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Dr. Wangari Maathai Plants a Forest

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Rebel Girls

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“For some, measuring porn’s real-world effects boils down to one extreme and ultimately misleading question: “Does it lead to rape?” What is overlooked here is the more subtle question of how porn shapes the culture and the men who use it. No anti-porn feminist I know has suggested that there is one image, or even a few, that could lead a nonrapist to rape; the argument, rather, is that taken together, pornographic images create a world that is at best inhospitable to women, and at worst dangerous to their physical and emotional well-being. In an unfair and inaccurate article that is emblematic of how anti-porn feminist work is misrepresented, Daniel Bernardi claims that Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon believed that “watching pornography leads men to rape women.”³ Neither Dworkin nor MacKinnon, pioneers in developing a radical feminist critique of pornography, saw porn in such simplistic terms. Rather, both argued that porn has a complicated and multilayered effect on male sexuality, and that rape, rather than simply being caused by porn, is a cultural practice that has been woven into the fabric of a male-dominated society. Pornography, they argued, is one important agent of such a society since it so perfectly encodes woman-hating ideology, but to see it as simplistically and unquestionably leading to rape is to ignore how porn operates within the wider context of a society that is brimming with sexist imagery and ideology.”

“To be “unmanly” is, of course, within our gender binary system, to be feminine, and here lies the essence of gender socialization for males: they need, at all times, to distance themselves as much as possible from anything constructed by the culture as feminine. The feminine hence becomes feared—and that which we fear, we also learn to despise.”

“High fashion turns women into works of art, and women have always been willing to sacrifice freedom for the appearance of transcendence. What power is to a man, illusion is to a women. You can count on this: in any society, in any period, whatever style emerges to distinguish the elite from ordinary women will physically constrict.”

“In no society have women constricted men within the domestic compound or regularly battered or raped men. In no known culture, no matter how high a woman's status, have women as a caste locked up husbands, limited their bodily freedom, or denied them a voice in group decision. Men in matrilinies do not suffer as women do in patrilinies. Matrilineality is rooted in the bond between mother and child; patrilineality is rooted in dubious assertions of ownership of women and children.”

“Female maturity is evident in the onset of menstruation; nothing signals male maturity. When a boy becomes capable of erection, he may or may not yet be able to father a child. The ambiguity of male maturity, together with the lack of a given role that it seems to indicate, is precisely the problem male solidarity is intended to counter.”