Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

According to the free speech argument against pornography: pornography silences women, therefore a means of enabling women's speech is to silence pornographers' speech. In this paper I defend the following objection to this argument. The argument is self-defeating because censorship of pornography enables women's speech only insofar as women don't produce pornographic speech. But women do produce pornographic speech. I assess two responses to this objection: either redefine “pornography” or alternatively redefine “women” so that no women qualify as pornographers. I argue that the first option cannot be done and that, although the second can be done, the result is a position that is unacceptable to a liberal (amongst others). I conclude that the free speech argument against pornography is not (even in principle) a way to show how a liberal is committed to censorship in order to protect free speech—contrary to what some analytic philosophers have proposed.