Libertarian Feminism Quotes

“Let's examine the second accusation first: the idea that pornography is degrading to women. Degrading is a subjective term. Personally, I find detergent commercials in which women become orgasmic over soapsuds to be tremendously degrading to women. I find movies in which prostitutes are treated like ignorant drug addicts to be slander against women. Every woman has the right-the need!-to define degradation for herself.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“It is charged that pornography objectifies women: It converts them into sexual objects. Again, what does this mean? If taken literally, it means nothing at all because objects don't have sexuality; only human beings do. But the charge that pornography portrays women as "sexual beings" would not inspire rage and, so, it has no place in the anti-porn rhetoric.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“The real question to ask is: Why not simply let women enjoy their fantasies? Why shouldn't a woman entertain the wildest sex her imagination can generate? What damage is done? Who has the right to question it?”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“The current backlash of censorship is an alliance between the Moral Majority (the Right) and the politically correct (the Left). This alliance is threatening the freedom of both women and sexual expression. The Right defines the explicit depiction of sex as evil; the Left defines it as violence against women. The result is the same.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“As recently as the fifties, respectable women were given the sexual choice of marriage or celibacy. Anything else meant ostracism. Women who demanded pleasure in sex were condemned as "nymphomaniacs," much as they are pitied today as "victims of male culture" by anti-porn feminists.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“In the social turbulence following the Civil War, thousands of men and women enlisted in a purity campaign. They sought to establish a single standard of sexual morality for both sexes. This was not a drive for greater freedom; it was a puritanical campaign to narrow the choices of individuals down to socially acceptable ones.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“For most of the nineteenth century, women were the chattel of their husbands. Men had legal title to their wives' property and wages, to children, and even to their wives' bodies. Women could be locked away in insane asylums at the discretion of their husbands or other male relatives. They had no voice in government. They could not enter into contracts without their husband's consent. Even labor unions shut out the most needy of workers: women. Those seats of enlightenment-the universities-locked their doors against women who dared to ask for knowledge. To be a woman was to be powerless.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“The issue that united the anti-slavery and feminist movements was a demand for the right of every human being to control his or her own body and property. This same principle is the core of individualist feminism today.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“Freelovers vehemently denied the state had any right to intervene in the sexual arrangements of consenting adults. They focused on empowering the weakest and most abused partner in sex: the woman.

There were two keys to securing sexual rights for women. The first was to reform the marriage laws, which gave husbands almost absolute authority over their wives. Marriage-free-lovers insisted-should be a voluntary and equal association between two people who shared a spiritual affinity.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“There were two keys to securing sexual rights for women. The first was to reform the marriage laws, which gave husbands almost absolute authority over their wives. Marriage-free-lovers insisted-should be a voluntary and equal association between two people who shared a spiritual affinity.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“In a provocative move, the first issue of her periodical, Woman Rebel announced an intention to disperse contraceptive information. When the postal authorities declared this issue "obscene," Sanger avoided having it confiscated by mailing it in small batches all over the city. As subscriptions poured in, the post office declared five other issues unmailable.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“Sexual freedom-especially pornography, which is sexual free speech-is an integral part of the battle for women's freedom. The censoring of sexual words and images does not simply lead to the suppression of women's sexual rights. It is an attempt to control women themselves. For women's rights have traditionally been phrased in terms of their sexuality: marriage, abortion, and birth control. To surrender one iota of women's control over their own sexual expression is to deny that it is their sexuality in the first place.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“As pornography flourished, it became part of the changing view of sexuality. Sex was no longer tied, with a nooselike knot, to procreation, marriage, or romance. Pornography presented a kaleidoscope of sexual possibilities: as pleasure, with a stranger, as self-exploration, as power, with groups or with another woman...

The old stereotypes of pornography began to fade away. The caricature of the type of person who enjoyed pornography e.g., dirty old men and nervous perverts-was superseded by the sight of millions of people subscribing to Playboy. Couples viewed pornography together; explicit sex manuals, such as The Joy of Sex, became best sellers, which were prominently stocked by mainstream bookstores.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“To get upset by an image that focuses on the human body is merely to demonstrate a bad attitude toward what is physical. If I concentrated on a woman's sense of humor to the exclusion of her other characteristics, would this be degrading? Why is it degrading to focus on her sexuality? Underlying this attitude is the view that sex must be somehow ennobled to be proper.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“Pornography, it is said, presents false images about women. Pornography is a lie, because it presents women as large-breasted nymphomanics. If this accusation is true, the remedy is not to ban pornography, but to recruit a wider variety of women into the industry.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“A woman's body, a woman's right" applies not only to abortion, but to every peaceful activity a woman engages in. The law should come into play only when a woman initiates force or has force initiated against her.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“When you enforce virtue, you deny a woman's right to make an unacceptable choice with her own body.

This conflict is old wine in new bottles; it is nothing less than the age-old battle between freedom and control.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“But even generously granting the assumption that a correlation does exist between pornography and violence, what would such a correlation tell us? It would certainly not indicate a cause-and-effect relationship. It is a fallacy to assume that if A can be correlated with B, then A causes B. Such a correlation may indicate nothing more than that both are caused by another factor, C. For example, there is a high correlation between the number of doctors in a city and the number of alcoholics there. One doesn't cause the other; both statistics are proportional to the size of the city's population.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“Although anti-porn feminists cry out against viewing pornography, they must admit that there is at least one group of people who can survive such exposure without harm-namely, themselves. In their zeal, radical feminists view more pornography than the general population. Moreover, they dwell upon the small percentage of pornography that depicts violence. Either they are wonder women or they are human beings who have a normal response to brutal pornography: They are repelled by it.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“This is the second way in which women in the industry are said to be victims of violence. They are said to be so brainwashed by white male culture that they cannot render consent. Thus, they are de facto coerced.

Consider how arrogant this statement is.

Although women in pornography appear to be willing, anti-porn feminists see through this charade [...] If a woman enjoys performing sex acts in front of a camera, it is not because she is a unique human being who reasons and reacts from a different background or personality. No. It is because she is psychologically damaged and no longer responsible for her actions. She must, in effect, become a political ward of radical feminists, who will make the correct choices for her.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“The right to choose hinges on the right to make a "wrong" choice. Freedom of religion entails the right to be an atheist. Freedom of speech involves the right to be silent. Freedom of choice requires the right to make bad choices-that is, a decision society considers to be wrong. After all, society is not going to stop a woman from doing what it wants her to do.

But radical feminists are going one step farther than simply denying that women have the right to make wrong choices; they deny that women have the ability to choose.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“According to radical feminists, even if a woman in pornography signed a contract with full knowledge, she can sue on the grounds of coercion. What legal implications does this have for a woman's right to contract? What legal weight will future negotiators give to a woman's signature? Women's contracts will be legally unenforceable; their signature will become a legal triviality.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“For centuries, women have struggled against tremendous odds to have their contracts taken seriously. At great personal expense, they stood up and demanded the right to own land, to control their own wages, to retain custody of their children-in other words, to become legally responsible for themselves and for their property. A woman's consent must never again become legally irrelevant.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“Anti-porn feminists want us to accept their sexual preferences as gospel. Presumably, their theories are based on solid fact and deep insight. Although they have been born and raised in the same patriarchal culture that has warped other women, radical feminists have somehow escaped unscathed. Just as they have escaped being damaged by the pornography they view. Somehow these women have scaled the pinnacle, from which they now look down and make pronouncements on the lifestyle of those beneath them.

Perhaps radical feminists are superwomen. Perhaps they are merely fanatics unwilling to respect any position other than their own.

If women's choices are to be trashed, why should radical feminists fare better than other women? Are they the elite? If the choices of pornographic models are not to be taken seriously, radical feminists cannot claim respect for their choices either. If culture negates the free will of women, anti-porn feminists are in the same boat as the rest of us.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“Contracts are records of voluntary exchanges. Labor contracts are voluntary exchanges of work for wages. Most people enter labor contracts-that is, get a job-because they need money. But, to radical feminists, this is "economic coercion." Because they believe the free market forces people to take jobs, they view it as a form of violence.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“To condemn pornography, radical feminists must condemn the concept of individuality. They must deny that personal choices are personal.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“Refusing to acknowledge the contracts of women in pornography places them in the same legal category as children or mental incompetents. In Indianapolis, the anti-pornography ordinance argued that women, like children, needed special protection under the law:

"Children are incapable of consenting to engage in pornographic conduct.... By the same token, the physical and psychological well-being of women ought to be afforded comparable protection, for the coercive environment ... vitiates any notion that they consent or `choose' to perform in pornography." [2]

This attitude of "I'm a helpless victim" could easily backfire on women who may be required to prove they are able to manage their own finances, or to handle custody of their own children. Moreover, the idea of men "emotionally or verbally coercing" women re-enforces the concept of men as intellectually and psychologically stronger than women. It is the old "Man of Steel/ Woman of Kleenex" myth.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“I may not personally approve of their choices. I may find their choices distasteful. Nevertheless, every choice a woman makes enriches me because it expands my range of alternatives-even if it is an alternative I can't imagine ever pursuing myself.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“Modern feminism needs a little less dogma and a lot more heresy.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography

“It is because I know how brutal sex can be that I insist on reminding women that they also live in a world of sexual possibilities and pleasures. Sex is too important to surrender.”
― Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography