On Our Backs portrayed lesbian sex and sexuality, with real lesbians.
Created by, for, and about lesbians, On Our Backs came about in the tumult of the “feminist sex wars,” a deeply polarizing internal debate in the feminist movement regarding sex, sexuality, pornography, erotica, and BDSM. Divided into sex-positive and anti-porn camps, the sex wars saw rabid disagreement on what the nature of things like pornography were doing for lesbians and for society as a whole. Many feminists argued that pornography and erotica were inherently objectifying and abusive. Writer and theorist Andrea Dworkin argued that not just pornography but heterosexual sex as a whole was a “means of physiologically making a woman inferior,” and claimed that anyone aroused by porn that depicted sexualized violence (whether real or scripted) “was evidence of a mind that’s absorbed the propaganda of the patriarchy and eroticized the subjugation of women.” On the flipside, sex-positive feminists argued that pornography itself was not an inherent evil, but rather its morality was dependent upon the creators and participants. Rubin, one of the founders of the lesbian feminist BDSM group Samois, believed sexual liberation was a key component of the feminist movement and that public expressions of female sexuality were crucial in asserting women’s existence as fully realized beings.
