Before my teenage years, I never gave much thought to the ethics of porn. For me, porn was just something that existed, background noise in our culture. Sure, there had been times when I thought to myself, “Hey, this is exploitative in nature,” but it never stuck in my brain long enough to bother me.

When I reached high school, I started to see porn as something more malicious. I couldn’t understand how people found pleasure in something that I perceived to be so blatantly exploitative and degrading. I hated how the men who watched it saw the women on their screens as objects and how those same women willingly chose to participate in an industry that profits off of their subjugation. To me, porn seemed like a way to legitimize violent fantasies against women and romanticize sexual abuse while simultaneously giving men unrealistic standards about what the female body should look like.

Yet, I never truly stopped to consider what, if anything, should be done about porn’s cultural significance. You could say I, as a feminist, had a problem but lacked a solution. One thing, however, was certain — the world would be better without porn.

I turned to answers from feminist scholars of the past and was quick to learn that feminist views around porn fell into two flawed categories: the radical belief that all porn must be banned and the liberal belief that porn is emancipatory and a celebration of female sexuality. Regarding the former, anti-porn feminism arose in the 1970s, particularly out of lesbian feminist spaces. These anti-porn feminists believed that all porn fostered the systemic abuse of women and, therefore, it must be legislated.

One of the loudest voices of this anti-porn movement was Andrea Dworkin. In her book “Pornography: Men Possessing Women,” she writes: “Pornography is the essential sexuality of male power: of hate, of ownership, of hierarchy, of sadism, of dominance. The premises of pornography are controlling in every rape and every rape case, whenever a woman is battered or prostituted, in incest, including in incest that occurs before a child can even speak, and in murder…”

In other words, porn doesn’t only inspire violence, violence also inspires porn.

Then, in the 1980s and ’90s, many feminists began to shift their beliefs to “pro-sex” feminism. For these feminists, to police porn was to police a woman’s body, and to ban porn would be to infringe on a women’s right to make decisions about her own sexuality. Many pro-sex feminists advocated for the rights of sex workers, arguing that it is a legitimate form of labor and can, under some circumstances, be empowering. I like to think of this school of thought as “girl-boss” feminism emboldened by market representation.

Nevertheless, both of these beliefs are oversimplified and lack nuance. Feminists who are vehemently anti-porn struggle with the feasibility of their beliefs. After all, porn between consenting adults is technically an expression of free speech, and attempts to legislate it have historically been used as a cover to attack sexual minorities while leaving the mainstream industry of porn unscathed. For example, the 1992 Canadian Supreme Court case “R v. Butler” upheld the criminalization of certain “obscene” materials, particularly violent or degrading pornography. However, the implementation of this law specifically targeted the LGBTQ+ community. The first obscenity charge after this decision was against a Toronto bookshop for selling a lesbian magazine called “Bad Attitude,” and further charges were brought against sexually explicit queer magazines, comics and books for being obscene — which, for one, meant it contained “appreciation of the physical activity” and, for another, sexual activity did “not arise from any ongoing human relationship.”

Where anti-porn feminism fails to take into account that the livelihoods of some women depend on sex work, pro-porn feminists often overlook the industry’s relation to sex trafficking and the abuse of sex workers physically and culturally. This past January, porn star Bonnie Blue claimed to have sex with 1,057 men in just a day, something no woman’s body is built to withstand. We have to take a step back and ask ourselves a series of disturbing questions: Why would she agree to do something so violating? Who are the men participating in this? Why was she expecting consumers to watch it? What effect will treating sex as an inconsequential act have on our future generations of young people?

Now, as a junior in college, I believe I finally have a nuanced take on the ethics of porn, and it all has to do with a class I took sophomore year, “The Right to Sex in the 18th Century.” In this class, taught by Professor John Havard, I was introduced to the intellectually stimulating work of contemporary feminist philosopher Amia Srinivasan and her provocative essay, “Talking to My Students About Porn.” In this piece, she writes about how to engage her students to think critically about how porn influences desire, power and gender dynamics.

What is so unique about porn, according to Srinivasan, is that it allows for easy access to another person’s body, which causes her to ponder whether porn teaches impressionable minds that they have a right to someone else’s body, and therefore, a right to sex. In the end, she concludes that students should be taught that they have authority over what sex is and what it can be rather than rely on porn to shape their sex lives. Porn can be pleasure or representation, but it cannot be the only source of education, even for diverse sexualities, as sex is mental as well as physical. It is up to each individual to craft their own sex lives, and they can choose to make it something pleasurable, but if they have not emancipated their minds from the showmanship of porn, they may be led to disappointment.

I think a good place to start productive critical analysis around porn is with the philosophy of Srinivasan. As a pedagogical figure, she believes that if her students choose to consume it, they should be taught to critically evaluate the type of content they engage with and how it influences their desires. Instead of calling for a complete dismantling of the porn industry like anti-porn feminists, Srinivasan advocates for self-awareness and critical reflection, which I think are essential for building a society in which porn has less impact on people’s sex lives and is less tied to violence.

If we accept that porn has too great an influence on our perceptions of sex and that these perceptions are shaped by social and cultural biases, then it stands to reason that we could also shift those attitudes toward a healthier, more positive understanding of sex. I don’t believe that full-on legal censorship of violent or hardcore porn is the solution — if anything, I think this will make people want to watch it more. However, I do believe that if we shift the way we educate young people about sex and show them that it can be something more than what’s often portrayed in these materials, then the demand for problematic content could gradually decrease.

While I do not claim to have all the answers on how to make this shift happen, I believe starting an open, honest dialogue about the issue is a crucial first step. This conversation could be key to lessening the harmful and polarizing influence that porn has on people’s perceptions of sex and relationships.

Jordan Ori is a junior majoring in English and is a Pipe Dream Opinions intern. 

Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial.