Talk:Women Against Pornography

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[edit] NPOV tag

I've cleaned up some of the more POV statements on this page, however, the overall slant of this article is still unbalanced. One would never know that this group was highly controversial (even among feminists) during its existence, as this controversy is not so much as discussed.

The debates between WAP and groups and individuals like the Lesbian Sex Mafia, the organizers of the Barnard Conference on Sexuality, Ellen Willis, Dorothy Allison, and others who later became identified with sex-positive feminism deserve mention.

Also, there's no discussion as to how WAP ended - the group dissolved many years ago, though its leader (after 1980), Dorchen Leidholdt, is still quite active. Iamcuriousblue 06:56, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your edits. I agree that a lot more needs to be discussed in the article.

I've condensed down some material that you added to the section on the formation of the group, preserved here:

In San Francisco, a feminist anti-pornography group, Women Against Violence and Pornography in Media (WAVPM), had been successfully organized in July 1976 and was highly active, picketing strip clubs and peep shows in San Francisco's red-light districts. WAVPM also organized the first-ever Take Back the Night march in November 1977, which culminated in a speech by Andrea Dworkin. Founding members of this group included Laura Lederer, Lynn Campbell, and Diana Russell.[1]

WAVPM organized a national conference of anti-pornography feminists in San Francisco in November 1978. Susan Brownmiller approached Laura Lederer and Lynn Campbell after this conference and encouraged them to come to New York to help in organizing and anti-pornography group there.[2] Lederer decided to stay in San Francisco to edit an anthology based on the conference presentations (Lederer 1982), but Campbell took up the offer. (WAVPM became less active soon after this, though the group stayed together until 1983.)

Campbell arrived in New York on April 1979, with Brownmiller, Adrienne Rich, and Frances Whyatt contributing money to help cover her move and living expenses while the organizing work progressed. Dolores Alexander was soon recruited as a fundraiser, and Barbara Mehrhof was hired as an organizer soon thereafter with the money that Alexander was able to raise. Brownmiller remained as an unpaid organizer. (Brownmiller 302-305)

I incorporated several edits, but the article is after all about WAP, not WAVPM, so the two-paragraph history of WAVPM's rise and decline seems off-topic. The best thing to do would probably be to carry over most or all of this information into an article on WAVPM which could be linked from here.

I also rewrote the bit about Brownmiller's position with WAP, so as to be clear about how it fell out. WAP didn't formally exist until 1979 so there was nowhere for Brownmiller to "remain". On the other hand it is weird to keep talking about Brownmiller's instrumental role in jump-starting the organization and then say that she "joined" later on. So what I've tried out is saying that Brownmiller took an unpaid position as the fourth organizer in 1979. Hopefully that will work better.

I hope these edits help. Radgeek 23:48, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I double-checked WorldCat (national library catalog) and Diana Russel's website (she was one of the founders of this group). You are correct about the name of the group, with the exception of the abbreviation, which really is the odd-sounding "WAVPM". You probably are right to create a separate article on them - I was adding material to an article on Samois, including their early run-ins with WAVPM and decided that there needed to be some material on that group. I wasn't sure whether that group was notable enough to warrant its own article, but knew that one of their leaders played an important role in the formation of WAP, and that indeed, much of the rhetoric and tactics of WAP was developed by the San Francisco group. I'm a lifelong SF Bay Area resident, and remember WAVPM getting quite a bit of media attention in the mid-to-late-1970s, but having largely disappeared by the time news of the 1980s "porn wars" was coming from eastern and midwestern cities. Peter G Werner 00:43, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

The other thing that I thought of, when re-reading the article, is that it currently contains no information on WAP's involvement in direct political activism (support for Dworkin and MacKinnon's anti-pornography civil rights ordinance, etc.) later in the organization's history. That's also material that ought to be covered along the way, probably immediately after the section on "Educational tactics." Radgeek 00:30, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Peter G Werner 00:43, 26 April 2006 (UTC)