Quotessence
Home / Authors / Wendy McElroy
Wendy McElroy

Wendy McElroy Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllFeminismLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismPornographyPro PornWomens RightsSex Positive FeminismSexualityPro PornographyPornFemale SexualitySex PositiveFeminisimLibertarianismRadical FeminismCivil RightsFeminist PornFreedomSexSexual Objectification

Famous Wendy McElroy Quotes

“The current backlash of censorship is an alliance between the Moral Majority (the Right) and the politically correct (the Left). This alliance is threatening the freedom of both women and sexual expression. The Right defines the explicit depiction of sex as evil; the Left defines it as violence against women. The result is the same.”

FeminismSexualityWomens RightsPornographyLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismPro PornPolitical Polarization
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“It is charged that pornography objectifies women: It converts them into sexual objects. Again, what does this mean? If taken literally, it means nothing at all because objects don't have sexuality; only human beings do. But the charge that pornography portrays women as "sexual beings" would not inspire rage and, so, it has no place in the anti-porn rhetoric.”

FeminismSexualityPornographyPornFemale SexualityLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismPro PornSex Positive
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“To get upset by an image that focuses on the human body is merely to demonstrate a bad attitude toward what is physical. If I concentrated on a woman's sense of humor to the exclusion of her other characteristics, would this be degrading? Why is it degrading to focus on her sexuality? Underlying this attitude is the view that sex must be somehow ennobled to be proper.”

FeminismSexualityPornographyLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismSex Positive FeminismPro PornSexual Objectification
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“Pornography, it is said, presents false images about women. Pornography is a lie, because it presents women as large-breasted nymphomanics. If this accusation is true, the remedy is not to ban pornography, but to recruit a wider variety of women into the industry.”

FeminismSexualityPornographyLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismSex Positive FeminismPro PornSexual ObjectificationSexuality And Feminism
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“But even generously granting the assumption that a correlation does exist between pornography and violence, what would such a correlation tell us? It would certainly not indicate a cause-and-effect relationship. It is a fallacy to assume that if A can be correlated with B, then A causes B. Such a correlation may indicate nothing more than that both are caused by another factor, C. For example, there is a high correlation between the number of doctors in a city and the number of alcoholics there. One doesn't cause the other; both statistics are proportional to the size of the city's population.”

FeminismSexualityPornographyViolence Against WomenLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismSex Positive FeminismPro PornCorrelation And Causation
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“Although anti-porn feminists cry out against viewing pornography, they must admit that there is at least one group of people who can survive such exposure without harm-namely, themselves. In their zeal, radical feminists view more pornography than the general population. Moreover, they dwell upon the small percentage of pornography that depicts violence. Either they are wonder women or they are human beings who have a normal response to brutal pornography: They are repelled by it.”

FeminismSexualityWomens RightsPornographyLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismSex Positive FeminismPro Porn
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“The right to choose hinges on the right to make a "wrong" choice. Freedom of religion entails the right to be an atheist. Freedom of speech involves the right to be silent. Freedom of choice requires the right to make bad choices-that is, a decision society considers to be wrong. After all, society is not going to stop a woman from doing what it wants her to do. But radical feminists are going one step farther than simply denying that women have the right to make wrong choices; they deny that women have the ability to choose.”

FeminismSexualityWomens RightsPornographyLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismSex Positive FeminismPro Porn
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“According to radical feminists, even if a woman in pornography signed a contract with full knowledge, she can sue on the grounds of coercion. What legal implications does this have for a woman's right to contract? What legal weight will future negotiators give to a woman's signature? Women's contracts will be legally unenforceable; their signature will become a legal triviality.”

FeminismCivil RightsWomens RightsPornographyLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismSex Positive FeminismPro Porn
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“For centuries, women have struggled against tremendous odds to have their contracts taken seriously. At great personal expense, they stood up and demanded the right to own land, to control their own wages, to retain custody of their children-in other words, to become legally responsible for themselves and for their property. A woman's consent must never again become legally irrelevant.”

FeminismHuman RightsCivil RightsWomens RightsFreedom Of ChoiceLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismSex Positive Feminism
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“Anti-porn feminists want us to accept their sexual preferences as gospel. Presumably, their theories are based on solid fact and deep insight. Although they have been born and raised in the same patriarchal culture that has warped other women, radical feminists have somehow escaped unscathed. Just as they have escaped being damaged by the pornography they view. Somehow these women have scaled the pinnacle, from which they now look down and make pronouncements on the lifestyle of those beneath them. Perhaps radical feminists are superwomen. Perhaps they are merely fanatics unwilling to respect any position other than their own. If women's choices are to be trashed, why should radical feminists fare better than other women? Are they the elite? If the choices of pornographic models are not to be taken seriously, radical feminists cannot claim respect for their choices either. If culture negates the free will of women, anti-porn feminists are in the same boat as the rest of us.”

FeminismWomens RightsRadical FeminismLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismSex Positive FeminismInfightingAnti Radical Feminism
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“Contracts are records of voluntary exchanges. Labor contracts are voluntary exchanges of work for wages. Most people enter labor contracts-that is, get a job-because they need money. But, to radical feminists, this is "economic coercion." Because they believe the free market forces people to take jobs, they view it as a form of violence.”

FeminismWomens RightsLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismSex Positive Feminism
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“Refusing to acknowledge the contracts of women in pornography places them in the same legal category as children or mental incompetents. In Indianapolis, the anti-pornography ordinance argued that women, like children, needed special protection under the law: "Children are incapable of consenting to engage in pornographic conduct.... By the same token, the physical and psychological well-being of women ought to be afforded comparable protection, for the coercive environment ... vitiates any notion that they consent or `choose' to perform in pornography." [2] This attitude of "I'm a helpless victim" could easily backfire on women who may be required to prove they are able to manage their own finances, or to handle custody of their own children. Moreover, the idea of men "emotionally or verbally coercing" women re-enforces the concept of men as intellectually and psychologically stronger than women. It is the old "Man of Steel/ Woman of Kleenex" myth.”

FeminismLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismPro PornPro Pornography
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“To blame words or images for the actions of people is simplistic. It retards any real examination into what motivates violent crimes, such as rape. Radical feminists are handing a "pornography made me do it" excuse to rapists. Nothing should be allowed to mitigate the personal responsibility of every man who physically abuses a woman.”

FeminismViolence Against WomenIndividualist FeminismSex Positive FeminismPro PornPro Pornography
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“Historically, feminism and pornography have been fellow travelers on the rocky road of unorthodoxy. This partnership was natural, perhaps inevitable. After all, both feminism and pornography flout the conventional notion that sex is necessarily connected to marriage or procreation. Both view women as sexual beings who should pursue their sexuality for pleasure and self-fulfillment.”

FeminismSexualityWomens RightsPornographyLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismPro Porn
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“In the wake of two other Contagious Disease Acts (1866, 1868), prostitution became virtually a state-run industry. The government issued cards to women who were medically checked our and "registered." Then, they were allowed to work the streets. With unlimited powers of arrest, plainclothes policemen picked up women at random. Often, the police proceeded on the basis of gossip or reports from people who had grudges. Women who refused to be surgically examined could be detained at the magistrate's discretion and imprisoned at hard labor.”

FeminismSexualityWomens RightsPornographyLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismPro Porn
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“Freelovers vehemently denied the state had any right to intervene in the sexual arrangements of consenting adults. They focused on empowering the weakest and most abused partner in sex: the woman. There were two keys to securing sexual rights for women. The first was to reform the marriage laws, which gave husbands almost absolute authority over their wives. Marriage-free-lovers insisted-should be a voluntary and equal association between two people who shared a spiritual affinity.”

FeminismSexualityWomens RightsPornographyFree LoveLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismPro Porn
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“There were two keys to securing sexual rights for women. The first was to reform the marriage laws, which gave husbands almost absolute authority over their wives. Marriage-free-lovers insisted-should be a voluntary and equal association between two people who shared a spiritual affinity.”

FeminismSexualityWomens RightsBirth ControlFree LoveLibertarian FeminismIndividualist Feminism
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“Sexual freedom-especially pornography, which is sexual free speech-is an integral part of the battle for women's freedom. The censoring of sexual words and images does not simply lead to the suppression of women's sexual rights. It is an attempt to control women themselves. For women's rights have traditionally been phrased in terms of their sexuality: marriage, abortion, and birth control. To surrender one iota of women's control over their own sexual expression is to deny that it is their sexuality in the first place.”

FeminismSexualityPornographyLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismPro PornPro Pornography
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“People in the industry kept telling me intimate and unsolicited details about their sex lives. I realized that pornography was as much an attitude or lifestyle as it was a business. The line between private and public was sometimes blurred to the point of being erased.”

LibertarianismPornographyPornFemale SexualityIndividualist FeminismPro PornographyFeminisimFeminist PornPorn IndustryLibertarian Femainism
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“Let's examine the second accusation first: the idea that pornography is degrading to women. Degrading is a subjective term. Personally, I find detergent commercials in which women become orgasmic over soapsuds to be tremendously degrading to women. I find movies in which prostitutes are treated like ignorant drug addicts to be slander against women. Every woman has the right-the need!-to define degradation for herself.”

SexualityWomens RightsPornographyProstitutionFemale EmpowermentPornFemale SexualityLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismPro Porn
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“For over a decade, I have defended the right of women to consume pornography and to be involved in its production. In 1984, when the Los Angeles City Council first debated whether or not to pass an anti-pornography ordinance, I was one of two people -and the only woman-who stood up and went on record against the measure. I argued that the right to work in pornography was a direct extension of the principle "A woman's body, a woman's right.”

LibertarianismWomen S RightsPornographyPornFemale SexualityLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismPro PornographyFeminisimFeminist Porn
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“As recently as the fifties, respectable women were given the sexual choice of marriage or celibacy. Anything else meant ostracism. Women who demanded pleasure in sex were condemned as "nymphomaniacs," much as they are pitied today as "victims of male culture" by anti-porn feminists.”

Female SexualityLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismPro PornographySex PositiveSexual RepressionNymphomaniac
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“The majority of people are not fully committed to either the right or the left. Nor either to censorship or to absolute freedom of speech. People are too caught up in the daily struggle for survival to pour a lot of energy into ideology.”

LibertarianismFreedom Of SpeechRight WingLeft WingLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismPro PornographyFeminisimCentristPolitical Polarization
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“Anti-pornography (or radical) feminists will consider me a heretic-fit only for burning. Or, to put it in more politically correct terms, I am a woman who is so psychologically damaged by patriarchy that I have fallen in love with my own oppression. My arguments will be dismissed. In other words, if I enjoy pornography, it is not because I am a unique human being with different preferences. It is because I am psychologically ill.”

LibertarianismPornographyRadical FeminismPornLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismPro PornographySex PositiveFeminisimLiberal Feminism
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“In the social turbulence following the Civil War, thousands of men and women enlisted in a purity campaign. They sought to establish a single standard of sexual morality for both sexes. This was not a drive for greater freedom; it was a puritanical campaign to narrow the choices of individuals down to socially acceptable ones.”

SexualityWomens RightsPornographyFeminism QuotesLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismPro Porn
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image

“This is the second way in which women in the industry are said to be victims of violence. They are said to be so brainwashed by white male culture that they cannot render consent. Thus, they are de facto coerced. Consider how arrogant this statement is. Although women in pornography appear to be willing, anti-porn feminists see through this charade [...] If a woman enjoys performing sex acts in front of a camera, it is not because she is a unique human being who reasons and reacts from a different background or personality. No. It is because she is psychologically damaged and no longer responsible for her actions. She must, in effect, become a political ward of radical feminists, who will make the correct choices for her.”

Radical FeminismLibertarian FeminismIndividualist FeminismPro PornPro PornographyInfightingFeminist Infighting
Book:XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
Create image