Can pornography empower women? This was the central question at a debate hosted by the Southbank Centre’s Women of the World festival in London on 1 March. What the conversation boiled down to was: does pornography personally empower you? Despite insightful contributions from the panel – hosted by Jane Garvey and comprising Susie Orbach and Sam Roddick – and the audience, I came away asking myself if the political had become too personal.

Sometimes I wonder if feminists should just nix the word “empowerment”. As a goal for a social justice movement, it causes too many problems, because to be a modern feminist is to embody a multitude of contradictions. You can, as I do, enjoy dancing to the hip-hop song Put It in My Mouth, even if some of the lyrics disgust you on a fundamental level; if a 21st-century feminist is to stay sane, she must acknowledge that she may enjoy and appreciate aspects of pop culture that cannot be deemed wholly “feminist” – or that may be anti-feminist.

Collective action and discussion on pornography is needed now more than ever

As with taste or preference, empowerment is personal, and may not apply to others. That’s why the word causes such handwringing for those who are unable to distinguish between what might be individually empowering for them, and what might be empowering (or not) for women everywhere, as a gender and a social category – even a class – who are routinely singled out and discriminated against.

It was the central problem with the debate on pornography (to be broadcast on BBC Woman’s Hour on 8 March), and reduced the conversation to a kind of binary individualism where how you feel, what your “truth” is, and why your voice matters override women as a collective. And, as I hope any feminist who has seen hardcore pornography will agree, collective action and discussion is needed now more than ever. Let’s not pretend that the ubiquity of mainstream pornography – not to mention how its aesthetic and values have an impact on popular culture – is not worrying to those who strive for gender equality. It is.

So, rather than argue about whether or not feminist porn producer Pandora Blake is empowered by the pornography she makes, or dismissively refer to her as an “alleged feminist” as Brunskell-Evans, founder of Resist Porn Culture, chose to during the debate, why are we not examining the porn industry and how it depicts women? Is porn an equal-opportunities employer? Are its workers protected? Are the means of manufacture and distribution mainly controlled by one particular gender? Could it be men who have the power and control here? Do the women, who perform rather than own or distribute, look like they are enjoying themselves? As the author Zoe Margolis pointed out at the debate, could porn be a symptom of misogyny, not its root cause?

There was a generation gap in the debate, with some older second wavers asking why it is that men get off on abusing women, and some third and fourth wavers saying that, actually, they quite enjoy a bit of consensual degradation, thank you very much. I’d argue that when you start questioning and shaming another person’s adult, consensual sexual preferences, you’ve lost the fight. To borrow a useful phrase from Amy Poehler: “good for you, not for me”. You enjoy being pumped in multiple orifices while being bent over flatpack furniture and filmed? Good for you, not for me. But good for women? That’s another question, one that requires a much more nuanced approach. Only once we accept that can we work out what we are going to do about it.