ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the pornography often portrayed women in however problematic a manner as craving, enjoying, initiating sex. Some feminists and women's liberationists viewed pornography as coterminous with fascism. Perhaps the most damaging indictment against pornography was its purported link to sexual violence. The charge that pornography leads to sexual violence against women was disputed on numerous grounds, including its assumption of a behaviourist view that human beings are blank slates for the uncritical absorption of stimuli. For the most part, pornography does not challenge the family, monogamy, and heterosexism. The part dominating pornography is that which reflects the existing world making enormous profits from sexism, alienated relationships, and monogamy. While pornography is ostensibly in the business of sex, Roszak's point from more than 40 years ago still has much merit: because it has a stake in keeping sex mysterious, secret, and private, it actually represses genuine sexual exploration.
