Emma Watson wants you to stop watching porn. At 25 years old, the actress most known for her work in the "Harry Potter" films has decided to take a break from acting to focus on feminism. Since those movies, Watson has built herself a niche in the modern day feminist movement and entered the spotlight on the heels of her speech at the United Nations on behalf of HeforShe, a UN initiative advocating for men to join the feminist movement. Recently, she sat down with well-known feminist Gloria Steinem and discussed many topics on the feminist agenda.
Steinem had previously lauded Watson’s hiatus from acting to work for women as "great and important." Watson said she would like “awesome alternatives” to pornography -- using erotica as an example to help empower women rather than (in the words of Steinem) use a word, “about domination, pain, violence, humiliation and so on.”
But the word “pornography” isn’t synonymous with domination, or any of these other possible words. By definition, porn is “movies, pictures, magazines, etc., that show or describe naked people or sex in a very open and direct way in order to cause sexual excitement.” It’s an umbrella term for any form of media that depicts sexual content, including erotica. The words Steinem and Watson use to define porn fall into genres of the industry, itself.
Perhaps that’s the core of the problem for many likeminded individuals, a fundamental misunderstanding of terminology. But that is purely speculative and a moot point for another time. For Steinem, this isn’t the first negative headline of the month. In early February, she made comments at a Hillary Clinton rally, alongside Madeleine Albright, taking a jab at women who support Bernie Sanders. “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”
Around the same time she made that controversial statement, she echoed a similar sentiment on Bill Maher’s show, Real Time. “When you’re young, you’re thinking where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.” In other words, she believes that female supporters of Bernie Sanders, a large population of which are millennials, support the presidential candidate for attention from boys.
How backward is that logic? Gloria Steinem argues that women should vote for a candidate based on their gender rather than their views and plans for the country. That’s the kind of logic children use on a playground. The world isn’t male vs. female. Women and men work together to progress and move society forward.
Many people on social media criticized Steinem for the statements and she did apologize, yes, but the fact remains that in one month she has dealt herself a serious blow, damaging her own reputation and credibility by tackling non-issues like the word pornography, and criticizing women for not voting for a candidate based on their gender.
For Emma Watson, I suspect that this is a bit more important. She, already being in the feminist spotlight must now face a choice for her future. Because women’s rights today is split between the Gloria Steinem’s and the Malala Yousafzai’s of the world. Malala fights for real issues like women’s rights to an education worldwide. So which will it be?
