Pornography is one of the most contentious issues of the feminist movement today, with polarised views on whether it is liberating or degrading, allows and promotes sexual freedom, or if it promotes a view of female sexuality as submissive and based on rape fantasies. As a feminist firmly on the anti-porn side, I am used to the vitriol and passion this topic provokes, but is the debate becoming so vicious it is becoming a hindrance to progress?

Pornland, a film by leading anti-porn academic Gail Dines, will debut at a feminist conference in London on Saturday, and has already caused controversy before its screening, with some speakers and participants expressing anger at its clear anti-porn position.

“There has always been pornography,” says Dines in the film, “but there has not always been a porn industry.”

Porn, argues Dines, is a multibillion-dollar industry that has men in the crossfire. The film is educational and consciousness-raising, and shows how commercial porn operates as an industry, how the images impact on us and help shape our gender and sexual identity, and the extent of violence and cruelty in mainstream porn.

“A lot of women who call themselves feminists don’t know what’s in porn,” says Dines. “They have an out-of-date view of Penthouse. There are others who have a wilful ignorance as to what’s in porn.”

In the 1970s and 1980s, pornography was a contentious issue among feminists. But since the 1990s a neoliberal perspective has developed which labels anti-porn activists as “anti-sex”, and those who support it as “sex-positive”.

Dines and I both spoke at an anti-porn conference in London earlier this year, which was picketed by women and men arguing that we aimed to ban and censor pornography. Slogans on placards included, “Anti-porn is the theory, regression and censorship is the practice”, and ‘‘Porn is sex between consenting adults for consenting adults”. But none of the anti-porn feminists I work with would advocate state censorship, rather they call for better sex education, and awareness-raising about the harm caused by porn.

There is no doubt that pro-porn feminism is on the rise, and supported by many within the academy (Dines is one of a mere handful of anti-porn academics in the Europe and the US).

Last year saw the launch of Porn Studies, the first peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to the study of pornography, edited by two female academics who are critical of the feminist anti-pornography position. The board does not include any anti-porn theorists, and there have been calls from senior academics and those working with the victims of sexual and domestic violence and health professionals to rename the journal “Pro-Porn Studies”.

The accusation levied towards anti-porn feminists is that while we are wasting time focusing on images of people having consensual sex, the battle for equality is hindered. But there are real women in pornography and, whether the violence is acted out or real, the message is that brutality equals sexual pleasure, and in a world in which rape is commonplace, this is a harmful message.

Rather than look for a direct causal link between viewing porn and sexual violence, we should be looking at the culture of misogyny that porn arises from and contributes to. Ending misogyny will end violence against women. It is Dines’ view that the world would be a better place without porn. I agree.