Comments Elsewhere

Is it that Andrea Dworkin (who was openly lesbian, for what that’s worth) was writing from a heteronormative viewpoint, or just that she can’t touch on every kind of pornography that there is every time she gives a talk?

I mean, whether one agrees or disagrees with her take on it, she does talk about lesbian pornography and pornography aimed at women and gay pornography elsewhere in her books and articles. She mostly focuses on heterosexual pornography aimed at heterosexual men, yes, but why shouldn’t she? Isn’t that what the overwhelming majority of pornography, as an industry and a cultural institution, consists of? As a political critic of pornography it seems to make sense to direct the majority of your analytical and polemical energy at what is overwhelmingly most common, and most definitive of the institution…