Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: argue that pornography silences women. 1 Appealing to Austin's theory of speech acts, they offer a speech act account of the phenomenon of silencing and they also argue that pornography causes this phenomenon.2 In addition, they argue that silencing, in their sense, is a violation of the right to free speech.If this is correct, then the free speech rights of pornographers directly conflicts with the free speech rights of women.Thus, even if the free speech right is primary, appealing to pornographers' right to free speech cannot afford a straightforward justification for protecting pornography.For this reason, this work on silencing has rightly gained considerable attention.jopp_346 487..494Here I identify an alternative type of silencing and argue that pornography is just as likely to cause it.Although, as I shall argue, this alternative form of silencing does not appear to be a free speech issue, there are independent grounds for taking it seriously. I. TWO ACCOUNTS OF SEXUAL REFUSALLangton and Hornsby argue that pornography interferes with women's ability to successfully perform the speech act of sexual refusal.Since the focus is on this particular type of speech act, I start with a discussion of how such speech acts work.In what follows, I offer two different speech act accounts of sexual refusal.I argue against the first and for the second. A. TELLINGConsider first the hypothesis that sexual refusal is an instance of telling.On this account, when Cindy says 'No' in response to Carl's sexual advances, Cindy
Source: Journal of Political Philosophy
Author: Mary Kate McGowan
Institution: Wellesley College
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2072385605