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 “The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and
Free Speech” and the forthcoming “Fearless Speech: 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?


11:10 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