Sex Workers' Rights - Pornography Debates

Pornography Debates

During the 1970s and 1980s the main topic of feminist discourse was pornography, sex work, and human trafficking in regards to women’s sexuality. This led to the birth of mobilizing for sex workers’ rights in America. Carol Leigh is credited for coining the term "sex work" in the early 1980s and it was later popularized by a book published in 1989 called Sex Work. Around this time feminist debates centered upon the role that pornography played in women’s rights. The feminists involved in these debates had opposite views on ways to eliminate sexual violence against women in which feminists were generally either classified as liberal feminists or radical feminists. A third group of feminists is called pro-sex or sex positive feminism and this view is said to be the true defense of pornography.