Content warning: this episode involves discussion of sexual violence and sexual assault.
Can pornography be liberating or does it just promote the hatred of women? In episode 165 of Overthink Ellie and David discuss pornography. They talk about the feminist ‘sex wars’ and the pro-porn and anti-porn views that emerged from it. They talk about how the figure of the porn star has changed in the era of OnlyFans, and how porn blends sex with visuality. How might porn endanger women as a class? Can sex in pornography be considered art? And are AI and deepfakes enhancing the harms of pornography? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts chat about Heated Rivalry and discuss the relationship between art and porn.
Works Discussed:
Laura Bates, The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny
Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women
Catharine MacKinnon, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination
Oriana Small, Girlvert: A Porno Memoir
Amia Srinivasan, The Right to Sex
Highlight: Catharine MacKinnon
Mackinnon was an anti-pornography American lawyer, feminist activist, and legal scholar who famously wrote Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination
She also was friends and worked with Andrea Dworkin
She criticized pornography through the lens of anti-discrimination law
Mackinnon argues that pornography violates the rights of women as a protected class
Based off Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, she contends that sexual harassment is to sex what separate but equal was to race
Sexual harassment in the workplace is a violation because it infringes upon women’s rights
She makes the same argument about pornography
By eroticizing the abuse, humiliation, and domination of women, pornography harms women as a class and locks them into a position of social inequality
