Pornography and Obscenity
In ancient Greek, the term “pornography” means “writes about prostitutes,” emphasizing the link between pornography and prostitution. Although both involve the selling of sex for money, the two are often treated as (legally) distinct practices. The thread of the Greek root that is preserved in most modern considerations of pornography is the part about “writing” or words, and hence, particularly in the United States legal and social context, speech and expression (see Speech, Freedom of). 
 
 
Keywords: 
 
feminist philosophy; 
law; 
legal and political
Pornography and Public Reason
To liberals, speech must never be sacrificed for other social goals. But liberalism has never understood that the free speech of men silences the free speech of women. It is the same social goal, just other people. This is what a real inequality, a real conflict, a real disparity in social power looks like. The law of the First Amendment compre hends that freedom of expression, in the abstract, is a system, but it fails to compre hend that sexism (and racism), in the concrete, are also systems. —Catharine A. MacKinnon1
Girls Should Bring Lawsuits Everywhere... Nothing Will Be Corrupted: Pornography as Speech and Product
At the beginning of his recent anti-censorship memoir Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius, obscenity lawyer Edward de Grazia quotes Jane Heap as saying, "[g]irls lean back everywhere, showing lace and silk stockings; wear low-cut sleeveless blouses, breathless bathing suits; men think thoughts and have emotions about these things everywhere-seldom as delicately as Mr. Bloom-and no one is corrupted."3 De Grazia then proceeds to castigate (among others)