Ep. 217: ‘Defending pornography’

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 “TheCult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech” and the forthcoming “FearlessSpeech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment.”

Show Notes:

Transcript

Timestamps

0:00 Intro

2:17 Defining pornography

7:20 Is porn protected by the First Amendment?

11:10Revenge porn

22:05Origins of “Defending Pornography”

25:06Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon

29:20Can porn be consensual?

35:02Dworkin/MacKinnon model legislation

52:20Porn in Canada

56:07Is it possible to ban porn?

1:03:26College professor’s porn hobby

1:12:39Outro