Enough, says Penthouse and Maxim writer Gil Reavill, the concerned father of a middle school daughter. As a liberal, Reavill always believed that Americans have a First Amendment right to read and view sexually explicit material, and he saw nothing wrong with contributing to publications like Screw. But he now argues that unlike magazines and videos—viewed in private and by consent—smut in the public square has simply gone too far.
Reavill takes the reader inside the sex entertainment industry, recalling his own experiences as a young man from the Midwest seduced by a job at an X-rated magazine in New York City. With witty and fascinating stories, he shows how his colleagues rebelled against a stifling culture by pushing the envelope. Little did they realize that words and images considered porn in the 1980s are now on the public airwaves around the clock.
Many Americans instinctively defend smut because censorship strikes them as unacceptable. But Reavill argues that we have to balance the rights of those who want to buy smut with the rights of those who want to avoid it. His book will spark a long- overdue debate about where we draw the lines in pop culture.
