An historically important collection on the political battles around sexuality, feminism, censorship, pornography, law and queer dissent in the United States.

Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter gather essays from the 1980s and early 1990s that sit right inside the fault lines of the so-called feminist “sex wars”: antipornography campaigns, censorship in the name of feminism, legal struggles around sexual expression, public morality, queer politics, family values, identity, representation and the regulation of pleasure.

This is very useful theory stock because it is not a neutral textbook so much as a record of arguments still actively haunting feminist and queer politics. The pieces here push against moral panic and state censorship, while also taking seriously the political conditions under which sexuality becomes legible as danger, deviance, harm, liberation or identity. For readers interested in Catharine MacKinnon / Andrea Dworkin debates, queer legal theory, feminist media studies, censorship, pornography debates, 1990s culture wars, and the political history behind many arguments that still feel depressingly current.

Routledge edition, published 1995. Paperback, despite copyright page listing hardback ISBN. Good second-hand condition with light shelfwear and handling; internally clean.