cover image Debating Sexual Correctness: Pornography, Sexual Harassment, Date Rape and the Politics of Sexual Equality

Debating Sexual Correctness: Pornography, Sexual Harassment, Date Rape and the Politics of Sexual Equality

. Delta, $19 (340pp) ISBN 978-0-385-31384-1

Culling from publications ranging from Ladies' Home Journal to the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography and the New York Times, Stan has done an outstanding job finding pieces that look at the sexual correctness debate from every angle and writing style. There is no apparent bias here. Self-confessed ``card-carrying feminist'' Lisa Palac describes how she went from being an ``anti-porn feminist'' to making pornographic films. Former Ms. editor Robin Morgan sees connections between the porn industry, ``anti-Semitic tracts'' and the Ku Klux Klan. In a sometimes annoyingly abstruse piece, bell hooks writes that ``heterosexual women have not unlearned a heterosexist-based `eroticism' that constructs desire in such a way that many of us can only respond erotically to male behavior that has already been coded as masculine within the sexist framework.'' For those who prefer their arguments phrased more simply, Stan offers essays by George F. Will, Mortimer Zuckerman and the Village Voice's Ellen Willis, who warns that ``if feminists define pornography per se as the enemy, the result will be to make a lot of women ashamed of their sexual feelings and afraid to be honest about them.'' No one's ever going to win this debate, but studying the arguments helps readers see clearly the issues in the often deeply emotional exchange. (Mar.)