The government argued that material appearing to be child pornography harmed real children by sustaining the market for such pornography and encouraging those who would exploit children.
The Canadian Supreme Court's opinion, written by Justice John Sopinka, said that "our understanding of the harms caused by these materials has developed considerably" in recent years, and declared that there was now another, more compelling reason to regulate obscenity than mere public prudishness: pornography harms women.
Harry Brod argues that pornography harms men individually even while it augments men's collective power (Brod 1992, 158).
Helen Longino was one of the first feminist philosophers to articulate the theory of how pornography harms women.
According to MacKinnon, pornography harms women in a very special and serious way: by violating their civil rights (MacKinnon 1984 , 1987 1992).
As I was contemplating my topic for this week's column, my attention was brought to this video by Dawn Hawkins, Executive Director of the anti-pornography group, "Porn Harms" (which is down right now as I'll explain why later).
MacKinnon argues that pornography does harm women because it undermines their civil rights, including the right to free speech.
The question of whether pornography causes harm raises tricky conceptual issues about the notion of causality, as well as empirical and methodological ones.
It contains swearwords, rape, racism, pornography, self-harm, suicide, domestic violence, heroin and marijuana use, a character who contemplates child abuse, and graphic descriptions of sex.
Anecdotes abound about the harm pornography can cause.
