| Title | : | In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0674445791 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780674445796 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 508 |
| Publication | : | First published February 15, 1998 |
Speaking at hearings on a groundbreaking antipornography civil rights law, women offer eloquent witness to the devastation pornography has caused in their lives. Supported by social science experts and authorities on rape, battery, and prostitution, discounted and opposed by free speech advocates and absolutists, their riveting testimony articulates the centrality of pornography to sexual abuse and inequity today.
At issue in these hearings is a law conceived and drafted by Andrea Dworkin and Catharine A. MacKinnon that defines harm done through pornography as a legal injury of sex discrimination warranting civil redress. From the first set of hearings in Minneapolis in 1983 through those before the Massachusetts state legislature in 1992, the witnesses heard here expose the commonplace reality of denigration and sexual subordination due to pornography and refute the widespread notion that pornography is harmless expression that must be protected by the state.
Introduced with powerful essays by MacKinnon and Dworkin, these hearings—unabridged and with each word scrupulously verified—constitute a unique record of a conflict over the meaning of democracy itself—a major civil rights struggle for our time and a fundamental crisis in United States constitutional law: Can we sacrifice the lives of women and children to a pornographer's right to free "speech"? Can we allow the First Amendment to shield sexual exploitation and predatory sexual violence? These pages contain all the arguments for protecting pornography—and dramatically document its human cost.
In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings Reviews
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I got it, even way back then, how MacKinnon would and could argue that pornography was the central means by which men achieved inequality to women, by making the matter merely sexual consumption. However, I didn't buy it then or now. I think it's the economy that is the central way we keep sexism and male dominance, not commercialized erotica. I read this working in Civil Rights doing mandatory trainings for K-12 schools after the '92 decision by the Supremes that gave both compulsory and punitive damages to victims of sexual harassment and held schools accountable. I could never bend over backward enough not to be considered both anti-male and/or anti-sex. It's a jungle out there...
I do agree with MacKinnon that if we've had a decent *definition* of pornography that had to do with not allowing depiction of images of human beings that were degrading, we wouldn't have let our sex-crazed but also sex-dysfunctional (e.g., mixed messages) culture lead the world in the grossiest, most obscene (in terms of degredation) of pornography, where "anything goes". Instead, the "Supremes" gave us a definition of obscenity that couldn't be more relativistic and vague - that which doesn't comport with "community standards" (whose?) and that appeal only to our "prurient" (who defines?) interests. Sex sells, period.
People should read MacKinnon on sexual harassment again, if they didn't "in the day"! -
I love love love anything and everything MacKinnon and Dworkin do, and reading the hearings of their much-contested ordinance was an incredible and enlightening experience of not only how many supporters there were, but would-be supporters if only they could just get their heads out of their you-know-whats (sorry, booksellers, I love you all, but selling a romance novel is not within the definition of pornography that these two present, so just like.....stop lol). It was even moreso interesting to see where the resistors to this ordinance stood and why.
Filled with the hearings, letters from those who could not be present, appendices, and more, this book, in my humble opinion, is one of the best books discussing pornography: what it is, what constitutes it, who it happens to, why it is harmful on a personal and community level, and how we might begin to punish those who force others to partake in it.
Definitely worth the read, and well worth your time as a feminist activist!
Review cross-listed
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A very difficult read. Shocking and depressing. It becomes repetitive and boring after a while, but I think it's important to see how all those women had a very similar experience.
