ABSTRACT

Pornography has become a major issue for the women’s movements in North America, Europe, and Australia. To some extent the concern over pornography has replaced the nineteenth century feminist concern with prostitution. It was prostitution that epitomized the problem of the dual standard of morality and the abuse of women (both of which were reflected in law) in the last century. In the late twentieth century pornography has come to fill this role. For many feminists pornography is regarded as the very essence of patriarchy, indeed it is theorized as the mainstay of male power and female subjugation.