MARGARET ATWOOD

Margaret Atwood’s “Pornography”


Pornography, otherwise defined as vulgarity and obscenity, is an issue that has and will continue to call upon much debate. While there are many people who see pornography as degrading, sinful, and disgusting, there is also a large amount of people who see it as a turn on, a form of sexual expression, and entertainment. Webster’s dictionary defined pornography as merely “the depiction of erotic behavior with pictures or writing intended to cause sexual excitement.” Yet according to Margaret Atwood “pornography” meant women getting their nipples snipped off with garden shears, having meat hooks stuck into their vaginas, being disemboweled; little girls being raped; men being smashed to a pulp and forcibly sodomized. The cutting edge of pornography, as far as Atwood could see, was no longer simple old copulation, such as hanging from the chandelier or otherwise: it was death, messy, explicit, and highly sadistic.
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