Explores the history and social aspects of pornography, discussing how it is made and distributed, its popularity and effect on modern culture, its influence on attitudes and crime, and current laws legislating the industry.

Andrea Dworkin’s 1981 critique of pornography is an important and urgent document about how the culture consumes and manipulates images of women. Essential and discomfiting reading in a social media era, where women’s bodies are being commodified and displayed more than ever. Andrea Dworkin’s seminal 1981 work on the issue of pornography argues that the industry serves only to harm and oppress women. Her discussion of pornography as an outgrowth of the power that men exert over women—the power of owning, the power of money, and the power of sex, among others—still blazes with its clarity and immediacy, and illustrates how these inequities, while displayed in raw form in pornography, are endemic in all media. With a lively and deeply compelling voice, Andrea Dworkin succinctly outlines her anti-pornography stance. Though the media environment may have changed, this passionately and powerfully argued classic remains a relevant and crucial contribution to the area of feminist studies.

Feminist philosophers have made important strides in altering the overwhelmingly male-centric discipline of philosophy. Yet, in Nancy Bauer’s view, most are still content to work within theoretical frameworks that are fundamentally false to human beings’ everyday experiences. This is particularly intolerable for a species of philosophy whose central aspiration is to make the world a less sexist place. How to Do Things with Pornography models a new way to write philosophically about pornography, women’s self-objectification, hook-up culture, and other contemporary phenomena. Unafraid to ask what philosophy contributes to our lives, Bauer argues that the profession’s lack of interest in this question threatens to make its enterprise irrelevant. Bauer criticizes two paradigmatic models of Western philosophizing: the Great Man model, according to which philosophy is the product of rare genius; and the scientistic model, according to which a community of researchers works together to discover once-and-for-all truths. The philosopher’s job is neither to perpetuate the inevitably sexist trope of the philosopher-genius nor to “get things right.” Rather, it is to compete with the Zeitgeist and attract people to the endeavor of reflecting on their settled ways of perceiving and understanding the world. How to Do Things with Pornography boldly enlists J. L. Austin’s How to Do Things with Words, showing that it should be read not as a theory of speech acts but as a revolutionary conception of what philosophers can do in the world with their words.

Pornography, also known as sexually explicit material intended to cause sexual arousal, has been hailed by many as a growing public health crisis. Multiple states have now passed resolutions declaring pornography a harm to individual and collective health for inciting epidemics of sexual assault, human trafficking, and compulsive use. But research on the impact of pornography reveals a complicated story behind the straightforward narrative of abuse, including the repression of sex positive materials in the pursuit of pornographic containment. Pornography and Public Health uses a rigorous evidence-based approach to explore the positive and negative effects of pornography on public health, revealing how pornography came to be considered a public health crisis despite the lack of US governmental support. While pornographic content varies widely, this book provides a holistic overview of the people who view pornography, what they are most likely to see, how content has changed over time, and how these changes appear to influence some users. Each chapter explores controversies related to important subtopics in pornography scholarship including aggression, body image, and problematic use, as well as acknowledging the benefits that porn and porn literacy can provide in some contexts. Drawing on meticulous research and close readings of the available data, Emily F. Rothman explores the implications of existing evidence for practice and policy and offers meaningful guidance for public health scholars interested in understanding, and resolving, one of the most complicated issues in health and human behavior of our time. With unique academic insights, Pornography and Public Health avoids moralizing to argue that we can take steps to minimize possible harms from pornography while simultaneously protecting sexual liberty and promoting respect for pornography performers.

A masterwork of feminist ideology, brilliantly exposing pornography as the antithesis of free expression and the enemy of liberty In this powerful and devastating critique, poet, philosopher, and feminist Susan Griffin exposes the inherent psychological horrors of pornography. Griffin argues that, rather than encouraging expression, pornographic images and the philosophies that support them actually stifle freedoms through the dehumanization, subjugation, and degradation of female subjects. The pornographic mindset, Griffin contends, is akin to racism in that it causes dangerous schisms in society and promotes sexual regression, fear, and hatred. This violent rift in Western culture is explored by examining the lives of six notable individuals across two centuries: Franz Marc, the Marquis de Sade, Kate Chopin, Lawrence Singleton, Anne Frank, and Marilyn Monroe. The result is an extraordinary new approach to evaluating sexual health and the parameters of erotic imagination. Griffin reveals pornography as “not a love of the life of the body, but a fear of bodily knowledge, and a desire to silence Eros.”

Does porn make the man?

For readers of Peggy Orenstein and Rebecca Traister, an authoritative, big think look at pornography in all its facets - historical, religious, and cultural. In the 1960s, sex researchers Masters and Johnson declared the end of the fake orgasm. Nearly two decades later, in 1982, evangelical activist Tim LaHaye foretold that the entire pornography industry would soon be driven out of business. Neither prediction proved true. Instead, with the rise of the internet, pornography saturates the American conscience more than ever and has reshaped our understanding of sexuality, relationships, media, and even the nature of addiction. Dr. Kelsy Burke has spent the last five years researching and interviewing internet pornography's opponents and its sympathizers. In The Pornography Wars, Burke does a deep dive into the long history of pornography in America and then turns her gaze on our present society to examine the ways this industry touches on the most intimate parts of American lives. She offers a complete understanding of the major players in the debates around porn's place in society: everyone from sex workers, activists, therapists, religious leaders, and consumers. In doing so, she addresses and debunks the myths that surround porn and porn usage while showing how everything from the way we teach children about sex to the legal protections for what can be published is tied up in the deeply complicated battles over pornography. Sweeping, savvy, and deeply researched, The Pornography Wars is a necessary and comprehensive new look at pornography and American life.