Customer Reviews

The Reader, the Author, His Woman and Her Lover: Soft-Core Pornography and Heterosexual Men (Sexual Politics)

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Disappointing. Such a great topic, but this book is written for academics only! The language and debates are incomprehensible to the average intelligent reader if she has not done graduate study in sociology or cultural studies.

Like David Loftus's book on the same topic, the primary focus is to address the assertion of anti-porn feminists that porn is equal to violence against women (a 20 year old argument at this point). There is so much more to discuss, but Hardy, like Loftus, lets his enemy frame the language and topic of debate and does not ask questions of his own. Given the potential of the topic, it turns out to be a major disappointment.

Further, the sample is only 12 or so people, which frankly, even for qualitative work is absurdly small. This book was written in England (before internet porn was available) where hard core porn is banned. So it addresses nothing more than softcore magazines and it's applicability to the American experience is questionable.