SOURCE: Witt, Charlotte. “Pornography.” NWSA Journal 9, no. 2 (summer 1997): 165-74.

In the following review, Witt places MacKinnon's Only Words within the feminist debate over pornography, contrasting her views with Nadine Strossen's Defending Pornography.

With the Christmas release, to rave reviews, of The People vs. Larry Flynt, it seems that pro-porn philosophy, as argued by Nadine Strossen in Defending Pornography, and Avedon Carol in Nudes, Prudes, and Attitudes, is winning the culture war. The movie portrays Larry Flynt, the publisher of hard-core Hustler magazine, as a flawed but courageous defender of free speech. Frank Rich, in the New York Times calls it “the most timely and patriotic movie of the year”. Even critics, such as Ellen Goodman in the Boston Globe and Hanna Rosin in the New Republic focus on the movie's airbrushing of Flynt (in life he was fat and ugly, had five wives, and neglected his kids) rather...