It is said that censorship is the strongest drive in human nature — with sex being a weak second.
But what happens when these two primordial drives clash? Does censorship or sex win out?
Nadine Strossen is a professor emerita at New York Law School, a former president of the ACLU, and a senior fellow at FIRE. She is also the author of “Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights.” First released in 1995, the book was reissued this year with a new preface.
Mary Anne Franks is a law professor at George Washington University and the president and legislative and tech policy director of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. She is the author of “The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech” and the forthcoming “Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment.”
Read the episode transcript here.
Timestamps
0:00 Intro
2:17 Defining pornography
7:20 Is porn protected by the First Amendment?
11:10 Revenge porn
22:05 Origins of “Defending Pornography”
25:06 Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon
29:20 Can porn be consensual?
35:02 Dworkin/MacKinnon model legislation
52:20 Porn in Canada
56:07 Is it possible to ban porn?
1:03:26 College professor’s porn hobby
1:12:39 Outro
Ep. 217: Defending Pornography