Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Nadine Strossen's text is useful reading for anyone distressed by the tone of the most prominent anti-censorship activists - she points out the willingness of MacKinnon and Dworkin to ignore civil rights in favour of passing the laws they want, shows how anti-censorship laws, when in place, are not used to target heterosexual porn but gay and lesbian literature, and generally deplores the image of women in the MacDworkin canon as helpless children who need protecting by the benevolent laws of a (hang on, patriarchal and sexist) government. As an ACLU lawyer, she's been attacked for defending pornographers, but she points out that the ACLU has also defended the rights of anti-porn feminists to display inflammatory material. (A comical image: the ACLU defending people's right to say that the ACLU are scum!) She has a perhaps misty-eyed view of conditions in the porn industry, but her argument that the consequences of censoring porn vastly outweigh the value of doing so is, I think, unarguable. (For example, if porn were to be banned, it wouldn't stop being made; but working conditions would be a hell of a lot worse, and the women who work in it would lose all legal protection they have.) A refreshing moment of sanity in a debate that has mostly been characterised by insanity and terror tactics on one side and incoherence on the other. You still have a right to free speech in the USA. Don't waste your time trying to censor porn when there are far more widespread and less glamorous problems that women have to deal with every day.

Despite the acrimony of some (obviously biased) reviewers, this is an outstanding book. Strossen has become a regular source for high school and collegiate debaters for precisely the type of solid analysis you'll find here. The legal argumentation is great and its nice to hear from an actual lawyer, not merely a social scientist who thinks s/he understands the field.

The rest of the book is also well-written, good structure and organization, decent index, entertaining style, excellent logic. It is obviously, designed to argue in favor of free speech, but her critics' responses that she ignores data do not impede the force of her argument. In fact, a lot of the data they rely on is less than ideally gathered, as Strossen points out. If it wasn't a powerful attack, Strossen's opponents wouldn't be as viciously opposed to this book as they are.

If, like me, you need evidence for debate rounds or are preparing a thesis on free speech, this book is essential, if only because it has generated so much debate. Don't be mislead by the mediocre rating or the views of an unsuccessful porn star, this book is a "must read".

I liked the carefully reasoned defense of pornography in this book. By the end of this book you will be able to stand up to the mcDworkinites and their ilk. You will also be just a bit tired of hearing the same argument repeated from every possible angle. The author points out that victim's like Linda Lovelace are rare and snuff films are mythology. However, you will have to go elsewhere to find a solid analysis of what pornography does to its practitioners

With some concern about ten years ago I began hearing about a group of feminists who were campaigning against pornography. Catherine MacKinnon, one of the leaders, wrote, "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." MacKinnon teamed up with another feminist, Andrea Dworkin, who has spouted a remarkable range of anti-sex rants: "Intercourse with men as we know them is increasingly impossible... It means remaining the victim... It means acting out the female role, incorporating the masochism, self-hatred, and passivity which are central to it." The MacDworkinites, as they are called, might be considered by some just a branch of feminists that are even more radical than their sisters, but the problem is that they are eager to chip away at the First Amendment.

That brings them into conflict with the American Civil Liberties Union, and in 1995 Nadine Strossen, President of the ACLU, wrote a fine argument against the MacDworkinites, which has now been issued with some updates, _Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights_ (New York University Press). It is a thrilling invocation of the principles of liberty given by the First Amendment, and a reasoned but passionate argument against those feminists who would for some notion of a greater good restrict free speech to make social gains.

The MacDworkinites have made some enormous leaps of definition and logic that to them justify suppression of certain forms of speech. They define pornography as sexually explicit description that subordinates or degrades women, and they insist that as such it causes discrimination and violence against women. The ACLU has successfully battled against the definition of pornography pushed by the pro-censorship feminists in various states and communities, but it has, of course, not taken legal action in Canada, which in 1992 adopted the definition and made illegal sexually explicit expression that might be deemed dehumanizing or degrading to women. The Canadian law has no provision for work that has serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value (as our obscenity laws do now), and it allows for suppression of an entire work even if only parts of it meet the new obscenity definition. MacKinnon and Dworkin saw this as a stunning victory for women. What happened in Canada is that the feminists who worked for the new law have been stunned to find it used against them. Women's bookstores, in particular, were raided if they carried sexual material. Homosexual material was found by definition to be degrading and was seized. And, in a delicious irony, two books entitled _Pornography: Men Possessing Women_ and _Woman Hating_ were seized by Canadian Customs at the American border, because they contained illegal descriptions of pain and bondage. The descriptions, however, were there for the purpose of persuading society against misogyny, and the books were written by Dworkin herself.

Much of _Defending Pornography_ deals with the legal reasons that MacDworkinist regulations undermine women's rights and human rights, and the chilling effect that such regulations would have on free expression, but it does touch on pornography in a more general view. If there should be no laws restricting freedom of the press (or other media), what is so particularly special about sexual content that justifies laws restricting freedom of the press? Why, if a work has sexual content, must we insist that it have artistic, scientific, or political content as well, when we do not do so for anything else? If men and women (and women are increasingly users of erotic material) find pornography entertaining (and even the Meese commission found it could be educational), how does it benefit society to restrict such material? And are such benefits worth the losses that censorship, censorship exemplified by the MacDworkinist restrictions, would necessarily make? _Defending Pornography_ makes plain the losses that have already occurred and serves as a call to arms against prudes or well-intentioned advocates that would cut back First Amendment rights.

This is a well-written, insightful and thought-provoking book on women's rights. Strossen (a New York Law School professor and feminist) points out that women do not really have to choose between freedom and security as the pro-censorship feminists would have us all believe. She refutes the position of Dworkin and MacKinnon that all sexual expression is degrading to women because all sex is rape.

Strossen shows that there is nothing intrinsically misogynistic about sex or sexual expression; that "pornography" is a McCarthyist label for anything one finds offensive; that the best tool against speech that offends is more speech, not less; and that the ultimate danger (and often the goal) of anti-sex censorship is to reinforce the traditional gender role of women as weak and helpless possessions of men rather than to change it.

Claims that Strossen ignores the exploitation of women in this book miss the point. She is not writing that exploitation does not exist, just that it is not a product of the sexually-explicit expression itself (nor would banning "pornography" eliminate it). Would one ban the clothing industry and walk around naked because children suffer in sweatshops? Or does one recognize that the exploiters are the problem, not the clothes?

Strossen has been accused of being a pawn of "pimps" in her role as the president of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ironic story of those same anti-sex, pro-censorship feminists running to the ACLU to (successfully) defend their right to publicly display and distribute "pornography" is quite an eye-opener -- so to speak.

Strossen's indignation of the 'MacDworkinites' is spot on and necessary in a world filled with political spin and personal ideologies. She defends the freedom of speech and the ideas that, as citizens, we hold very dearly. It is not enough to state that Strossen's arguments are logical, distinct, and thoughtful. Free expression and speech are imperative to a culture who believes they are free. She points out the liberties the government makes when it comes to our individual freedoms. Strossen takes on a functional perspective of 'pornography' and understands that sexual expression is not the only way we (citizens) are oppressed. The rhetoric is intelligent in a respect that it allows each and every one of us to assume that sexual orientation, expression, and thought are practical and natural in humans.

Excellent argument from civil liberties point of view. Very well written. Author was president of American Civil Liberties Union for 18 years; and a constitutional law professor.

A carefully written book that tackles many of the difficult issues in the field of first amendment jurisprudence. Nadine Strossen explains the underlying inconsistancies with the anti-porn, procensorship view. Brilliantly written!! For those interested in reading about free speech issues, I also recommend "Beyond the Burning Cross : A Landmark Case of Race, Censorship and the First Amendment" by Edward Cleary.

Finally, there is a feminist viewpiont that I would align withmy own. For a time being, I thought that the entire would had turnedinto a radical freakshow. Strossen has taken a stunning, common-sense approach to such a difficult topic. I have insisted that all of my friends, (both male and female), read this book!

Nadine Strossen provides a chilling account on how sexual expression is under attack by a bizarre alliance of radical feminists and right-wing lunatics. She devastates the Mackinnon-Dworkin procensorship position, pointing out its glaring legal and common-sense errors. She shows how censorship harms women more than pornography, and how attacks on pornography quickly mushroom into attacks on all forms of sexual expression. Anyone who values his or her freedom needs to read this book. It is aimed at a general audience and does not contain too much technical legal analysis.