Wendy McElroy: 'A Feminist Defense of Pornography'

Source:Free Inquiry- from an article that Canadian author Wendy McElroy wrote about pornography.

"Pornography benefits women, both personally and politically." This sentence opens my book XXX: A

Woman's Right to Pornography, and it constitutes a more extreme defense of pornography than most

feminists are comfortable with. I arrived at this position after years of interviewing hundreds of sex

workers." 

From Wendy McElroy

I take issues like pornography, alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, prostitution, gambling, video games, music, movies, abortion (go down the line) as personal choice issues in how I decide whether they should be legal or not. And if they are legal or illegal and under what conditions. 

When it comes to personal choice issue where there aren't multiple victims involved, I ask this basic simple question: would society be better off if we were freer or less freer and how we decide these issues? Or should government step in and decide for the people themselves whether they can do these things or not? That would be the less freer approach. And once they are given that power, they'll probably say no. Or should we allow free people to make these decisions for themselves? That would be the free approach and if we go in that direction. 

Wendy McElroy takes it a step further and says that pornography should not only be legal, but endorses it and perhaps recommends that women (at least) should not only be viewing pornography, but perhaps personally involved in it. I don't take that approach, but instead say that free adults should make these decisions for themselves and then be personally accountable for their own personal choices. 

People who are called radical feminists or militant feminists, if there's one thing that they have in common with the Christian-Right is the belief in big government even as it relates to personal freedom and say that pornography is not only bad, but it should be illegal, because they believe that it degrades women. And in a free society like America, we all get to make these decisions for ourselves and believe what we believe.