XXX: A woman's right to pornography

The insistence that all feminists call for a ban on pornography has received several cogent replies lately. Strossen's Defending Pornography took a lively, thoroughly researched shot at lawyer Catherine MacKinnon and her followers' censorship demands. McElroy agrees with Strossen's legal arguments and takes the issue a few steps further. She asserts that elements of pornography can actually benefit women and cites historical precedent to show that an environment of greater freedom for all sexual expression better enables discussion of such important issues as birth control and venereal disease. At the level of the individual, pornography, McElroy says, "provides women with a real sense of what is sexually available to them" and "is how-to literature for those who lack real-world experience." McElroy supplements her well-researched opinions with insightful interviews with outspoken women who work in the porn industry, which may help make XXX one of the more provocative books on this issue, albeit one that is ultimately more concerned with fomenting positive discussion than raising eyebrows. Aaron Cohen