Dirty looks : women, pornography, power

Pornography produces a mixture of gut reactions in most people: fascination, guilt, disgust, rage. What it doesn't often stimulate is an open mind and reasoned discussion. Women, who are the subject of much pornographic material, have much at stake in the issue. So it is not surprising that campaigns in favour of increased censorship should have recruited women to their ranks. But there are good reasons for women to resist the rush towards moral outrage. This collection of essays, all by women, shows that the issues are both more complex and more interesting than the censorship lobby allows. Lynne Segal directly challenges the easy assumption that pornography causes violence towards women. Linda Williams argues that to repress the pornographic depiction of 'deviant' activity runs dangerously close to the outlawing of deviance itself. One major argument against pornography is that it always involves the domination and degradation of Women. As several of these essays show, this claim simply does not survive serious investigation; male desires for submission are a mainstay of visual and written pornography. This book deals not only with theory but also with practice, examining the shifting boundaries between art and pornography. Two essays on the female porn-performer Annie Sprinkle demonstrate that wit, intelligence and feminist awareness are not incompatible with a pornographic imagination. Photographer Grace Lau disarmingly explains the fun she gets from photographing the sexually unconventional