ISBN-13: 9780415918138 / Angielski / Miękka / 1997 / 200 str.
By engaging in an empirical investigation of the pornography industry itself, the authors of this text - each grounded in the radical feminist anti-pornography movement - intend to move beyond the rhetorical bomb-tossing of an often polarized debate. The authors engage in a systematic examination of the politics, production, content and consumption of contemporary mass-market heterosexual pornography, with the aim of contributing to a fuller understanding of pornography's role in the cultural construction of gender, racial and sexual identities and relations. They begin with an overview of the social and political history of the feminist anti-pornography movement and the debate over pornography within feminism. Then they address the various rhetorical dodges - definitional, legal and causal - used to distort the fact that institutionalized pornography helps maintain the sexual and social oppression of women within a patriarchal system. Exploring the beginnings of the commercial pornography industry, the book focuses in part on the history of Playboy magazine.