Debating Sexual Correctness: Pornography, Sexual Harassment, Date Rape and the Politics of Sexual Equality

by Adele Stan (Editor)

Overview

A glance here, a flirtation there, a moment of misunderstanding. Have the new rules of feminist politics gone too far? Since Katie Riophe's book The Morning After helped spark a national debate over the politics of date rape, the media has focused on controversial sexual behavior of all kinds. Proponents of what has come to be called sexual correctness contend that we live in a culture where date rape, pornography, and sexual harassment are simply facts of life that demand a new sexual standard. Opponents argue that these claims are born out of a victim mentality they see as pervasive in the modern feminist movement that threatens to rob women of the gains of sexual freedom. As the successfull Dell title Debating PC did in 1992, Debating Sexual Correctness brings together some of the best known and most important voices in this debate. From the editorial pages of magazines as diverse as The New Republic and Glamour, The New York Times and Playboy, the country's most thoughtful social critics define or debunk this very controversial notion of sexual correctness. Katie Roiphe, Camille Paglia, Naomi Wolf, Andrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon, and Susan Faludi are only a few of the writers in this provocative anthology that looks at a highly charged debate that has encompassed a nation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385313841
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/02/1995
Pages:	340
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.75(d)

Table of Contents

	Introduction: Feminism and the Culture of Sexuality	xix
Part 1	Passionate Polemics
	Sex Harassment	3
	Date Rape: The Story of an Epidemic	10
	Rape and the Modern Sex War	21
	Pornography Is a Civil Rights Issue	26
	Feminism, Moralism and Pronography	41
	Where Do We Stand on Pornography? A Ms. Roundtable	50
Part 2	Flashpoints: The Meese Commission, Tailhook, Hill-Thomas, and the Antioch Sex Code
	Pornography Goes to Washington	67
	Going Wild	76
	It's a Case of the Powerless Versus the Powerful	79
	Taking Sides Against Ourselves	83
	Sex Amidst Semicolons	93
	Playing by the Antioch Rules	97
Part 3	Rights and Wrongs in the Intimate Arena
	The First Amendment, Under Fire from the Left A Conversation with Floyd Abrams and Catharine A. MacKinnon	103
	Thomas versus Clinton	122
	Dirt and Democracy	126
	The Privacy Problem	138
	Public Policy, Private Ritual	144
Part 4	Ways of Seeing (Viewer Discretion Advised)
	Date Rape's Other Victim	149
	Not Just Bad Sex	162
	Under His Thumb	172
	How to Avoid Date Rape	175
	Looking at Pictures	190
	Beauty and the Beast	193
Part 5	Sex War in the Media
	The Peeping Tube: America Is Shocked. Shocked!	207
	Are You a Bad Girl?	212
	Women of the Year?	218
	Entertainment for Men	222
	Behind the Paula Jones Story	226
Part 6	When the Personal Becomes Political
	Seduced by Violence No More	231
	How Dirty Pictures Changed My Life	236
	I Never Called It Rape	253
	On Not Being a Victim	259
	Two Good People	273
	Appendices
A.	The Dworkin-MacKinnon Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance (Minneapolis)	277
B.	Selected Results from the Ms. Magazine Campus Project on Sexual Assault	285
C.	Excerpt from the Antioch College Sexual-Offense Policy	287

Editorial Reviews

Culling from publications ranging from Ladies' Home Journal to the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography and the New York Times, Stan has done an outstanding job finding pieces that look at the sexual correctness debate from every angle and writing style. There is no apparent bias here. Self-confessed ``card-carrying feminist'' Lisa Palac describes how she went from being an ``anti-porn feminist'' to making pornographic films. Former Ms. editor Robin Morgan sees connections between the porn industry, ``anti-Semitic tracts'' and the Ku Klux Klan. In a sometimes annoyingly abstruse piece, bell hooks writes that ``heterosexual women have not unlearned a heterosexist-based `eroticism' that constructs desire in such a way that many of us can only respond erotically to male behavior that has already been coded as masculine within the sexist framework.'' For those who prefer their arguments phrased more simply, Stan offers essays by George F. Will, Mortimer Zuckerman and the Village Voice's Ellen Willis, who warns that ``if feminists define pornography per se as the enemy, the result will be to make a lot of women ashamed of their sexual feelings and afraid to be honest about them.'' No one's ever going to win this debate, but studying the arguments helps readers see clearly the issues in the often deeply emotional exchange. (Mar.)

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