Pornography

Abstract This book assesses American, Canadian, and Swedish legal challenges to the explosive spread of pornography and its contribution to violence against women within their significantly different democratic systems and constructs a political and legal theory for effectively challenging the sex industry under law. The obstacles are exposed as more ideological and political than strictly legal, although they often play out in the legal arena. The pornography industry is documented to exploit vulnerable populations in making its materials. A thorough analytical review of empirical studies that use complementing methods demonstrates that using pornography substantially contributes to consumers becoming more sexually aggressive, on average desensitizing them and contributing to a demand for more subordinating, aggressive, and degrading materials. Consumers often wish to imitate pornography with unwilling partners; many demand sex from prostituted people, who have few or no alternatives. Most young men regularly consume pornography. Legal challenges to the harms are shown to be more effective under legal systems that promote equality and when the laws empower those most harmed, in contrast to state-enforced regulations (e.g., criminal obscenity laws). Drawing on feminist theory, among others, this book argues that pornography is among the linchpins of sex inequality, contending that a civil society forum can empower those harmed, with representatives who have more substantial incentives to address them. This book explains why democracies fail to address the harms of pornography and offers a political and legal theory for making the necessary changes. The insights can be applied to other intractable problems of hierarchy.