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20 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 1 (1985)
Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech

handle is hein.journals/hcrcl20 and id is 9 raw text is: PORNOGRAPHY, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND SPEECH* Catharine A. MacKinnon** I thank the Committee that selected me for this lectureship, the Harvard Faculty, the Dean, and the Riddles, for this thrill, this honor, and this forum. I am also existentially amazed to be here. Topically, in order, tonight I will first situate a critique of pornography within a feminist analysis of the condition of women. I will speak of what pornography means for the social status and treatment of women. The obscenity approach, the closest this government has come to addressing pornography, will then be briefly contrasted. Next I will outline an argument for the constitutionality of the ordinance Andrea Dworkin and I conceived, in which we define pornography as a civil rights violation.1 Here I will address what pornography does as a * The 1984 Francis Biddle Memorial Lecture, given at Harvard Law School, April 5, 1984. ** Associate Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School. Linda Marchiano, Andrea Dworkin, Charlee Hoyt, Van White, Annie Mc- Combs, Susan Williams, David Rayson, Margaret Baldwin, Jeanne M. Barkey, Steve Jevning, Therese Stanton, Dorchen Leidholdt, John Stoltenberg, Beulah Coughenour, Valerie Harper, and Karen E. Davis, together with those who testified for the ordinance in Minneapolis, made my part of our work against pornography possible rand real in the world. They make me believe we are unstoppable. We define pornography as the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pic- tures and/or words that also includes one or more of the following: (i) women are presented dehumanized as sexual objects, things, or commodities; or (ii) women are presented as sexual objects who enjoy pain or humiliation; or (iii) women are presented as sexual objects who experience sexual pleasure in being raped; or (iv) women are presented as sexual objects tied up or cut up or mutilated or bruised or physically hurt; or (v) women are presented in postures of sexual submission, servility or display; or (vi) women's body parts-including but not limited to vaginas, breasts, and buttocks-are exhibited, such that women are reduced

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