Applications Of Feminist Legal Theory

Introduction

Introduction THE ANTIPORNOGRAPHY MOVEMENT has ignited one of the most heated controversies in feminist legal theory today. Feminist scholarship about pornography dates to the 1970s.1 During that period, writers Robin Morgan, Susan Brownmiller, and Andrea Dworkin2 introduced the view that pornography represents an ideology that influences social attitudes. Robin Morgan, for example, linked pornography and rape. "Pornography is the theory , and rape the practice," she wrote.3 Similarly, Susan Brownmiller, in Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rnpe, identified pornography as one of two major institutions (along with prostitution) that contribute to rape.4 Calling for a ban on pornography, she wrote that pornography, like rape, is "designed to dehumanize women, to reduce the female to an object of sexual access, not to free sensuality from moralistic or parental inhibition ."51n addition, Andrea Dworkin in Woman Hatingexposed several societal practices and beliefs, including pornography, as forms of ''woman hating."6 During the same era, feminists also began addressing pornography as a political issue .7 In 1970 Robin Morgan and a group ofwomen staged a sit-in at Grove Press, claiming that the press had "earned millions off the basic theme of humiliating, degrading, and dehumanizing women through sadomasochistic literature, pornographic films, and oppressive and exploitative practices."8 In Los Angeles in 1976, feminists staged a demonstration and held a press conference to protest a billboard of a chained and bruised woman, captioned "I'm black and blue from the Rolling Stones and I love it." In Rochester, New York, women vandalized a cinema showing a film in which a woman was reputedly tortured and murdered for sexual titillation. In San Francisco in 1978, Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media organized a national conference and staged a ''Take Back the Night" march through the city's red-light district. Finally, Copyrighted Material 5 6 I PORNOGRAPHY in New York City in 1979, a newly formed organization (Women Against Pornography) offered biweekly antipornography tours of Times Square.9 Although feminist concern about pornographywas intensifYing, feminists were not united in their views. By the end of the 1970s, significant divisions had emerged. Articles and books criticized the antipornography position.10 As Freedman and Thorne describe: This latest political split within the women's movement, like all such splits, has been painful for participants and observers alike. It is especially unsettling for a movement that has flourished on an ideal of female unity and a dream of a common sexual politics. At times many ofus have wished that the debate would simply fade away, or magically resolve itself, without our having to take personal stock of our confusion about sexuality, violence, pornography, and power. But when feelings run so high, on so central a political concern, there is, we sense, more than mere factionalism, personality conflict, or a natural process of organizational subdivision at stake. The debates and their intensity signal important issues that come at a critical moment in the history of our movement.11 Feminists directed subsequent scholarship, in the 1980s, toward political reform.12 One form targeted the findings of two government commissions on pornography: the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography created in 1967 by President Lyndon Johnson and chaired by constitutional scholar William Lockhart; and the U.S. Attorney General's Commission on Pornography (named the Meese commission after Attorney General Edwin Meese), which was established in 1985.13 Both commissions studied the nature, extent, and impact on society of pornography and made recommendations . Whereas the Lockhart commission found no empirical evidence linking pornography with criminal behavior,14 and consequently recommended repeal oflegislation prohibiting its sale, exhibition, or distribution to consenting adults, the Meese commission recommended increased prosecution and the enactment of more restrictive legislation.15 Feminists from both the antipornography and the anticensorship positions criticized the commissions' findings. 16 Feminist political action targeted the legislative process as well. Catharine MacKinnonl7 and Andrea Dworkinl8 in particular were leading reformers, creating a novel legal theory to regulate pornography. Together, they drafted an antipornography ordinance that provided the basis for legislative efforts in Minneapolis and Indianapolis .19 The ordinance became the focus of intense philosophical and legal controversy involving issues of women's sexuality, feminist theory and practice, and constitutional law. In addition, the Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force (FACT) was formed in 1984 in New York by feminist activists and scholars to oppose the MacKinnon-Dworkin ordinance .2o Attorney Nan Hunter, founding member of FACT and director of the American Civil Liberties Union Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, was...