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In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings
This book contains the oral testimony of victims of pornography, spoken on the record for the first time in history.
Speaking at hearings on a groundbreaking antipornography civil rights law, women offer eloquent witness to the devastation pornography has caused in their lives. Supported by social science experts and authorities on rape, battery, and prostitution, discounted and opposed by free speech advocates and absolutists, their riveting testimony articulates the centrality of pornography to sexual abuse and inequity today.
At issue in these hearings is a law conceived and drafted by Andrea Dworkin and Catharine A. MacKinnon that defines harm done through pornography as a legal injury of sex discrimination warranting civil redress. From the first set of hearings in Minneapolis in 1983 through those before the Massachusetts state legislature in 1992, the witnesses heard here expose the commonplace reality of denigration and sexual subordination due to pornography and refute the widespread notion that pornography is harmless expression that must be protected by the state.
Introduced with powerful essays by MacKinnon and Dworkin, these hearings—unabridged and with each word scrupulously verified—constitute a unique record of a conflict over the meaning of democracy itself—a major civil rights struggle for our time and a fundamental crisis in United States constitutional law: Can we sacrifice the lives of women and children to a pornographer's right to free "speech"? Can we allow the First Amendment to shield sexual exploitation and predatory sexual violence? These pages contain all the arguments for protecting pornography—and dramatically document its human cost.
Speaking at hearings on a groundbreaking antipornography civil rights law, women offer eloquent witness to the devastation pornography has caused in their lives. Supported by social science experts and authorities on rape, battery, and prostitution, discounted and opposed by free speech advocates and absolutists, their riveting testimony articulates the centrality of pornography to sexual abuse and inequity today.
At issue in these hearings is a law conceived and drafted by Andrea Dworkin and Catharine A. MacKinnon that defines harm done through pornography as a legal injury of sex discrimination warranting civil redress. From the first set of hearings in Minneapolis in 1983 through those before the Massachusetts state legislature in 1992, the witnesses heard here expose the commonplace reality of denigration and sexual subordination due to pornography and refute the widespread notion that pornography is harmless expression that must be protected by the state.
Introduced with powerful essays by MacKinnon and Dworkin, these hearings—unabridged and with each word scrupulously verified—constitute a unique record of a conflict over the meaning of democracy itself—a major civil rights struggle for our time and a fundamental crisis in United States constitutional law: Can we sacrifice the lives of women and children to a pornographer's right to free "speech"? Can we allow the First Amendment to shield sexual exploitation and predatory sexual violence? These pages contain all the arguments for protecting pornography—and dramatically document its human cost.
508 pages, Paperback
First published February 15, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 15, 2017
I got it, even way back then, how MacKinnon would and could argue that pornography was the central means by which men achieved inequality to women, by making the matter merely sexual consumption. However, I didn't buy it then or now. I think it's the economy that is the central way we keep sexism and male dominance, not commercialized erotica. I read this working in Civil Rights doing mandatory trainings for K-12 schools after the '92 decision by the Supremes that gave both compulsory and punitive damages to victims of sexual harassment and held schools accountable. I could never bend over backward enough not to be considered both anti-male and/or anti-sex. It's a jungle out there...
I do agree with MacKinnon that if we've had a decent *definition* of pornography that had to do with not allowing depiction of images of human beings that were degrading, we wouldn't have let our sex-crazed but also sex-dysfunctional (e.g., mixed messages) culture lead the world in the grossiest, most obscene (in terms of degredation) of pornography, where "anything goes". Instead, the "Supremes" gave us a definition of obscenity that couldn't be more relativistic and vague - that which doesn't comport with "community standards" (whose?) and that appeal only to our "prurient" (who defines?) interests. Sex sells, period.
People should read MacKinnon on sexual harassment again, if they didn't "in the day"!
I do agree with MacKinnon that if we've had a decent *definition* of pornography that had to do with not allowing depiction of images of human beings that were degrading, we wouldn't have let our sex-crazed but also sex-dysfunctional (e.g., mixed messages) culture lead the world in the grossiest, most obscene (in terms of degredation) of pornography, where "anything goes". Instead, the "Supremes" gave us a definition of obscenity that couldn't be more relativistic and vague - that which doesn't comport with "community standards" (whose?) and that appeal only to our "prurient" (who defines?) interests. Sex sells, period.
People should read MacKinnon on sexual harassment again, if they didn't "in the day"!
November 15, 2019
I love love love anything and everything MacKinnon and Dworkin do, and reading the hearings of their much-contested ordinance was an incredible and enlightening experience of not only how many supporters there were, but would-be supporters if only they could just get their heads out of their you-know-whats (sorry, booksellers, I love you all, but selling a romance novel is not within the definition of pornography that these two present, so just like.....stop lol). It was even moreso interesting to see where the resistors to this ordinance stood and why.
Filled with the hearings, letters from those who could not be present, appendices, and more, this book, in my humble opinion, is one of the best books discussing pornography: what it is, what constitutes it, who it happens to, why it is harmful on a personal and community level, and how we might begin to punish those who force others to partake in it.
Definitely worth the read, and well worth your time as a feminist activist!
Review cross-listed here!
Filled with the hearings, letters from those who could not be present, appendices, and more, this book, in my humble opinion, is one of the best books discussing pornography: what it is, what constitutes it, who it happens to, why it is harmful on a personal and community level, and how we might begin to punish those who force others to partake in it.
Definitely worth the read, and well worth your time as a feminist activist!
Review cross-listed here!
July 12, 2025
A EXCELLENT PRESENTATION OF ‘BOTH SIDES’ OF THE DEBATES
Catherine MacKinnon is Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, as well as at Harvard Law School. Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005) was an American feminist and writer.
They wrote in the ‘Note on the Editing’ of this1997 book, “These hearings are based on transcripts of oral testimony… We intend these hearings to be as complete and accurate a record of what was said as possible. The excised material consists of some small talk, pleasantries, arrangements … and legislative minutiae… Exhibits and written submissions, by contrast, are highly selected… Since Catherine MacKinnon spoke in all four hearings, much of her Indianapolis testimony … is removed… Not a word of testimony by opponents to the ordinance has been cut. All survivors who testified were fully identified to the bodies before whom they spoke… For this volume, each survivor chose an identification.”
Catherine MacKinnon wrote in her introductory essay, “Women speak in public for the first time in the history of the harms done to them through pornography in the hearings collected in this volume. Their first-person accounts stand against the pervasive sexual violation of women and children that is allowed to be criticized in public. Their publication, which comes about fifteen years after the first hearing was held, ends the exclusion from the public record of the information they contain on the way pornography works in social reality. Now ended is the censorship of facts and voices from a debate on the social and cultural role of pornography that has gone on as if it would go on without them.
“Until these hearings took place, pornography and its apologists largely set the terms of public discussion over pornography’s role in social life. Public, available, effectively legal, pornography has stature: it is visible, credible, and legitimated. At the same time, its influence and damaging effects are denied as nonexistent, indeterminate, or merely academic, contrary to all the evidence. Its victims have had no stature at all. The hearings changed the terms of this discussion by opening a space to speak for the real authorities on pornography: the casualties of its making and use. Against a background of claims that the victims and the harm done to them do not exist, must not be believed, and should not be given a legal hearing, the harms of pornography stood exposed [as they] took shape as potential legal injuries. These hearings were the moment when the voices of those victimized through pornography broke the public surface. Their publication gives the public unmediated and unrestricted access to this direct evidence for the first time. The authority of their experience makes the harm of pornography undeniable: it harmed them.” (Pg. 3-4)
She continues, “Woman after woman used by consumers of pornography recounts its causal role in her sexual violation by a man close to her. A husband forces pornography on his wife and uses it to pressure her into sex acts she does not want. A father threatens his children with pornography so they will keep silent about what he shows them is being done, audibly, to their mother at night. A brother holds up pornography magazines as his friends gang-rape his sister, making her assume the poses in the materials, turning her as they turn the pages.” (Pg. 5-6)
Later, she adds, “Addressed not at all by the opposition in the hearings is whether or not the practices of pornography made actionable by the ordinance are properly conceptualized as sex-based discrimination. Like the conclusion that pornography causes harm, the conclusion on the nature of that harm is based on evidence, on fact; these hearings provide those facts… actually and potentially, if even one woman, man or child is victimized BECAUSE OF THEIR SEX, as a member of a group defined by sex, that person is discriminated against on the basis of sex; those who testified in the hearings incontestably were hurt as members of their gender.” (Pg. 7-8)
She notes, “For those who survived pornography, the hearings were like coming up for air. Now the water has closed over their heads once again. The ordinance is not law anywhere… The victims have been betrayed.” (Pg 17-18)
She explains, “In the defense of pornography against the ordinance---the first effective threat to its existence---the outline of a distinctive power bloc had become discernible in the shadows of American politics. Cutting across left and right, uniting sectors of journalism, entertainment, and publishing with organized crime, sprawling into parts of the academy and the legal profession, this configuration has emerged to act as a concerted political force. Driven by sex and money, its power is largely hidden and institutionally without limits. Most of those who could credibly criticize it either become part of it or collaborate through silence.” (Pg.20)
Andrea Dworkin wrote in her own introductory essay, “In these hearings [1983-1992]… women testify about being hurt in and by pornography, This hurt includes every kind of sexual exploitation and abuse. The hearings are road maps of injury, made graphic through the speech of those who had their legs spread, their hands ties, their mouths gagged. These hearings and the political organizing that went into creating them pushed silence off the women in these pages---they stood up and spoke. But while some legislators listened—and while other hurt women, still silent, hoped---society at large pretty much turned its back on the suffering caused by pornography and refused to consider honorable and equitable remedies. These hearings also contain all the familiar leftist arguments for pornography: it is free speech or free sexuality in a free marketplace of ideas. Only when women’s bodies are being sold for profit do leftists claim to cherish the free market. The protectors of pornography have arguments and principles; the status quo supports the validity and legitimacy of their world view. Their arguments and principles help to continue pornography’s current status as constitutionally protected commerce in women and maintain the colonialization of women’s bodies for male pleasure.” (Pg. 25)
She continues, “I am asking you to listen in these hearings to those who have been hurt---and to care. I have always thought that conscience meant bearing witness to injustice and standing with the powerless. I still think that… I used to think that the Left was the side that valued those dehumanized by hate. I don’t think that anymore---unless feminists fighting pornography and the global trafficking in women are the remnant, the last living leftists: facing the new millennium in opposition to the biggest trafficking in human beings this planet has yet seen. All the power is on the other side: all the money, media, current law, unexamined assumptions about speech, sex, women; all the fetishized sex that depends on dominance and submission as a dynamic and the objectification of women as a fundamental element of pleasure… it is always and without exception a vicious practice to buy and sell human beings, which we are---which women are--- no matter how used and raped or prostituted or incested or beaten we have been; no matter how shamed or humiliated by the overt sadism of some and the brutal indifference of the rest. You need to listen. You need to know, You need to care about the suffering pornography causes and be willing to decide what is fair.” (Pg. 35-36)
Ultimately, during the 1980s and early 1990s, versions of the Dworkin-MacKinnon Ordinance were passed in several U.S. cities---but they were either vetoed by mayors, or struck down by courts. And nowadays, with the Internet, it’s practically inconceivable that access to pornography can ever be restricted in any way. (Clearly, there was a ‘lost opportunity’ we failed to exploit back in the pre-Internet days…)
Catherine MacKinnon is Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, as well as at Harvard Law School. Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005) was an American feminist and writer.
They wrote in the ‘Note on the Editing’ of this1997 book, “These hearings are based on transcripts of oral testimony… We intend these hearings to be as complete and accurate a record of what was said as possible. The excised material consists of some small talk, pleasantries, arrangements … and legislative minutiae… Exhibits and written submissions, by contrast, are highly selected… Since Catherine MacKinnon spoke in all four hearings, much of her Indianapolis testimony … is removed… Not a word of testimony by opponents to the ordinance has been cut. All survivors who testified were fully identified to the bodies before whom they spoke… For this volume, each survivor chose an identification.”
Catherine MacKinnon wrote in her introductory essay, “Women speak in public for the first time in the history of the harms done to them through pornography in the hearings collected in this volume. Their first-person accounts stand against the pervasive sexual violation of women and children that is allowed to be criticized in public. Their publication, which comes about fifteen years after the first hearing was held, ends the exclusion from the public record of the information they contain on the way pornography works in social reality. Now ended is the censorship of facts and voices from a debate on the social and cultural role of pornography that has gone on as if it would go on without them.
“Until these hearings took place, pornography and its apologists largely set the terms of public discussion over pornography’s role in social life. Public, available, effectively legal, pornography has stature: it is visible, credible, and legitimated. At the same time, its influence and damaging effects are denied as nonexistent, indeterminate, or merely academic, contrary to all the evidence. Its victims have had no stature at all. The hearings changed the terms of this discussion by opening a space to speak for the real authorities on pornography: the casualties of its making and use. Against a background of claims that the victims and the harm done to them do not exist, must not be believed, and should not be given a legal hearing, the harms of pornography stood exposed [as they] took shape as potential legal injuries. These hearings were the moment when the voices of those victimized through pornography broke the public surface. Their publication gives the public unmediated and unrestricted access to this direct evidence for the first time. The authority of their experience makes the harm of pornography undeniable: it harmed them.” (Pg. 3-4)
She continues, “Woman after woman used by consumers of pornography recounts its causal role in her sexual violation by a man close to her. A husband forces pornography on his wife and uses it to pressure her into sex acts she does not want. A father threatens his children with pornography so they will keep silent about what he shows them is being done, audibly, to their mother at night. A brother holds up pornography magazines as his friends gang-rape his sister, making her assume the poses in the materials, turning her as they turn the pages.” (Pg. 5-6)
Later, she adds, “Addressed not at all by the opposition in the hearings is whether or not the practices of pornography made actionable by the ordinance are properly conceptualized as sex-based discrimination. Like the conclusion that pornography causes harm, the conclusion on the nature of that harm is based on evidence, on fact; these hearings provide those facts… actually and potentially, if even one woman, man or child is victimized BECAUSE OF THEIR SEX, as a member of a group defined by sex, that person is discriminated against on the basis of sex; those who testified in the hearings incontestably were hurt as members of their gender.” (Pg. 7-8)
She notes, “For those who survived pornography, the hearings were like coming up for air. Now the water has closed over their heads once again. The ordinance is not law anywhere… The victims have been betrayed.” (Pg 17-18)
She explains, “In the defense of pornography against the ordinance---the first effective threat to its existence---the outline of a distinctive power bloc had become discernible in the shadows of American politics. Cutting across left and right, uniting sectors of journalism, entertainment, and publishing with organized crime, sprawling into parts of the academy and the legal profession, this configuration has emerged to act as a concerted political force. Driven by sex and money, its power is largely hidden and institutionally without limits. Most of those who could credibly criticize it either become part of it or collaborate through silence.” (Pg.20)
Andrea Dworkin wrote in her own introductory essay, “In these hearings [1983-1992]… women testify about being hurt in and by pornography, This hurt includes every kind of sexual exploitation and abuse. The hearings are road maps of injury, made graphic through the speech of those who had their legs spread, their hands ties, their mouths gagged. These hearings and the political organizing that went into creating them pushed silence off the women in these pages---they stood up and spoke. But while some legislators listened—and while other hurt women, still silent, hoped---society at large pretty much turned its back on the suffering caused by pornography and refused to consider honorable and equitable remedies. These hearings also contain all the familiar leftist arguments for pornography: it is free speech or free sexuality in a free marketplace of ideas. Only when women’s bodies are being sold for profit do leftists claim to cherish the free market. The protectors of pornography have arguments and principles; the status quo supports the validity and legitimacy of their world view. Their arguments and principles help to continue pornography’s current status as constitutionally protected commerce in women and maintain the colonialization of women’s bodies for male pleasure.” (Pg. 25)
She continues, “I am asking you to listen in these hearings to those who have been hurt---and to care. I have always thought that conscience meant bearing witness to injustice and standing with the powerless. I still think that… I used to think that the Left was the side that valued those dehumanized by hate. I don’t think that anymore---unless feminists fighting pornography and the global trafficking in women are the remnant, the last living leftists: facing the new millennium in opposition to the biggest trafficking in human beings this planet has yet seen. All the power is on the other side: all the money, media, current law, unexamined assumptions about speech, sex, women; all the fetishized sex that depends on dominance and submission as a dynamic and the objectification of women as a fundamental element of pleasure… it is always and without exception a vicious practice to buy and sell human beings, which we are---which women are--- no matter how used and raped or prostituted or incested or beaten we have been; no matter how shamed or humiliated by the overt sadism of some and the brutal indifference of the rest. You need to listen. You need to know, You need to care about the suffering pornography causes and be willing to decide what is fair.” (Pg. 35-36)
Ultimately, during the 1980s and early 1990s, versions of the Dworkin-MacKinnon Ordinance were passed in several U.S. cities---but they were either vetoed by mayors, or struck down by courts. And nowadays, with the Internet, it’s practically inconceivable that access to pornography can ever be restricted in any way. (Clearly, there was a ‘lost opportunity’ we failed to exploit back in the pre-Internet days…)
July 20, 2020
A very difficult read. Shocking and depressing. It becomes repetitive and boring after a while, but I think it's important to see how all those women had a very similar experience.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews