Whip me, beat me and while you're at it cancel my N.O.W. membership - feminists war against each other over pornography

Washington Monthly, June, 1987 by Kathleen Currie, Art Levine

Politically correct erotica

The zealotry of both the anti-porners and thepro-sexers have made their clashes particularly bruising. At a 1982 Barnard College conference, "The Scholar and the Feminist: Towards a Politic of Sexuality,' the "sexual outlaws,' including advocates of sadomasochism and more moderate pro-sexers, tried to rally their troops. Conference workshops focused on such topics as "butchfemme' lesbianism, "politically correct' sex, and "concepts for a radical politic of sex,' the last offered by a lesbian masochist anthropologist. Two hundred women showed up at an off-campus speak-out on "politically incorrect' sex hosted by the Lesbian Sex Mafia, a support group for lesbians with unusual sexual tastes. Brandishing the devices and symbols of lesbian S&M--from cut-out leather pants to nipple clamps to studded neck and wrist straps--members of the crowd attacked the anti-porners who viewed them as traitors to feminism for aping the worst aspects of patriarchal sexuality. "We're feminist because we're tired of having men tell us how we should feel and be sexual,' said one woman, as the defiantly waved a strap-on dildo. "Now women are telling us. What's the difference?'

These sorts of activities brought out the antipornvigilantes. They protested to the Barnard administration and leafletted on campus, attacking the conference organizers and speakers for promoting sadomasochism, unorthodox lesbian sex roles, sexual abuse of children, and pornography. "They're advocating the same kind of patriarchal sexuality that flourishes in our culture's mainstream, that is channeled into crimes of sexual violence against women, and that is institutionalized in pornography,' their leaflet said. It went on to give intimate details of the foundness of some of the speakers and their groups for acts ranging from flagellation to dressing up as Nazis during sex.

Not surprisingly, the leaflet infuriated thebackers of the conference. They charged it distorted their political views, smeared individuals' personal lives, and smacked of fifties-style red-baiting. They responded with their own petition: "Feminist discussion about sexuality cannot be carried on if one segment of the feminist movement uses McCarthyite tactics to silence other voices.'

The confrontations elsewhere have been justas vituperative. In a fight over an anti-porn referendum in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1985, Catherine MacKinnon lumped her pro-sex opponents in with "pimps and pornographers,' calling them "house niggers who sided with the masters.' (The referendum lost, but garnered 42 percent of the vote.) Andrea Dworkin, co-author of the Indianapolis ordinance, repeated her charge of collaboration. She says the pro-sexers are being used by men who own publications like The Village Voice. Their goal, she says, is to return to the halcyon days of the sixties when "women were available to men at all times for anything.' Her feminist credentials challenged, Ellen Willis, a Voice writer, furiously demanded of such critics: "who are you to decide I don't belong in a movement I've helped create?'