I was eight years old, sitting on the floor in my parents' bathroom, seized by the thrill of discovery. I had been plundering the cabinets under the sink. My goal: cotton balls. My discovery: A crisp stack of magazines full of girls in their nakie. Nabbing the top periodical, I inspected its cover. A lickerishly-posed brunette smirked at me. She was wearing a cut-off t-shirt and the bottoms of her breasts peeked generously out from the torn hem of the shirt. Her skin was the color of brown sugar. An electric curiosity coursed to the tips of my fingers, forcing me to separate the magazines covers. This was not my mom's Good Housekeeping, definitely, although there were pictures of a long-haired, leggy blonde and a man (who looked oddly like my school principal, Mr. Mayhew) doing something peculiar with a feather duster. Other pages revealed naked women riding bareback on horses and more pictures of Mr. Mayhew with a different woman on the beach. I was entranced. Careful not to incriminate myself, I tucked the magazine away just as I had found it. I thought about those ladies often and glimpsed the magazines whenever I thought I could get away with it. I wondered if my body would look like those of the magazine ladies when I got older. I wondered why my father even needed such a salacious catalogue of nude women. Two things were certain: I was never meant to find those magazines and I could never look at Mr. Mayhew the same way again.

Pornography's political implications were unbeknownst to me at such a tender age, but became quickly apparent during my junior year of college while taking Special Populations, a course required for my social work major. My major was small compared to others at my school and, also unlike the rest of the concentrations, predominantly female. My Special Pops class was comprised of seven women and a female professor, which always meant intimate, earnest exchanges about whatever we were discussing at the time, from the feminization of poverty to pornography. The class was taught from a feminist perspective, and I can genuinely state that it was the single most influential class on my collegiate transcripts, nurturing the foundation for my political ideology.

Nearly everyone in that class felt that pornography was inherently evil and should be completely railed against, just done away with. "It objectifies women! Porn dehumanizes them, removes their voice!" was their reasoning. "Pornography sets unrealistic expectations and standards for women's bodies!" they argued. And I agreed, but concurrently disagreed as well. "But sex work is valid work too," I offered. "To slander all porn, to work towards its total cessation is tantamount to removing a woman's voice and sense of agency as well." Blank stares. Crickets chirping. I continued, hoping an elaboration would garner a few nodding heads, "You see, feminists have continuously argued that women should have a right to do what they want with their bodies. Right? What if some women want to pose nude or make porn movies?" I sighed. They weren't getting me. I furthered, "Shouldn't they have the choice to do that? And just because some porn reduces a woman to a sex object, does that mean all porn has to do that?"

I've found myself at the porn crossroads several times since as well. I unabashedly consider myself a feminist, yet other feminists are usually the ones to call me on my pro-pornography perspective. It was, and sometimes remains to be, a little alienating. Fortunately, though, after that class and subsequent debates on the topic, I've seen a surge of feminist pro-sex work publications.

Let's get one thing straight, however: I'm not advocating for carte blanche creation of porn. No way. I'm well aware of the gross inequities present in some porn production I've read interviews with the late Linda Lovelace, who forcibly "starred" in the extremely controversial and discouragingly successful Deep Throat. I'm aware of wage, power, and creative control inequalities. And I am aware of those materials that depict violent sexual images of women and even children. Those things, they've got to go. We don't stand for those injustices in other lines of work, why would we make an exception here? So, instead of calling for the eradication of porn creation, why not call for exacting erotic materials completely void of sexist sex? Can we unravel patriarchy from pornography?

In an attempt to forge a dichotomy of "positive" porn and "negative" porn, I find myself wondering how to define these divisions. What precisely constitutes "positive" porn and separates it from the bad, sexist stuff?

Gloria Steinem, in her essay Erotica vs. Pornography, initially establishes an etymological division between the two. Taking a closer look at the term "pornography", one finds two Greek roots: porne (harlot, prostitute, or female captive) and graphos (writing about or description of). "Thus, it means a description of either the purchase of sex, which implies an imbalance of power itself, or sexual slavery," adds Steinem. There are two roles present, the victimizer, who is ascribed traits stereotypically associated with "masculinity" (domination, aggression, competition, emotion inhibition) and the antithetically behaviored victim, who exhibits submission and passivity. Regardless of the type of pornography or the genders involved, the bottom line remains that pornography depicts a choiceless power imbalance, an intentionally voiceless disparity of domination. Steinem expands, "But whatever the gender of the participants, all pornography is an imitation of the male-female, conqueror-victim paradigm, and almost all of it actually portrays or implies enslaved woman and masterful male." There you have it: negative porn.

"Erotica," Steinem proffers, describes those materials that portray mutual passion, reciprocal pleasure, and egalitarian preference. It encompasses themes of respect and love. Voila: positive porn. While I do not wish to get bogged down in the semantics of pornography vs. erotica, I eagerly embrace Steniem's delineation of these two types of sexual materials. "Negative" porn vs. "positive" porn sounds far less academic, but the ideas resonate.

However, too truly create and promote positive pornographic materials, we cannot merely stop with Steinem's basic characterization. To upgrade the empowerment of positive porn, it is critical that society encourage the acceptance of all body shapes and sizes. One of the things that seriously pisses me off (and frankly bores me) with current pornographic media is that everyone looks the same. Change out the hair color, bikini wax, and scenery and you're viewing extremely homogenous materials. That was even apparent to me as a little girl back in my parents' bathroom nearly two decades ago. Nearly all of the women are young, conventionally attractive, and possess ample bust, tiny waists and not a dimple of cellulite. Even with websites like BurningAngel and Suicide Girls, who masquerade as progressive and feminist pornography, those boundaries of conventional beauty standards still exist. Genuinely empowering pornography would make room for all body shapes and sizes, and not just in fetish niches.

Positive porn, however, is not just about what we see. It includes what goes on behind the scenes of its creation. The most qualified people to make feminist porn are, well, feminists. In previous years, nearly all directors and writers of pornographic movies were men. Thanks to ladies like Veronica Hart, Candida Royalle, and Tristan Taormino, we've seen a relative abundance of feminist-minded pornography. And to the credit of the folks at BurningAngel and Suicide Girls, the models have total control over the poses they select and the pictures they post on the sites.

Many argue that pornography is an inadequate tool for proper sex education, and if we base that assumption on current porn media trends, I wholeheartedly agree. But there is this hopeful and inspired piece of me that envisions a new wave of pornography, one that emphasizes body love and acceptance, mutuality, equal opportunity and choice, one where the viewer walks away feeling excited and good about themselves instead of stifled and discouraged. I believe that sort of material can be an effective tool for sex education.

So, can we liberate porn from patriarchy? I think we can. If we want to untangle patriarchy from porn, though, it is essential to first untangle patriarchy from sex. The personal is political. The revolution of pornography begins in our bedroom.