Censorship In Susan Jacoby's 'A First Amendment Junkie'

Introduction

It is impossible to give a concise definition to the term pornography from my point of view because it depends on each and every individual’s perception. I believe that a pornographic material is anything that is able to sexually arouse an individual but the question is does what can sexually arouse me be able to sexually arouse another person? The answer is no because it may not automatically do exactly that. Susan Jacoby’s “A First Amendment Junkie” Susan Brownmiller, in Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, has described pornography as “the undiluted essence of anti-female propaganda.” I think this is a fair description of some types of pornography, especially of the brutish subspecies that equates sex with death and portrays women primarily as objects of

Are all pictures of naked women obscene? Clearly not, says a friend. A Renoir nude is art, she says, and Hustler is trash. “Any reasonable person” knows that (Jacoby).

In any case, feminists will not be arbiters of good taste if it becomes easier to harass, prosecute, and convict people on obscenity charges. Most of the people who want to censor girlie magazines are equally opposed to open discussion of issues that are of vital concern to women: rape, abortion, menstruation, contraception, lesbianism—in fact, the entire range of sexual experience from a women’s viewpoint (Jacoby).

Feminists who want to censor what they regard as harmful pornography have essentially the same motivation as other would-be censors: They want to use the power of the state to accomplish what they have been unable to achieve in the marketplace of ideas and images. The impulse to censor places no faith in the possibilities of democratic