed by fem-
inist thought leaders, such as Susan Brownmiller and Susan Griffin.13
Radical feminists argued that the threat of male violence, including rape
and battering, shored up male power by keeping women in their place.
The experience of male violence was not just an individual problem; it
was a social problem rooted in patriarchal ideology and, as such, needed
to be confronted head on. Where, feminists began to ask, did men learn
the attitudes and behaviors that contributed to a culture of violence
against women? To answer this question they turned their attention to
13. Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1975); and Susan Griffin, “Rape: The All-American
Crime,” Ramparts (September 1971): 26–35.
444 Lynn Comella
the role of the mass media in constructing certain “truths” about women
and men, sex and power, aggression and passivity. If the media were part
of the problem of male violence, they contended, it would also have to
be part of the solution.
Alongside discussions about female sexuality and male violence
was another change that some feminists viewed as particularly worrisome:
the commercial sex industry in the United States was becoming much
more visible. Sexuality, to paraphrase film scholar Linda Williams, was
“on/scene” in new ways: on television and newsstands, in private clubs
and theaters.14 Pornography’s newfound on/scenity was facilitated by a
number of factors, not least of which was the liberalization of obscenity
laws during the 1950s and 1960s. But perhaps no event in the early 1970s
did more to put the question of pornography squarely on the national
stage than the release of Deep Throat and the advent of “porno chic.” 15
Deep Throat opened in theaters across the country in 1972. The film
starred Linda Boreman, whose stage name was Linda Lovelace, and told
the story of a woman whose lack of sexual response prompts her to visit
a doctor for help. Upon examination, the doctor, played by actor Harry
Reams, discovers that her clitoris has anatomically migrated to a loca-
tion deep inside her throat. If she wants to experience the bells and whis-
tles of sexual pleasure and orgasm, the doctor tells her, she will need to
perfect the art of “deep throat” fellatio.
Deep Throat was a cultural phenomenon.16 Middle class adults of all
ages flocked to theaters to see it. The film was reviewed in the New York
Times, and Boreman herself was treated as a celebrity. Gone, it seemed,
was the social shame and taboo long associated with the act of walk-
ing into an adult theater to see a pornographic movie. Watching XXX-
rated films was suddenly chic, and the government’s attempts to ban the
film in certain cities only fueled its popularity, piquing the curiosity of
14. Linda Williams uses the term on/scenity to describe “the gesture by which
a culture brings on to its public arena the very organs, acts, bodies, pleasure,
that have been designated ob/scene and kept literally off-scene.” See Linda
Williams, ed., Porn Studies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 3.
15. Deep Throat, directed by Gerard Damiano (Gerard Damiano Film Produc-
tions, 1972).
16. For an account of the cultural phenomenon of Deep Throat, see Inside Deep
Throat, directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (Imagine Entertain-
ment, 2005).
Lynn Comella 445
people interested in seeing what all the fuss was about. The film’s long
theatrical run, combined with its box office receipts, “put to rest the idea
that only a fringe audience of perverts and sexual deviants frequented
porn films. To the contrary, middle-class Americans made up the larg-
est and most rapidly growing segment of the market” (75).
It was against this backdrop that opposition to pornography began
to grow. Women across the country denounced Deep Throat as sexist.
For many, the film exemplified the failures of the sexual revolution and
the inability of the culture to take women’s pleasure seriously. A spark
had been lit. According to Bronstein, Deep Throat was feminism’s “a-ha”
moment, one that encapsulated the “painful truth” about what men
really thought about women (82). Despite this, it would be several more
years until a feminist movement dedicated to fighting pornography
would coalesce and gain national prominence.
Feminist Media Reform:

From Sexual Violence to Pornography
It was the issue of violence, not sex, in the media, that initially galva-
nized feminists into action. Women Against Violence Against Women
(WAVAW) was founded in Southern California in 1976 and was the first
national feminist organization dedicated to addressing the problem of
sexual violence in mainstream media. Notably, and unlike feminist media
reform groups that followed, the word “pornography” was not part of the
organization’s title, and the group, according to Bronstein, was careful
not to define itself as anti-pornography. Rather, WAVAW cast a wide net,
targeting sexist and violent imagery in advertising, fashion, music, and
film, and calling on corporations to act responsibly when it came to the
images they produced. WAVAW drew upon newly formed feminist frame-
works about the gendered nature of sexuality and violence to analyze —
and, importantly, communicate to others — the role of media in teaching
men that women liked to be dominated while simultaneously condition-
ing women to accept their subordination. Central to WAVAW’s efforts
was the idea that mass media did more than simply entertain; it dissemi-
nated powerful ideologies that influenced how people understood them-
selves and the world in which they lived. Media images — and the stories
they produced about gender and power — mattered tremendously.
The formation of WAVAW, and its rise to national prominence in
the mid-1970s, was the outgrowth of two media events that prompted
446 Lynn Comella
a coordinated feminist response: (1) the release of the film Snuff, which
ended with the simulated stabbing death and mutilation of a woman’s
body, and (2) the imagery used to advertise the Rolling Stones’s album
Black and Blue, which depicted a scantily clad woman bound and bruised,
with her legs open and a look of enjoyment on her face.
Reactions from feminists were swift. In a world where violence
against women was a very real problem, many feminists wondered why
major media corporations were not acting more responsibly. Why were
they perpetuating stereotypes that suggested that women are victims
who expect, and even enjoy, their victimization? And why did compa-
nies think it was okay to profit from misogyny and portrayals of sexual-
ized violence?
WAVAW rejected censorship as a strategy and instead urged media
companies to exercise “corporate responsibility.” The group focused its
efforts on consumer actions — boycotts, petitions, letter-writing cam-
paigns, and feminist street theater — and made a point to explain to jour-
nalists that they were advocating corporate responsibility, not govern-
ment censorship — a message that would remain constant for the group.
In particular, WAVAW took aim at the music industry, which was
saturated with imagery that eroticized violence. In late 1976, the orga-
nization launched a national boycott against Warner Communications
in the hope of pressuring the company to adopt more responsible prac-
tices regarding the imagery it used in its advertising and album covers.
An important component of WAVAW’s activism was its letter-writing
campaign, which served to inform people about the boycott, recruit
supporters, and give women who might be new to activism the confi-
dence they needed to “show that their actions could bring about change”
(111). WAVAW successfully married feminist media activism with con-
sumer boycotts, attacking record companies where it mattered most:
their bottom line.
Getting the results they wanted, however, took years. But WAVAW
kept the pressure on and, after three years of national protests and con-
sumer boycotts, Warner Communications released a statement in 1979
indicating that it had adopted a corporate policy opposing the depic-
tion of violence on its album covers and promotional materials. WAVAW
had won a major victory on a national level, demonstrating that femi-
nist grassroots efforts that emphasized public education and consumer
action could effect positive change. Around the same time, though, the
Lynn Comella 447
focus of feminist media reform had started to shift away from sexual vio-
lence in popular culture to a concern with pornography. With the emer-
gence of Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM)
and Women Against Pornography (WAP), a new dawn of feminist media
activism, with a new set of tactics and goals, was on the horizon.
WAVPM was founded by a group of Bay Area feminists in 1976 and,
according to Bronstein, functioned as a kind of “bridge group” in the
transition period between the media antiviolence campaigns of WAVAW
and the anti-pornography focus of WAP (20). WAVPM had a “foot in
each camp,” adopting aspects of WAVAV’s antiviolence educational cam-
paigns while simultaneously positioning pornography as a major con-
cern. The group’s focus on pornography — a word that WAVAW had con-
sciously avoided — was not the only difference. WAVPM drew a causal
link between images and actions, a sentiment illustrated by Robin Mor-
gan’s famous quote, “Pornography is the theory, and rape the practice.”
Arguing that pornography was a cause of rape was, however, much dif-
ferent than claiming that violent and sexist imagery desensitized men
to rape. The former marked a significant theoretical shift and upped the
ante considerably.
Six weeks after its first organizational meeting, WAVPM staged an
anti-pornography protest outside the Mitchell Brothers Theater in San
Francisco, a venue that offered patrons live sex shows, some of which
included sadomasochistic (S/M) acts. Two months later the group staged
a “May Day” stroll through North Beach, drawing attention to the mas-
sage parlors, adult stores, and porn theaters located throughout the
neighborhood. The strolls through North Beach — a kind of anti-por-
nography “sex tourism”— became monthly events. Eventually, some
women began venturing inside the establishments to see for themselves
what the world of hardcore pornography looked like. WAVPM organized
in other ways, too. The group called on national newspapers to enact
anti-pornography advertising policies, arguing that XXX-rated ads posed
a danger to women. They also picketed establishments that sold Hustler
magazine after the publication ran a cover with a woman, naked and
upside down, being fed through a meat grinder. But perhaps the group’s
most ambitious undertaking was organizing a national conference on
pornography.
In 1978 WAVPM began planning the first national conference
on pornography, an event that included panel discussions, strategy
448 Lynn Comella
workshops, and the nation’s first Take Back the Night march. The con-
ference was an opportunity to bring together an all-star lineup of fem-
inist leaders from across the country who were writing, speaking, and
organizing around the issue of pornography. It was also an occasion for
the group to develop a more comprehensive feminist analysis that could
better explain the dangers pornography posed, especially to women.
Feminist concern and outrage, while certainly good motivation, were
not enough to combat the spread of pornography. Feminists needed
theories; they needed strategies; they needed a foundation on which to
build a movement.
Members of WAVAW attended the conference in significant num-
bers, and there were even two WAVAW-led workshops on media violence.
It was the topic of pornography, however, that claimed center stage, and
the growing divide — indeed tensions — between WAVAW and WAVPM
became apparent, especially during a session that discussed possible
legal solutions for pornography and related First Amendment questions.
Panelists were evenly split about whether or not legal remedies were a
viable option for containing the spread of pornography, with two par-
ticipants speaking out in support of the strategy and two against. Susan
Brownmiller, who would later become a leader in WAP, left no room for
ambiguity. In her view, “pornography was propaganda for gender dis-
crimination and a patriarchal tool of oppression, and it required correc-
tive government action” (162).
Anticensorship advocates voiced concern that legal measures, includ-
ing legislation, could easily be turned against women and other socially
marginalized groups. First Amendment supporters cautioned that there
was no guarantee that a “so-called feminist anti-pornography law might
be applied in feminist ways” (163). It was possible that such laws might
put sexually explicit lesbian novels, or feminist books such as Our Bodies,
Ourselves, on the radar of government censors, while publications such
as Hustler would be ignored. Women simply did not hold enough politi-
cal power to ensure that legal remedies would be used in ways that ben-
efited rather than harmed them.
For members of WAVAW, the conference was a moment of reckon-
ing and, according to Bronstein, signaled a “troubling sea change” for the
feminist antiviolence movement (170). By the late 1970s, a new feminist
media campaign was emerging, one that differed dramatically from the
focus and approach used by WAVAW, an organization whose goals and
Lynn Comella 449
tactics, Bronstein notes, were never controversial among feminists. The

movement’s shift to an explicit focus on pornography, and especially the
mounting appeals to pass laws to restrict it, generated not only unease,
but mistrust. By the end of the decade, anti-pornography feminists were
regarded as the “new censors” and enemies of the First Amendment
(199). A Pandora’s box had been opened, revealing political divisions that
would intensify in subsequent years and splinter the women’s movement
into competing factions.
The ascendency of Women Against Pornography (WAP) funda-
mentally altered the landscape of feminist antiviolence organizing. WAP
quickly became the leading voice in a national campaign against por-
nography, overshadowing the movement’s previous focus on sexual vio-
lence. The organization garnered mainstream media attention, includ-
ing appearances on the Phil Donahue Show, which helped generate
widespread interest and support for the nascent movement. WAP lead-
ers were a media savvy bunch. They knew that the topic of pornography
would grab headlines and draw attention to their campaign. Accord-
ing to Bronstein, there were other things that also contributed to the
rise of WAP. The organization had the support of a number of prom-
inent feminists, including Gloria Steinem, Adrienne Rich, and Robin
Morgan, among others, which lent credibility to the organization and
its agenda. WAP offered up its best-known members to journalists in an
effort to maximize media attention. It was a strategy that would have a
lasting impact on the larger campaign against media violence, as it gave
a select group of women considerable power to define the movement and
its goals. Over time, Bronstein notes, “the roots of the feminist anti-por-
nography movement in a broader campaign against media violence
against women faded from public view” (205). The account the media
most wanted to tell was the story about feminism’s war on pornography.
Anti-pornography feminists offered the public easy-to-digest the-
ories of gender difference that they hoped would provide a clear and
accessible framework for understanding why pornography was danger-
ous. Leading anti-pornography writers, including Andrea Dworkin and
Kathleen Barry, among others, drew upon notions of ingrained gender
difference popularized by cultural feminism to formulate highly con-
stricted versions of female and male sexuality. Women, they offered,
desired sexual intimacy and sensuality, whereas men were socialized to
be sexually violent and insatiable (205). According to this schema, all
450 Lynn Comella
men were potential predators and all women potential victims. Pornog-
raphy, for its part, was an especially pernicious weapon of male domi-
nance; it was an expression of male violence and a defining feature of a
misogynistic culture that stripped women of their sexual agency. Lib-
erating women, both politically and psychically, required feminists to
adopt bold tactics to combat the very real harms that pornography posed.
WAP set up shop in a rent-free office space in New York’s Times
Square in June 1979 and joined with other entities, including govern-
ment agencies and local law enforcement, to “clean up” the area by eradi-
cating violent or pornographic imagery and films. The organization also
embarked on a nationwide publicity campaign and initiated four major
projects: educational slide shows, tours of Times Square’s sex district, an
East Coast pornography conference, and an anti-pornography march on
Times Square. While these activities succeeded in raising the public’s
consciousness about pornography, they also revealed the movement’s
shortcomings. For example, the WAP slideshow built on the slideshows
of its predecessors, WAVAW and WAVPM, and included some of the same
slides, such as the Rolling Stones’ Black and Blue advertisement and the
infamous Hustler meat grinder cover. It was relatively easy for WAP to
explain its objection to slides that depicted clear cut images of violence,
such as a man holding a knife to a woman’s throat or a woman covered
in bruises; however, the group’s emphasis on pornography also meant
that it had to explain why nonviolent sexual images were problematic.
This was tricky and ultimately left WAP open to criticism. The absence of
imagery in the WAP slideshow explicitly linking violence to sex led some
critics to conclude that WAP’s critique of pornography was less about
violence and more about sex itself — a charge that would follow WAP
as it moved more squarely into the national spotlight. As WAP’s efforts
gained steam, moreover, the complex analysis of violent media images
and their real world effects in the form of attitudes and behavior — pio-
neered by WAVAW and central to earlier forms of feminist media activ-
ism — “began to fade from public conversation,” replaced instead with
pithy catchphrases and media-friendly slogans such as “Pornography Is
Violence Against Women” (243).
According to Bronstein, of all the accusations facing WAP— from
allegations that the organization lacked an intersectional analysis that
Lynn Comella 451
included race and social class, to concerns that it targeted sex work-
ers, to claims that it was working in concert with religious conserva-
tives — one problem in particular stood out. Because WAP endorsed a
narrow range of sexual expression and behavior, “arguing that sex under
patriarchy was a significant source of danger to women” (236), and as
WAP’s national profile grew, feminists who opposed its agenda and tac-
tics began to push back. They asserted that the group threatened wom-
en’s fundamental rights to sexual autonomy and pleasure, promoted
gender stereotypes, and advanced sexually repressive ideas that served
the political interests of religious conservatives. A new, countermove-
ment was emerging that would challenge the hegemony of anti-pornog-
raphy feminism.
The ascendency of the anti-pornography movement, with its
emphasis on sexual violence and danger, meant that by the early 1980s
there was dwindling cultural space for feminists who wanted to talk
about— and indeed champion — the more positive and life-affirming
aspects of various kinds of sexuality, including pleasure, fantasy, and
desire. And it was not just pornography that was in the line of femi-
nist fire. As the anti-pornography campaign gained steam, a hierarchy
of “good” and “bad” sex also was being constructed. At a time when the
New Right was flexing its conservative muscles, the stakes regarding the
politics of sexuality, especially for women and sexual minorities, could
not have been higher.
Lesbian sex radicals were on the front lines of resistance. Bron-
stein locates the origins of the pro-sex feminist movement in the clashes
that took place in the late 1970s between Samois, a San Francisco-based
lesbian-feminist BDSM organization, and WAVPM. Members of WAVPM
viewed lesbian S/M as eroticizing male supremacy and glorifying the
“unequal relations of power fundamental to a patriarchal society” (285).
WAVPM rejected the idea that S/M could be consensual — even among
lesbians. Instead, they argued that patriarchal ideology conditions
women to think that domination and subordination are natural, even
desirable, states. According to Bronstein, “For many activists within
the anti-pornography movement, there was no way to reconcile lesbian
S/M with feminism” (287). For some, this position signaled an alarming
mission creep, one that marked a shift from a focus on sexually explicit
imagery to a concern with consensual sexual practices.
452 Lynn Comella
The mounting conflicts within the women’s movement over por-

nography and sexual expression more broadly came to a head at the
1982 Barnard Conference in New York City, exposing just how intrac-
table the schisms had become.17 The Barnard Conference was intended
to “challenge the conservative feminist sexual discourse that held sway
in the women’s movement” by focusing on sexuality as an arena for both
danger and pleasure (298). Pro-sex feminists were acutely aware of the
ways in which women were constrained by sexuality; however, they were
also wary of defining female sexuality solely in terms of danger and vic-
timization. They saw a need, according to Bronstein, “to fight sexism and
sexual repression while simultaneously claiming sex for women” (297).
For pro-sex feminists, these were not mutually exclusive goals. Confer-
ence organizers, for their part, wanted to restore a sense of balance to
conversations about sexuality that had been dominated by anti-pornog-
raphy perspectives. In particular, they wanted to highlight the theme of
sexual pleasure and its place in women’s lives — a concept that many felt
had been eclipsed by the focus on sexual danger. If sexual danger was a
battleground for women, so, too, they argued, was sexual pleasure.
Controversy enveloped the conference almost immediately when
word got out that no one affiliated with WAP or from anywhere else
in the anti-pornography movement had been invited to be part of the
organizing committee. Anti-pornography feminists did not take this
exclusion lightly. The conference organizers defended their decision
and countered that it was hard to argue exclusion when anti-pornog-
raphy views dominated almost every conversation about feminism and
sex, including on the national stage. But more than this, organizers felt
that anti-pornography feminists had demonstrated an unwillingness in
the past to engage with viewpoints that differed from their own. Includ-
ing them in the conference planning risked derailing an event that was
meant to open up conversation and make room for viewpoints not typi-
cally heard in predominantly feminist spaces.
Tensions continued to grow as the date of the conference
approached. Women claiming affiliation with local anti-pornography
groups placed phone calls to Barnard College administrators. They
17. See Lynn Comella, “Looking Backward: Barnard and Its Legacies,” Commu-
nication Review 11, no. 3 (2008): 202–11.
Lynn Comella 453
denounced the event, suggesting that some of the invited speakers repre-
sented “anti-feminist” sexuality. Two days before the conference, college
administrators confiscated copies of the conference’s major text, Diary
of a Conference on Sexuality, a collection of images and writing, includ-
ing minutes from conference organizing meetings and personal reflec-
tions of committee members. On the day of the conference, anti-por-
nography protesters showed up wearing T-shirts with the words, “For
a Feminist Sexuality” on the front and “Against S/M” on the back. They
handed out leaflets accusing conference organizers of silencing the views
of anti-pornography feminists and called out by name specific organiza-
tions — as well as individuals — that they opposed. While many involved
in the conference planning had expected debate, they had not antici-
pated the personal nature of the attacks. It was no longer just pornogra-
phy that was the enemy, but other feminists, too.18
The Barnard Conference was instrumental in mobilizing feminist
opposition to the anti-pornography position and challenging its strong-
hold on the issue. It also helped create, as I have written elsewhere, a
new “social formation,” a coalition of sex radicals and pro-sex feminists
who were committed to sexual freedom, autonomy, and anticensorship,
and who were willing to go to the mat to protect those things.19 Accord-
ing to Bronstein, the debut of an organized pro-sex feminism at Bar-
nard “signaled an end to uncontested anti-pornography politics” (307).
And although the work of WAP continued in the months and years fol-
lowing the conference, including lending support to the anti-pornogra-
phy ordinances drafted by Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin,
18. Gayle Rubin has openly discussed the treatment that she and other pro-sex
feminists received during this time: “We were treated as pariahs. We were
called every name in the book, from antifeminists to Nazis. Critics of anti-
porn orthodoxy lost jobs and publishing opportunities. Groups and institu-
tions were torn apart over invitations for us to speak. Our presence or par-
ticipation in organizations and public events was relentlessly and viciously
contested. Attempts were made to expel us from feminism, which was odd,
since there were no criteria for membership. Nonetheless, various anti-
porn spokespeople acted as if they had Papal powers of excommunication
and exorcism.” See Gayle Rubin’s letter to The Feminist Porn Book’s editors,
reprinted in “The Feminist Sex Wars and the Myth of the Missing Middle,”
Susie Bright’s Journal (blog), March 13, 2013, http://susiebright.blogs.com
/susie_brights_journal_/2013/03/the-feminist-sex-wars-and-the-myth-of-the-
missing-middle.html.
19. Comella, “Looking Backwards.”
454 Lynn Comella
Bronstein argues that the organization was never the same. WAP found
itself at “permanent odds” with certain segments of the women’s move-
ment, its position weakened and its leaders exhausted. In the face of
mounting opposition, combined with the home video revolution, which
brought pornography directly into people’s homes, WAP had lost its
power to define the issue and stop the spread of pornography.
Battling Pornography is a meticulously researched book that accom-
plishes many things, not least of which is demonstrating why the his-
tory of feminist activism and social movement formation matters. Bron-
stein’s account of the rise of anti-pornography feminism illustrates that
social movements are dynamic and multivocal, and that a movement’s
end goals can, and often do, change over time. Second Wave feminism
was not a monolith, nor was it overwhelmingly sexually repressive or
anti-sex— despite frequent depictions to the contrary. Anti-pornogra-
phy feminism had its roots in a broad-based movement that was com-
mitted to challenging sexually violent imagery in mainstream media,
not sex per se. In time, the movement’s focus turned to pornography,
a shift that some members vocally opposed. Early movement activists
challenged a commercial media environment that glorified — and prof-
ited from — violence against women. They used public education as a
means of consciousness-raising and demonstrated that consumer-based
actions could effect concrete feminist change. Bronstein’s “long view”
of anti-pornography feminism reframes both the timeline and the nar-
rative of anti-pornography organizing, highlighting the movement’s
twists and turns, its diverse viewpoints, its successes and, additionally,
its limits and disappointments. It also, importantly, provides a greatly
needed historical framework for understanding the nature of contem-
porary debates about pornography.
The Resurgence of Anti-Porn Organizing

WAP’s demise did not mark the end of anti-pornography feminism. Nor
did it mean that pro-sex feminists — later rebranded as sex-positive fem-
inists — smugly claimed victory. The terrain of sexual politics — from
Fifty Shades, to sexting, to hookup culture, and more — remains volatile,
and the divisions among feminists that defined the feminist “sex wars”
of the 1980s live on, even if the organizations that once represented them
do not. Versions of anti-pornography and sex-positive feminism con-
tinue to find expression in academic and activist conferences, books and
Lynn Comella 455
anthologies, educational slide shows, documentary films, and, impor-

tantly, new generations of feminists who, like their predecessors, are
inspired to take a stand — one way or the other — in the debates around
pornography and sex work.
What does anti-pornography organizing look like at the start of
the twenty-first century? What factors are motivating a new genera-
tion of feminist activists to speak out against and combat pornography
and other forms of sexualized culture, including “lad mags” (magazines
aimed at men featuring images of scantily clad women) such as Maxim,
and lap dancing clubs? British academic and anti-pornography activist
Julia Long discusses these new iterations of feminist opposition in her
book Anti-Porn: The Resurgence of Anti-Porn Feminism, with a particular
focus on UK-based activists and organizations.
For readers already familiar with the history of feminist debates
about pornography, much of Long’s book covers well-known territory.
Long draws heavily on secondary sources to map the rise, decline, and
eventual resurgence of anti-pornography feminism, the various ideolog-
ical positions mobilized by anti-pornography and anti-censorship fem-
inists, and how concepts such as choice, consent, and coercion are used
by feminists on either side of the divide to frame their analyses of por-
nography (5).
The strength of Long’s book comes from interviews she conducted
with anti-porn activists from across the UK, as well as ethnographic
research with two UK-based anti-pornography feminist organizations,
OBJECT and Anti-Porn London, between 2007 and 2010. Long found
that the mainstreaming of pornography, which, she says, includes the
opening of Playboy stores, the availability of pole-dancing classes, and
mainstream movies such as Zac and Miri Make a Porno, was a catalyst
that politicized many of the activists she interviewed. Her interviewees
describe their frustration and, in some cases, anger and emotional dis-
tress as they navigate a culture where they feel bombarded by images —
advertisements, music videos, magazines, and movies — that objectify
and degrade women. According to one activist interviewed,
I just became aware of it on pop videos, on adverts, you start to see it

all around you, and you start to think “This is influencing my daugh-
ter and her peers all the time!” And I was just getting angrier and
angrier at the overly sexual way in which women are shown. (142)
456 Lynn Comella
Rather than accept that they were powerless to intervene, Long’s inter-
viewees were spurred into political action. They found inspiration and
ideas from older activist friends and mentors, online communities and
social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook, and conferences
and events that addressed the problem of pornography and the sexu-
alization of culture. Long credits forums such as these with establish-
ing both a political agenda and an international network of anti-porn
activists.
The Playboy Corporation, in particular, attracted the ire of
anti-pornography feminist organizations during the time Long was con-
ducting her research. The group Anti-Porn London, for example, staged
a series of protests called “Bin the Bunny” in opposition to the opening
of a Playboy store in one of London’s most popular shopping districts,
Oxford Street. The campaign was designed to educate the public about
the nature of the company, including its efforts to target young girls as
potential customers for its bunny embossed goods (161). The group held
demonstrations that involved costumes and placards, and they created
leaflets, fliers, and T-shirts. They also created a seven-minute campaign
video called “Bin the Bunny — A Trilogy.” The video follows a life-size
bunny through the streets of London as it attempts to raise awareness
about the company. Playboy is more than just harmless fun, the film
argues, it’s a global empire that objectifies and degrades women and uses
merchandise, such as pencil cases and T-shirts, to groom young girls
to be consumers of a global porn brand. “Don’t buy it,” the campaign
implores. In another segment, the bunny chases a Hugh Hefner looka-
like through the side streets of London before the two duke it out, the
anti-porn bunny against the titan of porn. The video ends with the mes-
sage, “Don’t accept Playboy’s lies about who you are and what your pur-
pose is in life. Bin the Bunny.” 20
Another campaign against the company — “Eff Off Hef!”— was
directed at the reopening of the Playboy Club in London thirty years
after it originally closed. This action was organized by UK Feminista
and OBJECT and, according to Long, drew on the resources and knowl-
edge that activists had gained during the “Bin the Bunny” campaign.
20. “Bin the Bunny — A Trilogy” is available on YouTube at https://www.you-

tube.com/watch?v=-icpycRhROs.
Lynn Comella 457
About two hundred demonstrators attended the protest, chanting and

singing so loudly that, “Hefner was compelled sheepishly to enter the
club via the back entrance rather than the red carpet” (167). The “Eff Off
Hef!” protests gained nationwide and global media attention and show-
cased a movement that was “increasingly emboldened, confident, and
vocal” (167).
Long reports that by the time Anti-Porn was published the group
Anti-Porn London was no longer involved in active campaigning and
now exists primarily as an online resource; and OBJECT has moved on
to other projects. These changes are notable in that they point to the
short life of many activist organizations due, at least in part, to limited
resources and high rates of burnout. This leaves Stop Porn Culture! as
one of the few surviving examples of current anti-pornography orga-
nizing. Stop Porn Culture! was founded in Boston in 2007 by longtime
anti-pornography activist Gail Dines and several colleagues. According
to its mission statement, the group is “dedicated to challenging the por-
nography industry and an increasingly pornographic pop culture … we
affirm sexuality that is rooted in equality and free of exploitation, coer-
cion, and violence.” 21 Stop Porn Culture! has organized several confer-
ences, produced two anti-porn slide shows, which are available for free
on its website, and built a coalition among anti-porn activists in Austra-
lia, Norway, and the United Kingdom (156). Stop Porn Culture! not only
takes aim at the pornography industry, but “porn culture” more gen-
erally, which includes combatting the spread of pornographic imagery
in mainstream culture. While the anti-pornography position might not
hold the influence it once did — a reality that some of the movement’s
leaders readily acknowledge — anti-pornography feminists, as Long’s
book demonstrates, are committed to ensuring that their viewpoints
are represented in public protests and conversations about sexual vio-
lence, female objectification, and media effects.22 In op-ed articles and
21. Gail Dines, “Stop Porn Culture!,” in Big Porn, Inc.: Exposing the Harms of the
Global Pornography Industry,” eds. Melinda Tankard Reist and Abigail Bray
(North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press, 2011), 266–67.
22. Gail Dines was recently quoted as stating, “I remember when you could
count on most feminists to be anti-porn … the majority of women’s studies
books on porn [are now] sympathetic.” See Josh Israel, “This Is the Way the
War on Pornography Ends,” Think Progress, October 8, 2014, http://think-
progress.org/justice/2014/10/08/3577238/failed-war-on-pornography-2.
458 Lynn Comella
media interviews, their message is clear: The world would be “a better

place without porn.” 23
My main critique of Long’s book is a methodological one. Long
positions herself as an “insider,” as someone who is actively engaged in
anti-pornography activism and organizing. There is nothing inherently
wrong or problematic about her insider status; indeed, ethnographers
have long negotiated the boundaries of insider/outsider and participant/
observer in their research encounters and, subsequently, their ethno-
graphic accounts. The methodological issues arise when Long uses her
insider status as a justification for sidestepping responsibility toward
generating an objective account of feminist perspectives on pornogra-
phy, citing feminist critiques of objectivity as a rationale. According to
Long, “Those seeking a dispassionate, neutral account … will be disap-
pointed; then again, it is unlikely that the cover of this book would have
attracted such a reader” (8). Such a statement is surprising to read in a
research account, because, among other things, it forecloses the possi-
bility of a readership not already aligned with Long’s ideological posi-
tion. However, if one is looking for data to help understand the motiva-
tion and mindset of a new generation of anti-porn activists in the United
Kingdom and the continuities between organizing efforts of the 1970s
and today, Long’s book is one place to look.
$pread: Sex Worker Activism and Media Production

Organizing around the sex industry is by no means restricted to anti-por-
nography activists. Over the past decade, there has been a visible uptick
in sex worker-led activism, from labor organizing and healthcare ser-
vices to policy work and media advocacy that includes the creation of
magazines, blogs, podcasts, and online forums by and for sex workers.24
A great deal of this work (although certainly not all of it) involves
23. Julie Bindel, “Without Porn the World Would Be a Better Place,” Guardian,
October 24, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct
/24/pornography-world-anti-porn-feminist-censorship-misogyny.
24. The term “sex work” is an umbrella term that includes “anyone who
exchanges money, goods, or services for their erotic or sexual labor.” This
includes porn performers, fetish workers, phone sex operators, prostitutes,
exotic dancers and others. See Rachel Aimee, Eliyanna Kaiser, and Audacia
Ray, eds., $pread: The Best of the Magazine That Illuminated the Sex Industry
and Started a Media Revolution, (New York: Feminist Press, 2015), 11–12.
Lynn Comella 459
navigating the legacies of the feminist sex wars, particularly the rhetoric
of “exploitation” versus “empowerment.”
The anthology $pread: The Best of the Magazine That Illuminated
the Sex Industry and Started a Media Revolution is an example of sex
workers taking control of the means of cultural production and, in doing
so, telling their own stories. The anthology is a collection of writing from
$pread magazine’s five-year run, which began in 2005 and ended in 2010.
The idea to start a magazine by and for sex workers grew out of frustra-
tion on the part of $pread’s founders with how the mainstream media
portrayed sex workers as either helpless victims or empowered escorts
with unfettered agency, a framing that ultimately reduced the complex-
ities of sex workers’ lives and experiences into easy-to-digest narratives.
“We recognized the need for a space where sex workers could write about
their experiences in an accessible format— something lightweight and
fun to read, that could easily be distributed among sex workers from a
wide range of backgrounds,” the book’s editors write (17).
The story of $pread magazine is a lesson in DIY cultural produc-
tion and community building. There were no startup funds or operating
budget, no money for paid staff positions and certainly no fancy head-
quarters. As submissions rolled in, the group threw fundraising parties
and events, turning to their friends in New York City’s burlesque and
go-go scenes to generate the money they needed to print the first issue.
Over time, the magazine developed a more polished look and added
regular features, such as “Positions,” a point-counterpoint column in
which two sex workers would debate a question, and “Indecent Propos-
als,” a section in which sex workers would describe their weirdest client
requests. The editorial staff worked hard to be as inclusive as possible
of all sex workers — an objective that was easier said than done, espe-
cially for a publication that could not afford to pay its contributors. But
this did not stop them from trying. They reached out to low-income sex
workers, queer sex workers, and people of color and encouraged them
to add their voices to the conversation: “We spent years both reaching
for and failing at this goal, but the reaching made us a better publica-
tion” (23).
The anthology features articles that address workplace and labor
issues, relationships and family, violence and resistance, media and cul-
ture, and, perhaps not surprisingly, clients. The pieces are short and
accessible, ranging from several hundred words to several thousand.
460 Lynn Comella
There are essays about the experiences of black women in pornography,

the politics of sex tourism, and fighting off a rampaging client; inter-
views with sex workers, service providers, and clients; and art, illus-
trations, and photographs, including a photo essay depicting scenes of
everyday life in a Nevada brothel. The editorial position of the magazine
was one of “no position” in an effort to create space for a range of view-
points and opinions, an approach that is evident throughout the book.
Many of the pieces in the anthology are deeply theoretical with-
out invoking the often-obtuse language of theory. In the essay “Strip-
ping While Brown,” Mona Salim talks about stripping as a form of “race
work.” “A gentlemen’s club is not just gendered,” she writes, “it’s deeply
racialized. And classed. Race is an essential dimension of how the strip
club is experienced by dancers and customers” (59). Salim shares anec-
dotes from the club — conversations with fellow dancers, management,
and clients — that underscore the reality that what she is selling is more
than just lap dances; she is selling ideas about racial fetishes and fanta-
sies that either support or challenge notions about who she, as a South
Asian woman, is expected to be. Race is performed through a dancer’s
attire, music, and style of dancing. Salim might play any number of roles
depending on a customer’s racial fantasy: a Muslim woman rebelling
against sexual repression, a virginal girl with Indian values, or an edu-
cated woman with exhibitionist tendencies. “In the spaces of commer-
cial intimacy, it is never just a body that is bought or sold,” she writes (65).
The essays in the collection also vary in their orientation toward sex
work. In “Hell’s Kitchen: Growing up Loving a Working Mother,” Syd V.
writes about growing up with a single mother who worked as a stripper
and a professional dominatrix and who, for a time, ran an escort service
out of their apartment. “I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about the
memories and experiences I had growing up,” she writes (156). When she
was younger, Syd had created a fantasy world about her mother dancing
in clubs; but as she got older, she grew to resent what her mother did for
work. When friends at school asked what her what her mother did, she
would lie. She would stay home from school on Take Your Daughter to
Work Day to give the impression that she, too, had gone to work with her
mother. The resentment only mounted in her teens. It took going away
to college and taking classes in sociology and gender and sexuality stud-
ies for her to realize that she did not have to be ashamed of her moth-
er’s work. And yet, at the same time, Syd acknowledges that her feelings
Lynn Comella 461
about sex work are complex. She thinks about the women who do not
blog about their experiences, who did not get to go to college, and who
do not feel empowered as sex workers. What about the women like her
mother who did sex work to survive and pay the bills, but who longed to
be doing something else?
The $pread anthology also challenges myths and complicates ste-
reotypes about sex workers, including ideas about migrant labor and sex
trafficking. In “Bodies Across Borders: Experiences of Trafficking and
Migration,” authors Melissa Ditmore and Juhu Thukral dissect the dom-
inant narratives regarding sex trafficking that are driving US anti-traf-
ficking policy. All trafficked persons are not sex workers, they argue, and
all migrant sex workers are not trafficked — contrary to mainstream
media reports. The majority of trafficking cases in the United States do not
involve sex work; and even the US Government Accountability Office
concedes that the accuracy of claims regarding how many people are
trafficked into any kind of work, including sex work, are dubious because
of methodological weaknesses, flawed evidence, and ideological biases
that disregard standards of objectivity for social science research (256).
So what do we know about migrant sex workers? Ditmore and
Thukral discuss the findings of the 2005 report Behind Closed Doors,
which was released by the Sex Workers Project. The report is based on
interviews with fifty-two sex workers in New York City who worked in
a variety of settings, including bars, hotels, nightclubs, and dungeons,
as well as through the Internet. Of these fifty-two sex-workers, twen-
ty-one were migrants; of the twenty-one migrant sex workers, four
had been trafficked into sex work, meaning that they had been coerced.
The reasons interviewees offered for coming to the United States were
varied: some came for a new life, others to chase the “American Dream.”
Transgender women and gay men reported that they often faced dis-
crimination back home. Money was generally the main reason given
for why people became involved in sex work; and for those who did
not have lawful immigration status or proper documentation, sex work
allowed them to work independently out of their apartments without
an employer. While the sex workers who were not in abusive situa-
tions were concerned about violence from customers, the four trafficked
women reported being more concerned with threats and violence from
their traffickers, who sometimes beat and raped them and withheld their
earnings. Parsing out the distinctions between migration and trafficking
462 Lynn Comella
matter if we want to ensure that policies aimed at eliminating traffick-

ing do not undermine the security of sex workers around the world, the
majority of whom are not trafficked (256).
The $pread anthology is an important artifact of the sex worker
rights movement. The collection advances the accounts of those work-
ing in the sex industry and brings to the foreground voices and perspec-
tives that are often ignored or disregarded in feminist debates about por-
nography and sex work. In doing so, it also offers important lessons for
why feminism, as a social justice movement, needs to be more inclu-
sive of sex workers and their experiences and, at the same time, move
beyond discussions that reduce sex work to the default categories of
either “exploitation” or “empowerment.”
Conclusion
Feminist activists in the 1970s recognized the power of mass media to
produce certain “truths” about women and men, sex and power, aggres-
sion and passivity. They made media reform part of their activist agen-
das and encouraged corporations and consumers to think critically
about media messages and their effects on individuals and society. These
efforts continue today in the form of both anti-pornography and sex-pos-
itive organizing, including sex worker rights activism and media produc-
tion. While these movements differ dramatically in terms of their focus,
strategies, and goals, they each remind us, in their own ways, that media
messages matter and that the stories they produce can be reworked to
communicate alternative sexual possibilities and political visions of the
world. As Bronstein notes — and I agree — this, perhaps more than any-
thing, is one of the most significant legacies of the feminist sex wars.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Shira Tarrant and Alecsandria Cook for their
helpful feedback and comments on earlier drafts of this essay.

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Review: Revisiting the Feminist Sex Wars

Author(s): Lynn Comella

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Revisiting the Feminist Sex Wars

In 2012 British author E.L. James’s romantic trilogy Fifty Shades

Feminist Studies 41, no. 2. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 437

Books Discussed in This Essay

Anti-Porn: The Resurgence of Anti-Pornography Feminism.

$pread: The Best of the Magazine That Illuminated

3. For a discussion of the pornification of culture, see Julia Long, Anti-Porn:

overt sexual sadism masquerades as adoration and love.” 5 Others, how-

spring 2013, Routledge announced it would launch the first academic

I review Julia Long’s book, Anti-Porn: The Resurgence of Anti-Pornogra-

Battling Pornography: The Emergence of a Movement

mainstream media, to a crusade against pornography and other forms of

Feminist Media Reform:

tactics, Bronstein notes, were never controversial among feminists. The

The mounting conflicts within the women’s movement over por-

The Resurgence of Anti-Porn Organizing

anthologies, educational slide shows, documentary films, and, impor-

I just became aware of it on pop videos, on adverts, you start to see it

20. “Bin the Bunny — A Trilogy” is available on YouTube at https://www.you-

About two hundred demonstrators attended the protest, chanting and

media interviews, their message is clear: The world would be “a better

$pread: Sex Worker Activism and Media Production

There are essays about the experiences of black women in pornography,

matter if we want to ensure that policies aimed at eliminating traffick-

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Feminist Studies 41, no. 2. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 437