Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Pornography Debate Paperback - 1993

First line

From its beginnings in the early 1970s, the contemporary women's liberation movement has been divided between those feminists who see men as 'the main enemy' and those who have linked female subordination to a number of different structures in society, including the state and capitalist production.

From the rear cover

Over the past twenty years debates about pornography have raged within feminism and beyond. Throughout the 1970s feminists increasingly addressed the problem of men's sexual violence against women, and many women reduced the politics of men's power to questions about sexuality. By the 1980s these questions had become more and more focused on the issue of pornography--now a metaphor for the menace of male power. Collapsing feminist politics into sexuality and sexuality into pornography has not only caused some of the deepest splits between feminists, but made it harder to think clearly about either sexuality or pornography--indeed, about feminist politics more generally.

This provocative collection, by well-known feminists, surveys these arguments, and in particular asks why recent feminist debates about sexuality keep reducing to questions of pornography.