cover image Softcore: Moral Crusades Against Pornography in Britain & America

Softcore: Moral Crusades Against Pornography in Britain & America

Bill Thompson. Cassell & Company, $55 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-304-32791-1

Thompson argues that there is nothing innate in pornography that encourages violence against women. By exposing ``the bogus link between pornography and sex crimes,'' he hopes to turn public attention to the real causes of sex crimes. Thompson covers the history of censorship in Britain and some recent American juggernauts, such as the Meese Commission and the Dworkin-MacKinnon anti-porn ordinances (a telling bias of which is his definition of gay men as ``substitute women''), though U.S. readers can fill in some missing historical context with works by Lynn Hunt and Robert Stoller, among others. Thompson's scrutiny of ``pornography effects studies'' uncovers some surprises: the manipulation of subjects and their attitudes that passes for scientific research, the assumption that women's reactions differ from men's, and the evidence that even highly explicit soft-core material fails to increase aggression and, more often, reduces it. A serious lapse-considering the timeliness of the censorship vs. free choice debate-is in the outdated bibliography and absence of footnotes. (Oct.)