Article,

Speech and Action: Replies to Hornsby and Langton

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Legal Theory, 7 (2): 179-201 (June 2001)

Abstract

Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton defend a "silencing argument" for the censorship of pornography, which purports to rest on liberal premises. This argument suggests that pornography might violate women's speech rights by making it impossible for them to refuse sex. However, the silencing argument is fatally flawed; it is neither liberal nor cogent. Their most recent version of the argument, which concedes that in their central scenario women can refuse sex, and can refuse it by performing a speech act, but, nevertheless, denies that women thereby perform "the illocutionary act of refusal," is futile.

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