We refine a line of feminist criticism of pornography that focuses on pornographic works' pernicious effects. A.W. Eaton argues that inegalitarian pornography should be criticized because it is responsible for its consumers’ adoption of inegalitarian attitudes toward sex in the same way that other fictions are responsible for changes in their consumers’ attitudes. We argue that her argument can be improved with the recognition that different fictions can have different modes of persuasion. This is true of film and television: a (...) satirical movie such as Dr. Strangelove does not morally educate in the same way as a realistic series such as The Wire. We argue that this is also true of pornography: inegalitarian depictions of sex are not invariably responsible for consumers' adoption of inegalitarian attitudes toward sex in reality. Given that pornographic works of different genres may harm in different ways, different feminist criticisms are appropriate for different genres of pornography. (shrink)

Many pornographic works seem to count as works of fiction. This apparent fact has been thought to have important implications for ongoing controversies about whether some pornography carries problematic messages and so influences the attitudes (and perhaps even the behaviour) of its audience. In this paper, I explore the claim that pornographic works are fictional and the significance that this claim has for these issues, with a particular focus on pornographic films. Two related morals will emerge. First, we need to (...) pay attention not merely to whether entire pornographic works should be classified as fictional, but to the way that pornographic fictions (like fictional works more generally) have both fictional and non-fictional elements. Second, we have to understand the ways that pornographic works can blur the lines between fiction and non-fiction, misleading their audiences into taking their fictional elements to be revealing truths about non-fictional reality. In the case of pornographic films, we will examine how a pornographic fiction can be portrayed by people having sex on camera, and the ways in which this portrayal can mislead viewers about sex in the non-fictional world. (shrink)