Recognizing Men
A Feminist Vision
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2926032 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Patricia S Mann (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1986 |
| Issue | 16 |
| Pages | 17 |
| Publication date | 1986-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Text (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0164-2472 • E-ISSN: 1527-1951 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/466284 |
| OpenAlex | W2314681266 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 4 |
elude our conceptual grasp, for the most part. The pornography debate gains significance from the fact that it has been a political vehicle for women-on both sides of the issue-to begin to assert and articulate fundamental changes in male and female forms of sexual agency. In this article, I will analyze the underpinnings of the pornography debate, and then attempt to move beyond it to identify terms more adequate to the renegotiation of the sexual dynamic between men and women. The first thing to notice about the pornography controversy is the political form it has taken. Each side in this debate, both Anti-Pornography feminists and the opposing Anti-Censorship feminists (hereafter AP feminists and AC feminists), has been able to drape itself in the resonant, flowing texts of 19th-century liberalism. In fact, one can even trace the political leitmotif of each side back to a single political source, John Stuart Mill's now classical statement of democratic political agency in On Liberty. The AP feminists rally behind the claim that pornography harms women. Whether focussing on a notion that it encourages and increases actual violence against women, or more broadly condemning pornography as a sort of environmental pollution harmful to men as well as women in its degrading attitude to human bodies, AP feminists identify pornography as a public harm.' It was J.S. Mill who first proposed a Harms Principle as the justification for government curtailment of individual activities, and discussion today over whether or not a government may intervene to abridge a particular individual freedom is still formulated primarily in Millian terms of whether or not a harm has actually been committed, and whether the act of government intervention will be capable of eradicating this harm without creating greater harms as a result of the intervention.2 The AP movement thus enables feminists to enter the mainstream legal and political structure as morally indignant citizens, expressing legitimate anger at the harmful activities of the pornography industry, pressing for legal measures to deal with this social problem. The frequent alliance between AP feminists and members of religious or conservative groups serves, in a sense, to emphasize the objective nature of the social harm at stake, when citizens with such disparate political agenda band together to oppose it
Political science · Sociology · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Gender Studies · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |