Perversion for Profit

by Strub, Whitney

• ISBN13: 9780231148863
• ISBN10: 0231148860
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-11-14
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

While America is not alone in its ambivalence toward sex, its preferences swing sharply between toleration and censure. This pattern has grown even more pronounced since the 1960s, with the emergence of the New Right and its attack on the "floodtide of filth" supposedly sweeping the nation. Antipornography campaigns became the New Right's political capital in the 1960s, laying the groundwork for the "family values" agenda that shifted the country to the right. Perversion of Profit traces the anatomy of this trend, conducting archival research in twenty-four states and recounting the debates over obscenity that consumed members of the ACLU in the 1950s, the deployment of obscenity charges against gay media during the cold war, and the rise of the influential Citizens for Decent Literature during the 1960s.Whitney Strub illustrates the crucial function of pornography in constructing the New Right agenda, which emphasized social issues over racial and economic inequality. He situates the fight over obscenity within the politics of 1950s pop culture and the pivotal events that followed: the sexual revolution, feminist activism, the "porno chic" moment of the early 1970s, and resurgent Christian conservatism, which now shapes public policy far beyond the issue of sexual decency. Following these battles to the early months of the Obama administration, Strub isolates the undercurrents of anti-Communist rhetoric that once powered the antipornography movement and continues to permeate political discourse. Connecting the lowest forms of entertainment to the highest levels of government, he revolutionizes our understanding of sex and American politics.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
The Rediscovery of Pornography: Emergence of a Cold War Moral Panic	p. 11
Ambivalent Liberals: Theorizing Obscenity Under Consensus Constraints	p. 43
Arousing the Public: Citizens for Decent Literature and the Emergence of the Modern Antiporn Movement	p. 80
Damning the Floodtide of Filth: The Rise of the New Right and the Political Capital of Moralism	p. 116
The Permissive Society: Porno Chic and the Cultural Aftermath of the Sexual Revolution	p. 146
Resurrecting Moralism: The Christian Right and the Porn Debate	p. 179
Pornography is the Practice, Where Is the Theory?: Second-Wave Feminist Encounters with Porn	p. 213
Vanilla Hegemony: Policing Sexual Boundaries in the Permanent Culture-War Economy	p. 256
Notes	p. 299
Acknowledgments	p. 363
Index	p. 367
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Excerpts

Read an excerpt from the chapter, "Arousing the Public: Citizens for Decent Literature and the Emergence of the Modern Antiporn Movement". (pdf)