Endangerment or Empowerment? Feminist Battles Over Pornography and Reproductive Justice

 [Intro music fades in, then out]

Host: My name is Dani Minidis, and welcome to Endangerment or Empowerment? Feminist Battles Over Pornography and Reproductive Justice, a podcast where I explore my own inquiries around the porn industry and its relation to reproductive justice and bodily autonomy.

“I decide what I film. I decide who sees it. And if I want to say no, I say no.”

That’s how OnlyFans creator Ari Kytsya described her work when speaking to students at the University of Washington. For her, digital sex work is not exploitation, it’s autonomy. It’s control. It’s the ability to say yes or no on her own terms.

But that vision of empowerment sits on top of fifty years of feminist conflict. In the late 1970s and 80s, some feminists argued that pornography was inherently violent, inherently degrading, and inherently incompatible with women’s safety. Others argued that women needed more sexual expression, not less, and that sexual labor could be a site of freedom.

Today, in the era after Dobbs, reproductive justice asks us a bigger question:
Who gets to control sexual representation, sexual labor, and the body itself?

Section 1 

Host: To understand the fears feminist activists had, we turn to archival materials like pamphlets from Women Against Pornography (WAP), preserved at Smith College and digitized in the Independent Voices collection.

One of the most striking pieces is a WAP pamphlet titled “Pornography: The Sexual Politics of Violence.” The document reads like both a warning and a call to action. In bold type, it claims that pornography is “the training manual for sexual violence,” arguing that the industry doesn’t just reflect misogyny but actively teaches it.

Another section insists that porn “makes violence against women seem natural,” and even “sexy,” warning that repeated exposure conditions viewers to reinterpret women’s suffering as entertainment rather than violation. The pamphlet describes the woman in pornography as “a body acted upon,” a figure whose pain becomes “a cue for male pleasure.”

It also ties pornography to broader political struggles. One page states bluntly that “pornography is one of the tools used to keep women in their place,” linking the industry to workplace harassment, domestic violence, and public safety.

Reading these documents, you can feel the u rgency: the belief that pornography wasn’t just harmful media but part of a system that threatened women’s bodily autonomy at every level.

Carolyn Bronstein writes that activists believed pornography was “a visual system that normalized the sexual subordination of women.”
Susan Brownmiller framed porn as part of a larger system of gender terror, writing that women were turned into “adult toys… dehumanized objects to be used, abused, broken, and discarded.”
And in one of the most famous statements of the movement, Robin Morgan declared:
“Pornography is the theory; rape is the practice.”

Through a reproductive justice lens, these arguments are not simply anti-sex. They are about protection from violence, coercion, and the stripping of bodily autonomy. RJ teaches us that access to safety is a reproductive right. Pornography, according to anti-porn feminists, violates that right by creating a culture where women’s bodies are depicted, and therefore treated as violable.

Section 2

Host: But feminist disagreement was fierce. In the same decades, pro-sex feminists argued the opposite: that the problem was not sex, but who controlled it.

Gayle Rubin, in Thinking Sex, insisted that sexual freedom was essential to liberation. She warned that anti-porn feminists were recreating what she called the “sex hierarchy,” where certain sexualities were labeled deviant and suppressed.

Candice Valada, working in feminist porn production, emphasized consent and pleasure, arguing that alternative porn could be a space where performers were “active subjects rather than passive objects.”

Later, the Feminist Porn Awards required that actors could revoke consent at any point, and that films had to center on performers’ pleasure. Their criteria state that the work must “demonstrate a positive and respectful treatment of performers.”

This side of the debate highlights that autonomy is not only freedom from harm, but also freedom to choose. The right to bodily autonomy includes the right to engage in sexual labor consensually and safely. It reframes sex work as potentially empowering when material conditions, safety, consent, pay, and control are equitable.  

Section 3

Host: The feminist sex wars crystallized around a core tension: should the state intervene in sexual media?

Some anti-porn activists pushed for legal restrictions, but others worried deeply about censorship. Bronstein notes that even within WAP, members feared that antiporn ordinances could “silence the very communities feminism aimed to empower,” including queer creators, sex workers, and racialized performers.

Reproductive justice reminds us that state power is often wielded against marginalized bodies. The same state that restricts abortion, removing autonomy, can also weaponize obscenity laws to police sexuality, especially for queer and sex-working communities.

So the debate wasn’t just about pornography; it was about which forms of power help, or harm, people’s control over their own bodies.

Section 4 

Host: This brings us back to Ari Kytsya. Her distinction between mainstream porn and independent digital work mirrors pro-sex feminist arguments about agency.

She explained: “In corporate porn, you don’t own your content. In independent work, I set the boundaries. If I don’t want something online, it doesn’t go online.”

She described her work as creative labor, emphasizing:
“Safety for me is control—control over my body, my time, and my audience.”

From a reproductive justice perspective, Kytsya’s experience embodies the principle that autonomy comes from the ability to make informed, uncoerced decisions about one’s body and labor. In a digital environment, control over content becomes a form of bodily sovereignty.

Section 5

Host: So, is pornography endangering or empowering? Reproductive justice pushes us to reject the false binary.

RJ teaches us that bodily autonomy requires both safety and self-determination. Porn can be a site of profound exploitation, especially when performers lack control, protection, or economic security. But porn can also be a site of autonomy and creativity, as long as people have agency, resources, and consent.

The question isn’t “Is porn feminist?”
The question is: Who has power over the body in each context?

Conclusion

Host: The history of feminist conflict over pornography reveals something bigger than sex: a struggle over control of the body. Anti-porn feminists demanded protection from violence; pro-sex feminists demanded freedom from repression. Reproductive justice insists we need both.

In the post-Dobbs landscape, when bodily autonomy is under renewed attack, examining these histories helps us understand the stakes. Pornography is not just about representation; it’s about power, safety, and the right to make choices about our own bodies.

As Ari Kytsya’s story shows, empowerment is possible, but only when the structures surrounding sexual labor enable true autonomy.

Reproductive justice makes that the measure: not whether the sex exists, but whether the power to choose does.

[Outro music fades out]

Bronstein, Carolyn. Battling Pornography: The American Feminist Anti-Pornography Movement, 1976–1986. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Potter, Claire. “Not Safe for Work: Why Feminist Pornography Matters.” Dissent Magazine, February 10, 2015. Accessed November 22, 2025. https://dissentmagazine.org/article/not-safe-for-work-feminist-pornography-matters-sex-wars/.

YouTube. “9p5wGmmcDYc.” Posted [date unavailable]. Accessed November 22, 2025. https://youtu.be/9p5wGmmcDYc?si=y5lWkp8O1_wP8SGh.

Yahoo News. “University of Washington Professor Defends Inviting Porn Star to Class.” Published April 11, 2024. Accessed November 22, 2025. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/university-washington-professor-defends-inviting-165804644.html.

“Women Against Pornography Pamphlet.” Independent Voices, via JSTOR. Accessed November 19, 2025. https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28046786.

“Research Guides: [History 1900/HLS 2010] Feminisms and Pornography: Published Materials and Course Reserves.” Published Materials and Course Reserves – [History 1900/HLS 2010] Feminisms and Pornography – Research Guides at Harvard Library. Accessed November 19, 2025. https://guides.library.harvard.edu/c.php?g=707473&p=5025271.

Kristen Reilly, Dorchen Leidholdt, Elizabeth Dworan, Robin Quinn, Carole Post, and Sharyn Timmons-Esposito. “Women Against Pornography.” Women Against Pornography, September 1, 1982. Accessed November 20, 2025 https://jstor.org/stable/community.28046786.