Female Supremacy Articles - Page 22

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Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union and a prominent feminist advocate, said it's not. According to Strossen, the proliferation of pornography and pornolike images isn't necessarily bad.

"What someone sees as a disgusting, demeaning image, someone else might see as an empowering image," she said. "There's even pornography that's made for women by women, or at least that's the intent."

Strossen points out that numerous attempts by social scientists to find a connection between porn and damaging attitudes toward women have fallen flat. "Using empirical measures, nobody has been able to demonstrate even a correlation between pornography and negative effects," she said.

As for the argument that women who see porn could become more sexually overt themselves, Strossen said, "That kind of 'monkey-see-monkey-do' world view completely denies human autonomy."

Bob Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, said overtly sexual depictions of women are only dangerous when nothing exists to counter them.

"These images are only a real problem when they're not diluted by other images. … You've got a whole bunch of different representations of women right now that are all over the board," Thompson said.

While pop culture provides plenty of wet, writhing women with come-hither stares, it also offers alternatives.