Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Womens' Equality

by Andrea Dworkin, Catharine A. MacKinnon

"Pornography is central in creating and maintaining the civil inequality of the sexes. Pornography is a systematic practice of exploitation and subordination based on sex which differentially harms women. . . ."

With those bold words began the groundbreaking local antipornography law drafted by writer Andrea Dworkin and lawyer Catharine A. MacKinnon.

Their completely new legal approach--in which pornography is defined as sex discrimination and therefore a violation of civil rights--would allow anyone injured by pornography to fight back by filing a civil lawsuit against pornographers.

First passed in December 1983 in Minneapolis, where it was supported by a grassroots coalition of women, people of color, neighborhood groups, and the city's welfare poor and working poor, this law has transformed the way people of conscience understand the devastating impact of pornography on women's right to equality. This new law also offers hope: an effective legal tool for making sex equality real.

In this comprehensive and easy-to-read guidebook, now available on line, the coauthors of the anti-pornography civil-rights ordinance explain:

            How pornography hurts women and how and why the
                civil-rights ordinance would make a difference.
            Why the pornography is so important to women's
                equality.
            The truth about the antipornography civil-rights
                ordinance--what it is, what it does,
                what it means, how it works.
            Answers to the lies about it--lies that the media have
                spread to protect the pornography industry.
            What you can do to stop the pornographers and
                further women's equality.

"The Ordinance does not take 'rights' away from anyone, . . . it takes the power to hurt women away from pornographers." --from Pornography and Civil Rights

Online Edition: http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dwork...

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Politics, Law, Theory, Feminist Theory, History

143 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1988

About the author

Andrea Rita Dworkin was an American radical feminist and writer best known for her criticism of pornography, which she argued was linked to rape and other forms of violence against women.

An anti-war activist and anarchist in the late 1960s, Dworkin wrote 10 books on radical feminist theory and practice. During the late 1970s and the 1980s, she gained national fame as a spokeswoman for the feminist anti-pornography movement, and for her writing on pornography and sexuality, particularly in Pornography - Men Possessing Women (1981) and Intercourse (1987), which remain her two most widely known books.

Reviews

[Amy Layton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an utterly fantastic book that translates the politic and legal language of Dworkin and MacKinnon's Ordinance to plain English and demystifies general misunderstandings (what about booksellers?  Who is included?  What's not included?  What about general nudity?).  This book, if you've read Dworkin's bibliography, succinctly summarizes her stance both in terms of feminist opinion and legal opinion up until this point, making it perhaps the most accessible of her work in terms of her impact.

Filled with great examples in an easy-to-understand language, this book is just so informative and necessary.  I can't recommend it highly enough!

Review cross-listed here!

[Kay Baird]

do I need both of theirs?

[cheer · Rating 4 out of 5]

extremely refreshing to read after that awful sontag essay

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

The sad world of a 12 year old who has a hard time relating to humans. In a twisted way, it closely resembles The Lord of the Rings. There are powerful wizards roaming the land, called "the law", and smelly, distasteful works, called "pornographers". Everything sex related is coming from the perspective of a child going to church but who has read enough to have a clear impression that he knows what is going on behind closed doors. Overall Dworkin is far too troubled to be fascinating.

[Ashley Y · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book was pretty good. In summary, it was about something called the Indianapolis ordinance that the authors Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon had drafted. Their argument is that the pro-porn stance defends pornography as free speech; the authors argue that the anti-porn stance is not against feminist liberation and sexuality but rather makes a civil rights case for why certain pornography should be banned, though the authors often conflate pornography with violence and at the very least, misogyny.

It's also interesting to read this in 2025, since this was published in 1988, and the landscape around how pornography is thought about, produced, legalized, regulated, debated, etc. has changed so much since this was written.

Here are the notes I took:

- Comparisons with pornography and civil rights in the sense that pornography should not be treated as freedom of speech in the same way that putting a “white’s only” sign on a public place is not freedom of speech. It is also an action. Also, the authors bring up something like lynching, which I had never thought of as a comparison, as in part also reinforcing an image of violent superiority/submissive inferiority in a parallel way.
- “How is a picture of a lynching regarded, socially and legally. If it takes a lynching to show a lynching, what is the social difference, really, between seeing a lynching and seeing a picture of one? What would it say about the seriousness with which society regards lynching if actual lynching is illegal but pictures of actual lynching are protected and highly profitable and defended as a form of freedom and a constitutional right? What would it say about the seriousness and effectiveness of laws against lynching if people paid good money to see it and the law looked the other way, so long as they saw it in mass-produced form? What would it say about one’s status if the society permits one to be hung from trees and calls it entertainment—calls it what it is to those who enjoy it, rather than what it is to those to whom it is done?” (61).
- Talks about this misbelief that pornographers are radical and not capitalists, which they are, profiting off of women’s bodies (76)
- Authors talk about how anti-pornographers are often conflated with the Moral Majority and someone named Falwell. She likens these political conflations to the conflations of people who support a state of Israel as being opposed in their definitions/reasons/politics (77).
- While I agree pornography is a civil rights issue and not a free speech issue, I think the authors are someone misunderstanding the “free speech” clause used against them, namely because it does not apply to whether or not they picket but that the subject they are picketing calls for censorship, although “The same people who say the pornographers must be protected because everything must be published and protected are the first to say that feminist work opposing pornography must not be published in order to protect free speech” (79).
- Interesting, the ACLU has been very active in defending pornography (83), I suppose because they deem it as a protected class of speech. This is just crazy to me but perhaps this is why pornography is so prevalent today: “This is one way the ACLU helps pornographers wage war on feminists: high-toned in public; political destruction in private by use of money, power, and ACLU lawyers. The ACLU itself also has a record of defending child pornography by opposing any laws against it as constitutionally prohibited incursions on free speech” (83). This could also be considered in line with their defense of the Klan and Nazis protected speech.
- This seems nice in a utopia but I am afraid of what people might/could justify under their proposed Ordinance: “The Ordinance requires proof of actual harm before any materials can be found illegal. The harm cannot be a moral one—say, that someone is offended by the materials or believes they are not proper family entertainment or finds that they violate their religious beliefs. The harm proven must be a harm of coercion, assault, defamation, or trafficking in sex-based subordination” (85)
- I have a problem with the methodology (self-selecting) done for the statistical data on page 88-90, though I understand and agree with its point that many believe pornography to be casually linked to sexual violence.

[Peg Tittle · Rating 5 out of 5]

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Pornography [also] engenders sex discrimination. By making a public spectacle and a public celebration of the worthlessness of women, by valuing women as sluts, by defining women according to our availability for sexual use, pornography makes all women’s social worthlessness into a public standard. Do you think such a being is likely to become Chairman of the Board? Vice President of the United States? Would you hire a “cunt” to represent you? Perform surgery on you? Run your university? Edit your broadcast? (p.48, emphasis mine)

Worth repeating.

And while we're on the topic ...

Andrea Dworkin addressing an audience of about 500 men …

“…why are you so slow? Why are you so slow to understand the simplest things; not the complicated ideological things. You understand those. The simple things. The
cliches. Simply that women are human to precisely the degree and quality that you are.

“It is an extraordinary thing to try to understand and confront why it is that men believe— and men do believe— that they have the right to rape. Men may not believe it when asked. Everybody raise your hand who believes you have the right to rape. Not too many hands will go up. It’s in life that men believe they have the right to force sex, which they don’t call rape. And it is an extraordinary thing to try to understand that men really believe that they have the right to hit and to hurt. And it is an equally extraordinary thing to try to understand that men really believe that they have the right to buy a woman’s body for the purpose of having sex: that that is a right. And it is very amazing to try to understand that men believe that the seven-billion- dollar-a-year industry that provides men with cunts is something that men have a right to.

“… men come to me or to other feminists and say: “What you’re saying about men isn’t true. It isn’t true of me. I don’t feel that way. I’m opposed to all of this. ”
And I say: don’t tell me. Tell the pornographers. Tell the pimps. Tell the warmakers. Tell the rape apologists and the rape celebrationists and the pro-rape ideologues. Tell the novelists who think that rape is wonderful. Tell Larry Flynt. Tell Hugh Hefner. There’s no point in telling me. I’m only a woman. There’s nothing I can do about it. These men presume to speak for you. They are in the public arena saying
that they represent you. If they don’t, then you had better let them know.

excerpts from “I Want A Twenty-four Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape”

[M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for the PopSugar Challenge 2019

14. A book by two female authors: Pornography and Civil Rights


Good to think about how to oppose pornography from a legal standpoint, without getting muddled on the whole free speech debate, because as MacKinnon and Dworkin prove, this is not about free speech, not about an abstract idea, but the harm pornography causes in itself, which is often left out of debates. They pose the weaknesses of obscenity laws, since pornography shapes culture, the idea of softcore and hardcore has taken ground. I think it would be better to talk about gateway pornography instead of "softcore", as if there were such thing as "mild pornography".

Oh, also a memorable bit for the choice-choicey libfems of late: if someone can be coerced to a sexual act on a pornographic set, they can be coerced into signing a contract. And Hugh Hefner was absolutely despicable:

" Dorothy Stratten, a Playboy centerfold who was sodomized, tortured, murdered, then raped after she was dead by her pimp-husband, Paul Snider, was tricked and intimidated into photo sessions by Snider, who then sold the photos and access to Dorothy herself to Hefner. Ms. Stratten said she was sexually molested by Hefner. After her death, Hefner was made aware that Ms. Stratten had hated the pornography made of her and had hated posing for it. He responded by issuing more videotapes of Ms. Stratten posing."

[Anirudh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was recommended by our social transformation prof in college who had a knack of deconstructing the stats quo. This book does that in many ways.
Comparing the inequality in pornography with previous existing power struggles from suffrage to civil rights is hard hitting specially because it rings true.
They have done a good job of defining the legal definition for pornography where it is an act and not a view point or representation or art.
They also address the whole freedom of speech issue, by explaining pornography as an act and not an expression of View-Point .
What I felt was missing was more quantitative data around the correlation between pornography and sexual violence. As I am sure there are numerous studies on this. Although, there were plenty of testimonials and examples of exploitation of women by pornographers, including Playboy's.

However, the authors used a lot of their points again throughout the book for any counter questions posed, making the work seem more like a diatribe at times.

Lastly, The ordinance is itself seems something so obvious that should exist constitutionaly and hence it is surprising that there are still no laws (except the individual state ordinances) for protection against coerced pornography.

[4YANAMI · Rating 4 out of 5]

super explication sur l’importance d’une législation autour de la pornographie, avec comme priorité la protection des femmes (et autres individus mais principalement des femmes) qui en sont victimes directes, en leur donnant les outils juridiques pour

mise en parallèle avec le mouvement des droits civiques contre l’esclavage puis la ségrégation aux états-unis
obviously très centré sur les US ducoup mais maintenant ça m’intéresse de savoir ce qu’il en est en france et ailleurs !

[Octavia · Rating 4 out of 5]

It must be so hard to be Catherine McKinnon and see all of your worst predictions about porn come true.

The language is so simple and straightforward. Not at all mired in the heavy referencing of academic text so you would think it would be easy to argue against yet the best people can do even now is call it Christian. Says so much about the state of female discrimination in the modern day as well in a world now overrun with misogynist followers of Andrew Tate (both a pimp and pornagrapher).

[Wenjing Fan · Rating 5 out of 5]

很强烈的一个小短文。对于Pornography行业对女性剥削的批评我只有很浅薄的理解，说不了太多。The Nature of Change和Pornography and Civil Rights两章特别好，简洁明了，我觉得这两章可以称为Pornography行业的SCUM了。The Ordinance和后面的几章更适合作为工具教材。

[mia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"finally, the harm is invisible because of the smile, because women are made to smile, women aren't just made to do sex acts. we are made to smile while we do then."

[Taja Ofthemarigold · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Статус женщин как существ более низкого класса укрепляется убеждением, что женщины по природе своей сексуально подчинены, провоцируют у мужчин сексуальную агрессию, получая от неё удовольствие, и получают сексуальное наслаждение от боли. По природе своей женщины - рабыни, и само рабство сексуально" - как точно сказано!
"Люди, имеющие власть над другими людьми, обычно называют свою власть «правами». Когда те люди, над которыми они властвуют, хотят равенства, то власть имущие говорят им, что если общество изменится, то будут попраны самые важные права"

"Государство является одним из средств мужской власти. Еще одно из них — насильник. Еще одно — муж. Еще одно — сутенер. Еще одно — священник. Еще одно — издатель. И так далее. Сопротивление мужской власти требует больше, чем сопротивление государству или власти государства."
"Принятие мужской власти значит принятие важных элементов собственной социальной и половой неполноценности. Уважение к мужской власти значит уважение к своему статусу низшего класса."