Whitney Strub

Entertaining if preachy and disorganized account of attacks on pornography in the US from the early 20th century. Strub’s best points come when he shows how right-wing politicians explicitly connected attacking pornography to letting the rest of capitalism do its dirty work unhindered by any other kind of regulation—our kids need protection from smut, not from child labor! Strub blames the failure of liberalism to defend a politics of pleasure for allowing right-wingers to set the terms show more of debate, and argues that antipornography feminists made a bad alliance with conservatives even as pro-pleasure feminists couldn’t find a home in late-20th-century liberalism. show less