ABSTRACT
This chapter includes policy issues that are primarily concerned with the definition and regulation of women as sexual beings: prostitution, pornography, and lesbian issues. Regulation of prostitution and pornography has been in the American political arena for more than 150 years; lesbian issues have arrived more recently. Moralists, inspired by religious convictions and rules, want to use public policy to contain sexual expression within heterosexual monogamous marriage and procreation and to punish deviations from the norm. Liberal feminism protests the regulation of women by sexuality laws and mores. The traditional moralist-libertarian controversy is rarely gendered: it has not had a lot to do with the effect of policy options on women. For most of the history of sexuality policy, feminists have remained on the outside, trying to enter the debate from time to time to promote women's rights. Radical feminism, on the other hand, labels all sexuality questions as part of the basic structure of male domination.
