Full Description
Over the past twenty years debates about pornography have raged within feminism and beyond. Throughout the 1970s feminists increasingly addressed the problem of men's sexual violence against women, and many women reduced the politics of men's power to questions about sexuality. By the 1980s these questions had become more and more focused on the issue of pornography--now a metaphor for the menace of male power. Collapsing feminist politics into sexuality and sexuality into pornography has not only caused some of the deepest splits between feminists, but made it harder to think clearly about either sexuality or pornography--indeed, about feminist politics more generally.This provocative collection, by well-known feminists, surveys these arguments, and in particular asks why recent feminist debates about sexuality keep reducing to questions of pornography.
Contents
Feminist fundamentalism: the shifting politics of sex and censorship / Elizabeth Wilson
Negotiating sex and gender in the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography / Carole S. Vance
From Minneapolis to Westminster / Mandy Merck
Sweet sorrows, painful pleasure: pornography and the perils of heterosexual desire / Lynne Segal
Just looking for trouble: Robert Mapplethorpe and fantasies of race / Kobena Mercer
Gonad the Barbarian and the Venus Flytrap: portraying the female and male orgasm / Anne McClintock
Pornography and fantasy: psychoanalytic perspectives / Elizabeth Cowie
Liberalism and the contradictions of sexual politics / Mary McIntosh
Delightful visions: from anti-porn to eroticizing safer sex / Robin Gorna
Unquestionably a moral issue: rhetorical devices and regulatory imperatives / Carol Smart
Classroom conundrums: sex education and censorship / Jane Mills
So long as it's not sex and violence: Andrea Dworkin's Mercy / Harriett Gilbert
Pornographies on/scene, or diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks / Linda Williams
Bad girls: women who use pornography / Loretta Loach. Lesbian erotic explorations / Gillian Rodgerson
The female nude: pornography, art and sexuality / Lynda Nead
"A little bit spicy, but not too raw": Mae West, pornography and popular culture / Marybeth Hamilton
