Speaking Freely about Reducing Violence against Women: A Harm Reduction Strategy from the Law and Social Science of Pornography

Authors

• Michelle Chernikoff Anderson, University of California Berkeley

Abstract

This article exposes legal scholars to the research essential to establishing support for an education policy that would inoculate our children against the potentially harmful effects of consuming media that promote violence against girls and women. It argues that Dworkin-MacKinnonites, concerned about pornography, and civil libertarians, concerned about free speech, should waste neither more time nor more ink debating this issue. Rather, it is time to dedicate our efforts to creating and implementing a harm reduction educational approach to protect our children against pornography.

Part II defines the terminology used throughout the article. Part III outlines the failures of current obscenity law. Part IV discusses the shortcomings of the two approaches to the current pornography debate as framed by the Dworkin-MacKinnonites, favoring censorship, and the civil libertarians, supporting free speech. Part V reviews the social psychological research on the issue of harm from pornography and the limits of this research. Part VI reviews the research data, both inside and outside the laboratory, that point towards an educational solution. Lastly, Part VII concludes that we must cease framing the issue of pornography as Dworkin-MacKinnonites versus free speech; instead, we must focus on a harm reduction strategy of educational inoculation.

Recommended Citation

Michelle Chernikoff Anderson, Speaking Freely about Reducing Violence against Women: A Harm Reduction Strategy from the Law and Social Science of Pornography, 10 U. Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y (1998).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/jlpp/vol10/iss1/9