Does Pornography Silence Women?

Abstract

One of MacKinnon’s central claims is that pornography is not only words. Rather, pornographic speech subordinates and silences women. Using Austin’s speech act theory, Langton and Hornsby argue that pornographic speech has the power to silence women, thus depriving women of free speech rights. This silencing claim has attracted much philosophical interest over the past couple of decades. The chapter considers how we should understand the silencing claim by carefully dissecting the relevant literature. It further assesses the philosophical and practical tenability of the claim. The main philosophical lessons to arise from this chapter are as follows. First, even though some aspects of the silencing claim have pretheoretical plausibility, it remains to be established that pornographic speech is responsible for women’s silencing. Second, the silencing claim is often discussed by appealing to intuitive gut-feelings about specific cases. But (the chapter argues) this is not methodologically conducive to settling the matter.