Any book endorsed by both Playboy's Christie Hefner and the Nation's Alexander Cockburn is likely to raise eyebrows. The provocative essays gathered by editor McElroy (XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography) do just that. The writers of these essays identify themselves as "individualist feminists"—a term some readers will find unfamiliar, but one which best approximates a kind of gender neutral libertarianism. As such, these essayists (including Camille Paglia, Norma Jean Almodovar, Matthew Y. Biscan and others) embrace the mantra of "freedom of choice" in its broadest sense, drawing intriguing—and often shocking—intellectual connections between the right to bear arms, the pro-choice movement, women's pornography, prostitutes' legal rights and capitalism. The most powerful pieces are those that directly contest the entrenched orthodoxies of essentialist feminism; philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum's analysis of prostitution as merely one species of paid labor is particularly trenchant. Younger feminists will be moved by Janis Cortese's polemical, in-your-face challenge to what she perceives as the intellectual blind spots of an older generation. Her essay mixes stringent analysis with the heady passion of a rebellious adolescent daughter: "I feel that by being born after you, I have somehow signed a contract that says that I have to... achieve what you wanted to achieve, or else I have betrayed you." One regrettable aspect of these essays is their tendency to attribute all feminist thought of the late-1970s and '80s to antiporn feminists Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon; many scholars and activists (presumably the book's target audience) will find this debate slightly behind the curve. Still, this collection offers much food for feminist thought. (May 17)
