Customer Reviews

In Harm's Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings

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This wonderful book is required reading for all those who care about women (and especially for those who only CLAIM to care about women)

This book is necessary reading for anyone interested in the future motion of first amendment free speech law. By simply providing unedited transcripts of hearings, MacKinnon allows the critical reader to some to their own conclusions. Though their arguments are in the end unpersuasive and potentially very dangerous to free expression, the newest form of censorship is worth keeping an eye on.

This book is great. It will likely scare most women (and, needless to say, ALL men) because most women have been hypnotized by society (READ: male society) into believing that they must have a heterosexual, penetrative relationship in order to be worthwhile human beings. This enables men to keep using women as semen vessels, maids, and cooks. Things are changing, thanks to the honesty of women like MacKinnon and Dworkin.

If 10% of women cared even half as much about women's rights as MacKinnon & Dworkin, we'd be living in a much different society: A society that values women as humans, and not as animals whose purpose is to "service" men.

This book is necessary reading for anyone interested in the future motion of first amendment free speech law. By simply providing unedited transcripts of hearings, MacKinnon allows the critical reader to some to their own conclusions. Though their arguments are in the end unpersuasive and potentially very dangerous to free expression, the newest form of censorship is worth keeping an eye on.

I highly recommend this book to feminists, anti-feminists, sexual liberals, and any individual who is interested in the issue of pornography's harm to women and to society in general.

Unfortunately, the dominant ideology entertained in mainstream media is that sex - unchallenged and unquestioned - is OK. Pornography, according to the sexual liberals, is merely a fantasy, a representation, a speech. The fact that pornographers will not have their speech expressed without using the bodies of women, children, and sometimes men, is totally ignored; and the insidious side of pornography, that it is reflective and indicative to the dominant norms and values of a male supremacist society, is also rendered invisible.

This book, however, contains testimonies of women, girls and men of different ethnicity, class, and sexual preferences who have been victims of sexual abuse with the use of pornography. Their speech have been previously denied and silenced by the so-called sexual liberals who have advocated for free speech yet felt free to omit the speech of the exploited.

This is, by far, the best book on the subject I have ever read. If you sneer and think I'm hyping here, then you are not familiar with the brilliant mind of Andrea Dworkin and what she is capable of. But if you are familiar with her and are interested in gender issues, then this read should be an epiphany. In these oppressive times, questions as those dealt with in this book are as important as the fact that USA and Western Europe are exploiting Third World countries. We need to give feminists our attention, in order for them to remind us of the many ways women are oppressed, in the same way we need to be reminded that child labour and slavery never disappeared, we just moved it to the developing countries, where we didn't have to see it or call it American or European (even though it is; just look at who abuses the Free-Trade Zones).
Just as Naomi Klein ("No Logo") was a prominent figure in the fight against consumerism and Third World slavery and as Chomsky was a source of inspiration for peace activists as he opened our eyes to American corruption and militarism (which the government meticculously put in the garbage can together with all other matters that aren't lucrative), this book will be crucial for feminists in the struggle for equality, as it takes a determined step towards women's liberation.
Yes, I have read Simone de Beauvoir and I know that she would cry if she saw the state the world is in today.
Pornography means that we glamorize prostitution of both men and women, but it is most of all women who are abused, drugged and have their lives raped forever. Tracy Lords admits that by living in a culture that endorses porn, she was drawn into it and got spat out with a reputation ruining and ridiculing her name and image, leaving her empty and alienated from society. This book fights her fight, and it fights for all those defenseless and scared little girls who have been used like she was, a fight that hopefully will prevent little Tracies in the future to have their innocense stolen from them.
Just as we don't allow Nazy propaganda we should disallow pornography, to prevent it from brainwashing our children with its rapist mentality and loveless antipathy against all things real.
"You might not see things yet on the surface, but underground, it's already on fire." Y.B. Mangunwijaya

Anything these two men-hating individuals write is suspect