Pornography harms women

Pornography is an industrial product that shapes how we think about gender, sexuality, relationships, intimacy, sexual violence and gender equality — for the worse. Pornography is "the perfect propaganda piece for patriarchy". On the one hand, pornography's degrading representations of women embed those attitudes at both a sexual and social level in their male audience. On the other, the exposure of teenage girls to pornographic images affects their sense of sexual identity, with the result that women are "held captive" by images that lie about them. Femininity is reduced to the hypersexualized, young, thin, toned, hairless, and, in many cases, surgically enhanced woman with a come-hither look on her face.

The production of pornography entails physical, psychological, and/or economic coercion of the women who perform and model in it - even when the women are being presented as enjoying themselves. In addition, much of what is shown in pornography is abusive by its very nature, and is becoming increasingly violent and dehumanising. Women who perform in pornography are brutalised in the process.

Pornography gives a distorted view of men and women's bodies, as well as the actual sexual act, often showing the performers with synthetic implants or exaggerated expressions of pleasure. Pornography has a detrimental effect on self-esteem, particularly amongst women.

Pornography is a cause of rape and other forms of violence against women - "Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice." Anti-pornography feminists charge that pornography eroticizes the domination, humiliation, and coercion of women, and reinforces sexual and cultural attitudes that are complicit in rape and sexual harassment.