Bad Girls Dirty Pictures

The Challenge to Reclaim Feminism

Alison Assiter, Avedon Carol

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 1993
• Print ISBN:
  9780745305240
• eBook ISBN:
  9780745352787
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Human Sexuality in Psychology
• Index: Biological Sciences

For well over a decade, half-baked analysis and phony science have been used by some feminists to side-track the women's movement into puritanical campaigns against sexual material and imaginative sexual exploration.

Many feminists would say that this widely publicised version of feminism is itself sexist, and that the increasingly vocal anti-pornography campaigns are founded on theoretical dead-ends that have allowed feminists to deviate drastically from the basic goals of women's liberation.

Bad Girls & Dirty Pictures puts these anti-sex, anti-porn arguments under the microscope of a more thorough and considered feminist analysis. It examines the flaws in the research that purports to prove the harm of pornography and warns against the continuing use of censorship by politicians and the moral right, as well as exposing the dangers of anti-porn feminist arguments.

Contributions from a wide range of women, including sex workers and academics, remind us that pornography does not have a special place in our oppression, and that censorship must still be seen as dangerous enemy of women. Bad Girls & Dirty Pictures is a much-needed antidote to falsehoods, shabby thinking, and patronising sexism that have fuelled anti-pornography campaigns and misled the women's movement.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Misguided, Dangerous and Wrong: an Analysis of Anti-pornography Politics - Gayle Rubin
• 2. The Primarolo Bill
• 3. The First Amendment to the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution
• 4. Changing Perceptions in the Feminist Debate - Avedon Carol and Nettie Pollard
• 5. Mystery and Imagination: the Case of Pornography Effects Studies - Alison King
• 6. Essentially Sex: a New Look - Alison Assiter
• 7. The Small Matter of Children - Nettie Pollard
• 8. Sex On My Mind - Tuppy Owens
• 9. Snuff: Believing the Worst - Avedon Carol
• 10. Fear of Pornography - Claudia
• 11. The Anti-sexism Campaign Invites you to Fight Sexism, Not Sex - Christobel Mackenzie
• 12. The Wages of Anti-censorship Campaigning - Feminists Against Censorship
• Conclusion: Women Still Want Freedom - Alison Assiter and Avedon Carol
• Notes and References
• Recommended Reading