ABSTRACT

In recent years, the issue of pornography has engendered an intense debate in the feminist community. Dismissed by some as diversionary, it is a debate whose stakes, we feel, are high. Will feminism, having achieved some gains, capitulate to conservative forces, or will it continue to take a stand for the liberation of women in all domains, including the difficult and contradictory domain of sexual expression? We are still asking, in the mid-eighties, what do women want, and the answer is that women have multiple desires and goals. We want to be valued equally with men as earners, but we don’t want to contribute to the pollution of the planet and the exploitation of other human beings. We want to be safe from attack and abuse, in our private lives as well as in the public sphere, but we don’t want that safety at the cost of challenge, risk, exploration and pleasure. Safety and adventure represent conflicting demands: the relationship between the two, and how to negotiate it, is a key issue in the current debate.