NCJ Number
163199
Date Published
1995
Length
111 pages
Annotation
This book examines the role of the Canadian state in maintaining current social practices and their relationship to the criminal regulation of pornography.
Abstract
The author specifically asks whether feminist demands for social change through alteration of the state's approach to pornography have compelled members of the Canadian legal system to respond. In R. v. Butler, the Supreme Court of Canada reinterpreted the section of the Criminal Code that deals with obscenity. According to that decision, a link exists between obscenity and violence; depictions of degrading and dehumanizing sex and sex with violence are judged "harmful" to the extent that they promote antisocial behavior toward women and men. The author considers whether the Court's ruling is a co-optive response to feminist concerns or a key to social change. The first chapter provides the theoretical framework for the discussion, followed by a chapter that outlines an understanding of pornography that connects it to the insurgent potential of legal struggles. It identifies the substantive criteria the author uses to assess the "Butler" ruling. The third chapter focuses on "obscenity" law and the feminist engagement with the state. It outlines the history of obscenity law in Canada, feminist appeals for and response to changes in obscenity legislation, and the various notions of "harm" that have informed and justified a ban on certain sexually explicit materials. Chapter Four discusses the arguments presented to the Supreme Court by the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF), the only nationally based feminist organization to intervene in "Butler. Following a summary of the Court's ruling in "Butler," the author analyzes the decision and highlights the role of LEAF's legal struggle to advance women's equality. The author argues that agents of the state responsible for judicial practice fail to comprehend the complexity of pornography from a sociological perspective. Owing to this failure, the law tends to persist in legitimizing, and thereby normalizing, what the author refers to as currently unequal socio-sexual "subjectivity" and practices; thus, pornography has reproduced rather than changed gender power relations. 61 notes and a 186-item bibliography