In the US, where the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees free speech, the Women Against Pornography are more cognisant of the dangers of censorship than their Australian sisters. We do not advocate censorship. Feminists here concede that banning pornography will not even begin to attack the reasons why so many men hate and oppress women. And they work on many other fronts to end sexism and violence against women. Yet they still appeal, as the puritans have always appealed, to the censor.
Most pornography is sexist, yet can be a source of erotic pleasure to men and women.
Not all pornography, however, is violent. Some 95 per cent of it, according to Janet Strickland, shows both parties getting sexual pleasure. It is the five per cent, where the woman is unwilling and is brutalised to boot that sickens. To protest that kind of pornography, to raise people's consciousness about sexist sex, to ensure men are punished for assaulting and raping women is one thing. But to define all pornography as the enemy and to ban what adults watch in their homes strikes me as a kneejerk reaction to the perplexing realities of pornography.