Essay on Pornography and Feminist Fight for Women’s Rights

Pornography and Feminist Fight for Women’s Rights There was a complaint in 1992 about having The Nude Maja in a classroom. The complaint came from a feminist English professor who stated that the painting made her students, as well as herself, uncomfortable. Another incident occurred at the University of Arizona when a female student’s photographic artwork consisting of self portraits in her underwear was physically attacked by feminists. There was also an occurrence at University of Michigan when some of their law school feminists organized a conference â€Å"Prostitution: From Academia to Activism†. This group removed a feminist-curated art exhibition held in conjunction with the conference. They felt that videos showing†¦show more content†¦For decades the Supreme Court has tried to craft a definition of obscenity that the lower courts can apply with some fairness and consistency. Former Justice Potter Stewart summed up the dilemma best with the now famous statement: â€Å"I shall not today attempt f urther to define (obscenity); and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it†(Faigley Selzer, 540). I think that the â€Å"offense† Strossen is trying to describe, or rather not describe is act of making love. Making love is a very sensual and unidentified beautiful feeling, but what is portrayed in porn is nothing beautiful, and I believe it can very easily be defined. It is the misuse of women’s sexuality. She also states that the censorious feminists are not as modest as Justice Stewart. They have already created an elaborate definition of pornography that encompasses more material than the currently recognized law of obscenity. In their model law pornography is â€Å"the sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures and /or words.† This model law lists eight different criteria that attempt to illustrate their concept of â€Å"subordination,† such as depictions in which â€Å"women are presented in scenarios of degradation, humiliation, injury, torture†¦in a context that makes these conditions sexual†(Faigley Show MoreRelatedFeminist Theory1248 Words   |  5 PagesFeminism refers to political, cultural, and economic movements aimed at establishing greater rights, legal protection for women, and or womens liberation. It includes some of the sociological theories and philosophies concerned with issues of gender difference. Nancy Cott defines feminism as the belief in the importance of gender equality, invalidating the idea of gender hierarchy as a socially constructed concept. 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