Pornography: Home

Reports in recent years have suggested that 70 million individuals visit porn sites every week; that among viewers aged 18-24, women watch more porn than men; and that amongmiddle-aged, white-collar workers, three-quarters of men and half of women have admitted to looking at pornography websites while at work. While debates and emotions around porn can run high, there is a crucial need for reliable information and rational conversation. In this book, Shira Tarrant parses the wide range of statistics that we have on the pornography industry, sorting myth from reality in an objective, fascinating andknowledgeable fashion. She looks at ongoing political controversies around the industry, the feminist porn wars, the views of the religious right, the history of pornography, landmark legal cases, and the latest in medical research. The Pornography Industry also explains the industry basics - who works in porn, why people become performers, how much they earn, and what happens on a porn set.

Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, debates over pornography have raged, and the explosive spread in recent years of sexually explicit images across the Internet has only added more urgency to these disagreements. Politicians, judges, clergy, citizen activists, and academics have weighedin on the issues for decades, complicating notions about what precisely is at stake, and who stands to benefit or be harmed by pornography.This volume takes an unusual but radical approach by analyzing pornography philosophically. Philosophers Andrew Altman and Lori Watson recalibrate debates by viewing pornography from distinctly ethical platforms - namely, does a person's right to produce and consume pornography supersede a person'sright to protect herself from something often violent and deeply misogynistic?In a for-and-against format, Altman first argues that there is an individual right to create and view pornographic images, rooted in a basic right to sexual autonomy. Watson counteracts Altman's position by arguing that pornography inherently undermines women's equal status. Central to theirdisagreement is the question of whether pornography truly harms women enough to justify laws aimed at restricting the production and circulation of such material. Through this debate, the authors address key questions that have dogged both those who support and oppose pornography: What ispornography? What is the difference between the material widely perceived as objectionable and material that is merely erotic or suggestive? Do people have a right to sexual arousal? Does pornography, or some types of it, cause violence against women? How should rights be weighed againstconsequentialist considerations in deciding what laws and policies ought to be adopted?Bolstered by insights from philosophy and law, the two authors engage in a reasoned examination of questions that cannot be ignored by anyone who takes seriously the values of freedom and equality.

Debates over pornography tend to be heated and deeply polarized - as with other topics that have to do with sex, pornography cuts to the core of our values and convictions. Philosophical debates concerning pornography are fraught with difficult questions: What is pornography? What doespornography do (if anything at all)? Is the consumption of pornography a harmless private matter, or does pornography violate women's civil rights? What, if anything, should legally be done about pornography? Can there be a genuinely feminist pro-pornography stance?Answering these questions is complicated by widespread confusion over the conceptual and political commitments of different anti- and pro-pornography positions, and whether these positions are even in tension with one another. For a start, different people understand pornography differently and caneasily end up talking past one another. In order to clarify the debate and make genuine philosophical headway in discussing the topic of pornography, Mari Mikkola here provides an accessible introduction to contemporary philosophical debates conducted from a feminist philosophical perspective. Thestarting point of the book's examination is morally neutral, and the book provides a comprehensive discussion of various philosophical positions on pornography that are found in ethics, aesthetics, feminist philosophy, political philosophy, epistemology, and social ontology. The book clarifiesdifferent stances in the debate, thus clarifying and helping readers to understand what exactly is as stake. In addition, although the book does not argue for a single outlook, it puts forward substantive philosophical views on different aspects of philosophical debates about pornography. Mikkolaultimately offers readers important methodological insights about doing philosophical work on something as ubiquitous as pornography.