Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.72 (889 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0231148879 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 400 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-05-12 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Strub situates the New Right within a vibrant political landscape, not dominated by just one sliver of the politically engaged public but inhabited by pro-porn feminists, reluctant liberals, gay rights activists, influential thinkers, and pragmatic judicial appointees." Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Journal of American Studies (May 2012)"Strub does a masterful job of making the complicated postwar legal history of the shifting definitions of obscenity clear in a nuanced analysis that is always attentive to issues of gender and sexuality Examining the sexual politics of the New Right's emergence, he provides a thoughtful, compelling addition to the growing literature on the rise of modern conservatism." --David K. Johnson, American Historical Review (October 2012)"Strub's exploration o
Antipornography campaigns became the New Right's political capital in the 1960s, laying the groundwork for the "family values" agenda that shifted the country to the right. While America is not alone in its ambivalence toward sex and its depictions, the preferences of the nation swing sharply between toleration and censure. As he demonstrates, this failure put the Democratic Party at the mercy of Republican rhetoric. This pattern has grown even more pronounced since the 1960s, with the emergence of the New Right and its attack on the "floodtide of filth" that was supposedly sweeping the nation. Strub also examines the ways in which the left failed to mount a serious or sustained counterattack to the New Right's use of pornography as a political tool. Conducting his own extensive research, Whitney Strub vividly recreates the debates over obscenity
His writing has appeared in American Quarterly, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Journal of Social History, PopMatters, and Bad Subjects. He lives in Center City, Philadelphia.. Whitney Strub is an assistant professor of history at Rutgers University, Newark
Mary Rizzo said Thoroughly researched study of political debates over pornography. Using an extraordinary array of archival materials, Perversion for Profit is a brilliant analysis of how debates over pornography are really debates over citizenship and normalcy. Strub shows how the postwar period moved from milquetoast liberalism that hid conservative sexual politics, to a moment of openness and sexual maturity, to a retrenchment led by a strange combo of Christian rightists and anti-porn feminists.