 Amy Allen critiques feminist debates about pornography for reducing the idea of power to the capacity to subordinate someone or resist subordination. Anti-pornography feminists understand pornography’s influence only in terms the subordination of women by men, and in this way treat all women as victims and overlook the forms of social power some women have by virtue of their race, nationality, or class. Pro-sex feminists view pornography as a tool for subverting sexual norms, and empowering women by enabling them to resist sexual repression and sexist constructions of feminine respectability. Following Foucault, Allen argues that the power to oppress or resist are interconnected, in that both are shaped by common understandings of human needs and desires that can be controlled by others or liberated. Allen writes