ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a different example, pornography, which many people believe is connected to another social ill, female subjugation. There is no necessity to the notions that women are more passive than men, more domestic, less venturesome, or that they should have primary responsibility for the care and nurture of children. In the early years of the nation, women were needed for domestic and farm labor on the frontier and newly developed areas of the West and prairie regions. Accordingly, images of women in the narratives of the day depicted them as pious, God-fearing, resourceful, able to make fires, mend clothing, fend off Indian raiders, raise children and help their husbands in the fields from morning to night. Pornography, a particular form of female depiction, responds to many of the same forces that shape female depiction generally, but often with a reverse twist. For example, during westward expansion the dominant image of women was relatively traditional—defender of home and hearth.
