Thread by @WomenReadWomen

Larry Flynt, founder of "Hustler", has died today. Pornography was and is defended as "free speech" because it upholds male entitlement to violate and access women.
Pornography is called "free speech," but "only women give birth" is called hate speech.

soundcloud.com/womenreadwomen…

"An entire class of women will be treated in these ways so that others can have what they call freedom of speech: freedom meaning free access to women’s bodies, free use of women’s lives, speech meaning women’s bodies as a medium for those others’ expression."

"The same people who say the pornographers must be protected because everything must be published and protected are the first to say that feminist work opposing pornography must not be published in order to protect free speech."

"We think that freedom to exploit women is no freedom at all for women. We believe that it is wrong to talk about freedom as if everyone has it when women are being violated for purposes of profit and entertainment. We think we have a right to freedom from sexual abuse."

"Though women have been excluded from access to the political dialogue... forced into silence by terrorism... women are supposed to value speech rights by valuing the rights of those who have excluded them... she is supposed to value his right to speech over her own."

"There is massive evidence that pornography is not only a symptom of misogyny but an active agent in generating woman-hating acts. Pornography is used as a blueprint for sadism, rape, and torture. It is used to force women and children into prostitution."

"Sexual sadism against women is mass entertainment; sexual exploitation of women is protected as and widely understood to be a civil liberty of men; the sexual violation of women in the pornography itself is protected by the courts as 'speech.'"

"The legal perception of what pornography is has shaped the social perception of what pornography does. Its harms have not been seen as real. They have been protected under the disguise of the name given that world of words and pictures which are not considered real: 'speech.'"

"This is truth time. Do women’s rights really matter? How much does the woman who has been abused because of the pornography matter to you?
This is truth time. We can win if you care enough. Winning
depends on you."

- Dworkin, MacKinnon
"Pornography and Civil Rights"

Men react to women's words as if they were acts of violence. Women are censored; opposition to our erasure and dehumanization is framed as a threat against those who feel entitled to our lives while their threats of and actual violence against us are protected as "free speech."