ABSTRACT
Those of us living in an Anglo-American context at the beginning of the twentyfirst century surely are not surprised that pornography and politics intersect.1 During the past twenty-five years, the mere mention of pornography has been enough to incite vituperative condemnations from political activists on both the right and the left as it is variously burdened either with the disintegration of bourgeois family relations, conservative morality, the dignity of political office, or the often violent degradation of women's identity and agency. Such responses, though, beg the crucial question I seek to answer here. How did the pornographic body-predominantly, but by no means exclusively, female-come to be so politically contested?
