A Social Network Analysis of the Feminist Sex Wars

During second-wave feminism, gender, sex, and sexuality emerged as popular topics in a debate
questioning the place and implications of sex through a feminist lens that eventually became
known as the “sex wars.” Two dominating theoretical camps emerged: anti-porn versus sexpositivity. Anti-porn feminist scholars claimed pornography was the modern root of genderbased violence, gender oppression, and male domination; as such, all pornography contributed to
hierarchies of power which placed women at the bottom and scholars contended that it did not
deserve to exist and much less be legalized by national institutions. Sex-positive scholars
responded by nuancing the identity politics employed by sex-negative feminists; they interpreted
sex, especially queer sexualities, as existing in direct opposition to patriarchal and heterosexual
impositions on bodily and sexual autonomy. However, the sex wars continue to be
predominantly portrayed as a dichotomous and monolithic debate in feminist studies without
regard for its many participants who vigorously contributed over the years and for the impact it
had at all analytical levels in both social and political science. In an attempt to provide a more
holistic representation of the sex wars, I collected data on feminist scholars’ co-authorships
throughout the three most recent waves of feminism and constructed a visual network of their
ties. I followed by analyzing the emergent themes depending on the scholars’ camp in order to
understand the shift in feminist contribution to the sex wars over time. The following is a
network analysis of feminist theory authors’ collaborations which examines the shifts in the sex
wars discourse according to the past three feminist waves.