Sociology of Knowledge : "We Already Regulate Pornography for Gender-Based Reasons without Acknowledging It" -- Regulating Pornography Comparing the Zoning and Nude Dancing Cases to Hudnut -- Language Games and the Zoning and Nude Dancing Cases -- The Legal Landscape that Acts to Exclude Knowledge Claims about Pornography -- Categories and Epistemic Gatekeeping in Free Speech Jurisprudence -- A Critique of the Content-Neutrality Principle -- Pornography Harms : Where Speech Act Theory, Causality, and the Performative Fall Short -- Discursive Effects : a different framework to understand the harm from speech -- Liberal law and a new theory of harm -- Discursive effects and liberal law -- Reconsidering the tension between liberty and equality.
Summary:
By examining the highly contested legal debate about the regulation of pornography through an epistemic lens, this book analyzes competing claims about the proper role of speech in our society, pornography's harm, the relationship between speech and equality, and whether law should regulate and, if so, upon what grounds. In maintaining that inegalitarian pornography generates discursive effects, the book contends that law cannot simply adopt a libertarian approach to free speech. While inegalitarian pornography may not be determinative of gender inequality, it does contribute, reinforce, reflect and help maintain such unfairness. As a result, we can place reasonable gender-based regulations on inegalitarian pornography while upholding our most treasured commitments to dissident speech just as other liberal democracies with strong free speech traditions have done.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.