Talk:Women Against Pornography

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.
 * 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. 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)
 * 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 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 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)

Was the "stickering" of pornographic magazines with warning/informational/promotional labels ever a part of WAP's official (or unofficially condoned) tactics? I believe Josh Alan Friedman made casual reference to this in his essay collection "Tales of Times Square". Asat 20:30, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Listen Up
Rape has been down 80% for the last 20 years due to the higher availability of pornography. I personaly believe that this should be in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.110.240.224 (talk • contribs) 21:18, 23 April 2007


 * No it shouldn't. This is an article about a specific organization, Women Against Pornography, not an article about the pornography controversy as a whole. Iamcuriousblue 01:34, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Additions to the article, August 15, 2007
I've added several sections to the article which were strongly needed. First, I added additional material on the latter history of the group and its role in the formation of CATW, as well as the role of WAP in the Meese Commission hearings, both aspects that were left out of the earlier version of the article. I've also added a section on opposition and controversies to WAP, both from civil libertarians and other feminists. This was a glaring omission from the earlier version of the article, which in my opinion was overly reliant on Susan Brownmiller's autobiography as its sole source. I believe the changes have fleshed the article out more, as well as making the article more NPOV by noting criticisms and controversies surrounding WAP. Iamcuriousblue 01:34, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

GA comment
Before another editor reviews the article, the lead needs to be further expanded to better summarize the article. See WP:LEAD for more information. --Nehrams2020 22:43, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for noting this. I have added a much more detailed lead. Iamcuriousblue 03:52, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Good article nomination

 * GA review (see here for criteria)


 * 1) It is reasonably well written.
 * a (prose): b (MoS):
 * 1) It is factually accurate and verifiable.
 * a (references): b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR):
 * 1) It is broad in its coverage.
 * a (major aspects): b (focused):
 * 1) It follows the neutral point of view policy.
 * a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
 * 1) It is stable.
 * 2) It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
 * a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA):  c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
 * 1) Overall:
 * a Pass/Fail: GreenJoe 15:27, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * a Pass/Fail: GreenJoe 15:27, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I put the article on hold because nothing in the lead is cited. Also the citations don't use proper Wikipedia format tags. See also Template messages/Sources of articles GreenJoe 15:27, 17 September 2007 (UTC)


 * GreenJoe has made a request for a second opinion on this article, and I'll be providing that second opinion.  Pursey  Talk 15:47, 17 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Nothing is cited in the lead because the lead is simply a summary of the larger article. The references in the article itself are in fact cited. Iamcuriousblue 16:34, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

GA Review - Second Opinion
I've now assessed this article against the Good Article Criteria and have made the decision to Quick-Fail it. A full review has not been undertaken at this time though I'll make some general suggestions to help improve this article.

The lead contains claims that are unreferenced and could possibly be considered original research. The claims need to be cited if they are not cited elsewhere in the article. The lead is also very lengthy. I'd suggest checking out WP:LEAD for some suggestions on how to write a good lead.

GreenJoe raised concerns about the referencing format used. More info is available at WP:CITE.

If you feel this review has been in error, feel free to take it to a good article review. I'm also contactable on my talk page. Thank you for your work so far on this article :)  Pursey  Talk 15:51, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

paragraph "Other critics dissented"
I asked for citations in the new paragraph "Other critics dissented . . . ." (at the end of the section Opposition and Controversies) and recommend some rewriting because, while I suspect the points raised generally are fairly close to the truth, either they need to be brought to the nailhead or, if they are correct as they are, they need supporting citations. Specifically, (1) whether priestly sexual abuse was or was not fueled by porn is not something I've ever seen discussed and I'd be surprised if priests who sexually abuse are less likely than men in general to turn to porn for inspiration; (2) I don't know which of Susan Brownmiller's statements are being relied on for the sentence; (3) "Catholic and other forms of clergy pedophilia" implies that there are different forms of clergy pedophilia, Catholic and other, whereas I'd argue that the Roman Catholic Church's structure meant the Church was more likely to be held expensively liable but that the pedophilia did not take a different form, it being sex with people legally too young to consent and therefore it being rape and that being man-on-boy rape rather than heterosexual probably due to the expense of investigating and bringing a case and therefore due to lawyers' selecting which cases to pursue, given that we don't hear about clients whose cases were not pursued by the attorneys and that same-sex little-boy cases are likely to produce much higher jury awards than heterosexual cases with 17- or 22-year-old healthy females; and (4) my understanding is that when anti-porn workers worked with the anti-obscenity leaders they did so on common ground, i.e., in working together they did not oppose obscenity that wasn't porn in the civil rights sense, an argument that by working together on anything anti-porn workers were therefore supporting the anti-obscenity position being equivalent to an argument that by working together on anything anti-obscenity workers were therefore opposing porn in the civil rights sense (I'm looking forward to Bible-hollering for feminism but I'm not holding my breath). Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 07:22, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

why coalescing with nonfeminists was critiqued
I added criticism, but the source doesn't go as far as some criticism did on point. The criticism is about feminists coalescing with nonfeminists. The source only goes to the extent of "female moral outrage" without explaining why that would be a problem. I see two: ideologically, feminist and masculist oppositions to pornography are grounded on opposite premises (women's choice vs. certainty of fatherhood of offspring) so that coalescing risks cross-infection or at least loss of clarity about why pornography is a problem at all; and organizationally, organizations including political parties often seek exclusivity in being identified with an issue in order to gain resources and political power and thus the ability to act on the issue. I think Andrea Dworkin was criticized for sometimes agreeing, meeting, or working with the political right wing (although I don't recall it diluting much her feminist arguments or credibility). If anyone has sourcing on these or other reasons why coalescing would have been a problem for feminism (in the view of some feminists but not all), please add to the article. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:27, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

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