In her New York Law School Review, Ellen Willis states, “…; porn is an obvious target insofar as it contributes to larger patterns of oppression-the reduction of the female body to a commodity… and sexist images and propaganda.” (Willis 351). Based off of this one statement you can see that the argument is centered around that of the female body so going off of this I believe that most participants regardless of their sex will say that the porn industry has had a negative impact on females because females receive the most criticism about their body type and look that is based off of standards from the male driven porn industry. However, if the participant does not feel as if he or she is a feminist, this could alter their responses to the questions set forth (see …show more content…
The 1973 court case of Miller vs. California, pushed pornography into the public eye by addressing the fact that it first existed and then deciding that any form of sexually explicit material was in violation and that obscenity would need to have a boundary. Although this decision decided to suppress porn and all that it stood for, its step into the media created an interest in the American people and help grow the tolerant attitude towards issues dealing with sex and marriage (“Obscenity”) that we now know today. It was not until the 1980’s and 1990’s that the debate between whether or not porn was degrading to women became relevant to the public. During this time pornography had moved from the borders of sketchy places to mainstream media becoming central images for modern lifestyle (Langman 657). This caused this time period to be coined as the “porn wars”, because it highlights a time where feminist were greatly divided on the issue of porn and how it affected women as a whole. The divide consisted of two sides: right wing feminists who thought porn should be completely revamped with a new outlook that dismantled the destructive persona of the male form and left wing feminists who wanted to make slight adjustments to the porn industry (Avedon 25) that included fairer representation. As a whole, feminists thought that porn was destructive because it stooped to the lowest and least positive aspects of male