Is pornography anti-feminist? The argument that pornography is a subordinating speech-act.
MacKinnon (1987, 2006) and Langton (1993) argue that pornography is anti-feminist because watching pornography always constitutes the subordination of women. Langton's argument is based on a theory of speech-acts where pornography is viewed as a subordinating illocutionary speech-act.

Austin (1962) describes three types of speech acts, locutionary acts, perlocutionary acts, and illocutionary acts. The locutionary act is merely the utterance of words with some meaning, the perlocutionary act is the name given to the effects after you say it and an illocutionary act is the name used if the words themselves constitute an action. This happens because they are said within a specific context, for example saying 'I do' at the right time in church constitutes the action of marriage, there is no temporal gap as with perlocutionary acts.

To constitute an illocutionary act certain conditions called felicity conditions must apply when the words are said. The most important is that the audience recognises the intentions of the speech act and accord the speaker the authority to perform this action. In the example of marriage the felicity conditions would be that there are witnesses and someone with the authority to perform marriage present.

According to Langton for a speech act to be subordinating it must unfairly rank people as inferior, legitimatise discriminatory behaviour, and/or unfairly deprive people of power. Langton gives the example of the utterance "blacks are not permitted to vote" by a prime minister as being the illocutionary action of making it illegal for black people to vote.

For pornography to constitute a subordinating speech act the audience must therefore recognise that it intends to subordinate and must accord it the authority to perform this action. Langton claims certain audiences do find porn subordinating and so the first felicity condition is sometimes met. It is also feasible that pornography can be authoritative, especially in teaching teenage boys about sex, it may in fact have, "all the authority of a monopoly". She also believes that pornography unfairly ranks women as inferior, as sex objects, that it legitimatise discriminatory behaviour towards women such as sexual violence and deprives women of the power to refuse sex because in pornography 'no' does not necessarily mean no.

Langton's argument, that there is an intrinsic property to pornography which subordinates, goes against many peoples instincts. This is because speech acts can only occur within a certain context that is not intrinsic to the pornography alone. Saul (2006) argues that because pornography is a recording it is not necessarily viewed or filmed within the right context to be a speech act, and so the felicity conditions are not necessarily met. A recording can perform different speech acts in different situations, or can perform no speech acts at all.

Saul considers someone who uses a sign with the words 'I do' written upon it. This sign could then be used in place of words in the hypothetical wedding described above, or in a number of different scenarios, some constituting speech acts and some not. The sign itself cannot constitute a speech act. This is why subordination is not intrinsic to the pornography but is a matter of when and how it is used. It is not incoherent to say that pornography can sometimes constitute the subordination of women, however it is incoherent to claim that it always does.

References.
Austin J.L. (1962) 'How to do things with Words', in The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955, Urmson, J.O. (Ed.), Clarendon, Oxford.

Langton, R. (1993) 'Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts', Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 22, pp. 293-330. 

MacKinnon, C. (1987) 'Linda's life and Andrea's work', in Feminism Unmodified, Harvard Univerity Press, Cambridge, Mass, pp.130.

MacKinnon, C. (2006) 'Are Women Human?: And Other International Dialogues', Belknap Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Saul, J. (2006) 'On Treating Things as People: Objectification, Pornography, and the History of the Vibrator', Hypatia, vol. 21, pp.45-61.