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from www.guardian.co.uk – Julie Bindel [pictured] defends the screening of the documentary film Hardcore, implying that ours and other feminist organisations do not think women should view pornography (The Hardcore truth about women in porn, G2, 15 July). This belief could not be further from the truth.

Bindel writes: “Feminist group Scottish Women against Pornography [Swap] says the documentary should never be screened, because it is a ‘filmed rape of Felicity’ which will be ‘endlessly re-enacted long after she is gone'”. In fact, Swap has always used pornography where necessary to challenge pornography. Presenting a petition to press the Scottish parliament for a change in legislation to deal with pornography, we were instructed that on no account could we show any of the material we brought with us as evidence.

We have been working for more than a decade to highlight pornography and its role in violence against women and children, and have no doubt that in order to understand porn and fight against it, women have to view it irrespective of how uncomfortable or distressing it is to them. The difference is Swap uses porn images from a feminist perspective for training and information.

Bindel states: “In the early 1980s, Women Against Violence Against Women compiled a ‘slide show’ of pornographic images, and activists, including myself, gave presentations to anti-pornography women’s groups.”

Swap and other anti-porn organisations are currently doing the same using Swap resources and the anti-porn training slide show Who Wants to Be a Porn Star? Accompanying it is a script which takes the audience through each slide, providing context and meaning to the distressing images. This proves that it is possible to expose the abuse, degradation, violence and coercion of women in the porn industry without exploiting or dehumanising the women involved. The slide show continues to mobilise women to take action against the porn industry.

Why did Swap oppose the screening of Hardcore? “We need to know the truth about the porn industry to campaign against it. Hardcore tells the truth,” says Bindel.

But it is a commercial film, and we believe it was motivated by profit and its effect was to titillate viewers by filming the ordeal of a young woman. Our concerns are for her and innumerable other women and girls who never have the power to destroy filmed acts of male sexual violence committed against them. Is it feminist to promote and condone male sexual exploitation of women by attempting to relabel it as a documentary? The footage of Felicity after the filming, in deep distress about the relationship with her father, is harrowing and gives us an insight as to why she may have become involved in porn.

Hardcore’s director and producer have portrayed themselves as victims and serious about exposing the harm of the porn industry, yet we have never heard of them donating any of the profits of their film to organisations working to end pornography.