To appreciate just how bizarre it is to collapse a critique of pornography into a critique of sex, think for a minute if this were a book that criticizes McDonald’s for its exploitive labor practices, its destruction of the environment, and its impact on our diet and health. Would anyone accuse the author of being anti-eating or anti-food? I suspect that most readers would separate the industry (McDonald’s) and the industrial product (hamburgers) from the act of eating, understanding that the critique was focused on the large-scale impact of the fast-food industry and not the human need to eat and the pleasure the experience of eating yields.

So, why, when I talk about pornography, is it difficult for some to understand that one can be a feminist who is unabashedly pro-sex but against the commodification and industrialization of a human desire? The answer, of course, is that pornographers have done an incredible job of selling their product as being all about sex, and not about a particular constructed version of sex that is developed within a profit-driven setting.