Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights

by Nadine Strossen Narrated by Nadine Strossen

Overview

A new edition of a groundbreaking, feminist defense of pornography as free speech



Named a Notable Book by the New York Times Book Review in 1995, Defending Pornography examines a key question that has divided feminists for decades: is censoring pornography good or bad for women? Nadine Strossen makes a powerful case that increasing government power to censor sexual expression, beyond the limits that the First Amendment sensibly permits (for example, outlawing child pornography) would do more harm than good for women and others who have traditionally been marginalized due to sex or gender. She explains how the very anti-porn laws pushed by some feminists have led to the censorship of LGBTQ+ and feminist works, and she examines the startling connections between anti-porn feminists and right-wing fundamentalists. In an illuminating new preface, Strossen lays out the multiple current assaults on sexual expression, which continue to come from across the ideological spectrum. She shows that freedom for such expression remains an essential prerequisite for the equality, safety, and dignity of women and sexual/gender minorities.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

University of Michigan law professor and anti-pornography crusader Catharine MacKinnon has avoided debating Strossen, a New York University law professor who heads the American Civil Liberties Union. As this book shows, Strossen has a broad arsenal of vital arguments. Free speech has long been a strong weapon to fight misogyny, she notes, and she catalogues the fuzzy legal theories behind censorship. She ascribes feminist panic over sexual expression to a surge in ``cultural feminism,'' which was a response to 1970s setbacks to more tangible feminist projects like the ERA. The ``MacDworkin'' (MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin) proposed law to fight ``subordinating'' porn, Strossen argues, misreads evidence of its effects on men and ignores more influential media images like advertising as well as the complexity of female sexuality. In practice, as recent Canadian cases show ominously, such censorship laws have been used to seize lesbian, gay and feminist material. Strossen writes in professorial prose, with numerous quotes from better writers, and eschews the opportunity to explore murkier issues like the sexism inherent in much pornography. But she forcefully makes her point that scapegoating porn diverts activists from more important fights for women's rights. Author tour. (Jan.)

Library Journal

In this antithesis to law professor Catherine MacKinnon's Only Words (LJ 9/15/93), Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, attempts a public debate with MacKinnon, who has refused arranged debates with feminists in the anticensorship/pro-pornography camp. Mac-Kinnon's view is that pornography, in the guise of free speech, rails against women's equality guarantee. Strossen sees censoring pornography as effectively rendering the right wing's agenda to control the media and an attack on the First Amendment. Tackling the toughest question, she traces the recent history of censorship in relation to sexual speech. Although Strossen complains that MacKinnon's name-calling tactics is divisive, she herself chomps greedily at her free-speech bit and does the same. Strongly recommended as an important work for academic and large public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/94.]-Paula N. Arnold, Vermont Coll. Lib., Norwich Univ., Montpelier

Booknews

Reprint of the 1995 original with a new (5 p.) foreword by Wendy Kaminer and a new (43 p.) introduction cum bibliography by Strossen. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Betty Friedan

"Proves without a doubt that free expression is an essential foundation for women's liberty, equality, and sexuality."

New York Times Book Review

"A passionately argued, cogently written, lively discourse on the increasingly peculiar politics of sex."

Jerry Berman

"Strong medicine for all those who would censor sexual expression in cyberspace."

FIRE Ronald K. L. Collins

"In her true-to-form spirit, Strossen tackles her subject yet again with a blend of verve, acumen, and nuance. Make of the always controversial 'First Lady of Liberty' what you will, but one must grant this: Strossen is formidable in making her case."

The Washington Post Book World

"Defending Pornography is valuable precisely because of its lucid, broad exploration of the long debate over pornography."

Entertainment Weekly

"Antiporn feminists have been cruising for a forensic bruising since the early eighties. Defending Pornography lands quite a blow."

Wall Street Journal

"A triumphant (and sensual) view of women that stands in stark contrast to the bleak version of powerlessness and paternalism offered by her critics."

From the Publisher

"A triumphant (and sensual) view of women that stands in stark contrast to the bleak version of powerlessness and paternalism offered by her critics."-- "Wall Street Journal"

"A passionately argued, cogently written, lively discourse on the increasingly peculiar politics of sex."-- "New York Times Book Review"

"Antiporn feminists have been cruising for a forensic bruising since the early eighties. Defending Pornography lands quite a blow."-- "Entertainment Weekly"

"Defending Pornography is valuable precisely because of its lucid, broad exploration of the long debate over pornography."-- "The Washington Post Book World"

"Proves without a doubt that free expression is an essential foundation for women's liberty, equality, and sexuality."-- "Betty Friedan"

"Strong medicine for all those who would censor sexual expression in cyberspace."-- "Jerry Berman, Executive Director, Center for Democracy and Technology"

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192682906
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	07/16/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

Pornography, in the feminist view, is a form of forced sex, ...an institution of gender inequality... [P]ornography, with the rape and prostitution in which it participates, institutionalizes the sexuality of male supremacy. --CATHARINE MACKINNON

Feminist women are especially keen to the harms of censorship. Historically, information about sex, sexual orientation, reproduction and birth control has been banned under the guise of the protection of women. Such restrictions have never reduced violence. Instead, they have led to the jailing of birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, and the suppression of important works, from Our Bodies, Ourselves to the feminist plays of Karen Finley and Holly Hughes. Women do not require "protection" from explicit sexual materials. Women are as varied as any citizens of a democracy; there is no agreement or feminist code as to what images are distasteful or even sexist. It is the right and responsibility of each woman to read, view or produce the sexual material she chooses without the intervention of the state "for her own good." This is the great benefit of being feminists in a free society.

The strain of anti-pornologism is hardly what's distinctive about feminism; whereas anti-anti-pornology--the critique of the anti-porn movement on grounds other than constitutional formalism or First Amendment pietism--is a distinctive feminist contribution.
--HENRY LOUIS GATES W. E. B. Du Bois Professor Harvard University

In the past decade, some feminists have dramatically altered the long-standing debate in this country about sex and sexually oriented expression.Liberals--including those who advocated women's rights--had long sought increased individual freedom, and decreased government control, in the realm of sexuality. Accordingly, liberals had urged the repeal both of laws restricting consensual private sexual conduct between adults, and laws restricting the production of or access to sexually oriented materials, including books, photographs, and films.

Conversely, conservatives--including those who opposed women's rights causes--had consistently advocated strict government controls over both sexual conduct and sexual expression. With the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan and the growing mobilization of the so-called Religious Right, what had become a conservative clamor gained enormous political clout. It led to the 1986 Report of the Meese Pornography Commission, which in turn led to sweeping new law enforcement crackdowns on all manner of sexual materials, including popular, constitutionally protected works such as The Joy of Sex and Playboy magazine.

The startling new development is that, since the late 1970s, the traditional conservative and fundamentalist advocates of tighter legal restrictions on sexual expression have been joined by an increasingly vocal and influential segment of the feminist movement. Both groups target the sexual material they would like to curb with the pejorative label "pornography." Led by University of Michigan law professor Catharine MacKinnon and writer Andrea Dworkin, this faction of feminists--which I call "MacDworkinites"--argues that pornography should be suppressed because it leads to discrimination and violence against women. Indeed, MacKinnon and Dworkin have maintained that somehow pornography itself is discrimination and violence against women; that its mere existence hurts women, even if it cannot be shown to cause some tangible harm.

I share the fears, frustration, and fury about the ongoing problems of violence and discrimination against women, which no doubt have driven many to embrace the "quick fix" that censoring pornography is claimed to offer. Who wouldn't welcome an end to the threat of violence that so many women feel every time they venture out alone in the dark? But censoring pornography would not reduce misogynistic violence or discrimination; worse yet, as this book shows, it would likely aggravate those grave problems. In the words of feminist attorney Cathy Crosson, while the procensorship strategy may be superficially appealing, at bottom it reflects "the defeated, defeatist politics of those who have given up on really altering the basic institutions of women's oppression and instead have decided to slay the messenger."

The pornophobic feminists have forged frighteningly effective alliances with traditional political and religious conservatives who staunchly oppose women's rights, but who also seek to suppress pornography. As noted by feminist anthropologist Carole Vance, "Every right-winger agrees that porn leads to women's inequality--an inequality that doesn't bother him in any other way."

Under their joint anti-pornography banner, the allies in this feminist-fundamentalist axis have mounted increasing--and increasingly successful--campaigns against a wide range of sexually oriented expression, including not only art and literature, but also materials concerning such pressing public issues as AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, abortion, contraception, sexism, and sexual orientation.

So influential have the MacDworkinites become that all too many citizens and government officials believe that the suppression of sexually oriented materials is a high priority for all feminists, or even for all women. But nothing could be further from the truth.

An increasingly vocal cadre of feminist women who are dedicated to securing equal rights for women and to combating women's continuing second-class citizenship in our society strongly opposes any effort to censor sexual expression. We are as committed as any other feminists to eradicating violence and discrimination against women; indeed, many of us work directly for these goals every day of our lives. But we believe that suppressing sexual words and images will not advance these crucial causes. To the contrary, we are convinced that censoring sexual expression actually would do more harm than good to women's rights and safety. We adamantly oppose any effort to restrict sexual speech not only because it would violate our cherished First Amendment freedoms--our freedoms to read, think, speak, sing, write, paint, dance, dream, photograph, film, and fantasize as we wish--but also because it would undermine our equality, our status, our dignity, and our autonomy.

Women should not have to choose between freedom and safety, between speech and equality, between dignity and sexuality. Women can be sexual beings without forsaking other aspects of our identities. We are entitled to enjoy the thrills of sex and sexual expression without giving up our personal security. We can exercise our free speech and our equal rights to denounce any sexist expressions of any sort--including sexist expressions that are also sexual--rather than seek to suppress anyone else's rights.

Women's rights are far more endangered by censoring sexual images than they are by the sexual images themselves. Women do not need the government's protection from words and pictures. We do need, rather, to protect ourselves from any governmental infringement upon our freedom and autonomy, even--indeed, especially--when it is allegedly "for our own good." As former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis cautioned: Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when
the government's purposes are beneficent...The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." Or women of zeal.

The feminist procensorship movement is a far greater threat to women's rights than is the sexual expression it condemns with the epithet "pornography." For women who cherish liberty and equality, Big Sister is as unwelcome in our lives as Big Brother. Defending the sexual expression that some feminists condemn with the dread P word is thus a critical element in our support of free speech, sexual and reproductive autonomy, and women's equality.

Traditional explanations of why pornography must be defended from would-be censors have concentrated on censorship's adverse impacts on free speech and sexual autonomy. This book supports the anticensorship position from an important different perspective, which is not as widely understood. In light of the increasingly influential women's rights-centered rationale for censoring pornography, this book focuses on the women's rights-centered rationale for defending pornography. It explains why the procensorship faction of feminism poses a serious threat not only to human rights in general but also to women's rights in particular.