Anti-pornography movement in the United States

In 1970, the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography concluded that "there was insufficient evidence that exposure to explicit sexual materials played a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behavior."

[2] A large portion of the Commission's budget was applied to funding original research on the effects of sexually explicit materials.

Morton A. Hill, Lockhart said, "When these men have been forgotten, the research developed by the commission will provide a factual basis for informed, intelligent policymaking by the legislators of tomorrow".

[5] The result was the appointment by Attorney General Edwin Meese in the spring of 1985 of a panel of 11 members, the majority of whom had established records as anti-pornography crusaders.

A workshop headed by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop provided essentially the only original research done by the Meese Commission.

Given very little time and money to "develop something of substance" to include in the Meese Commission's report, it was decided to conduct a closed, weekend workshop of "recognized authorities" in the field.

Ordinary libertarians, who separate sex and violence, take MacKinnon and Dworkin to task for their refusal to leave sexual expression alone.

[15] This was done particularly by Gillian Rodgerson and Elizabeth Wilson in Pornography and Feminism: The Case Against Censorship: "Yet this theoretical cocktail of biologism and behaviorism is lethal.

Rodgerson and Wilson argue that pornography plays a relatively minor role in the wider regime of sexist practices pervading women's lives.

It dates back to the British Victorian era when people covered up their bodies with an immense amount of clothing, generating a greater mystery as to what they looked like naked.