L van der Poll I shall not today attempt to define the kinds of material I understand to be [hard core pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it. 1 Mr Justice Potter Stewart might have known obscenity when he saw it, but with respect, I do not, nor would in any way claim to any intuitive and immediate recognition of what is indecent. 2 Obscenity law is concerned with morality, meaning good and evil, virtue and vice. The concerns of feminism with power and powerlessness are first political, not moral. From the feminist perspective, obscenity is a moral idea; pornography is a political practice. Obscenity is abstract; pornography is concrete. Obscenity conveys moral condemnation as a predicate to legal condemnation. Pornography identifies a political practice that is predicated on power and powerlessnessa practice that is, in fact, legally protected. The two concepts represent two entirely different things.
'The time has come to recognize that denials of individuals' rights on the ground only that they are women are human rights violations, and to require state practices that expose women to degradation, indignity, and oppression on account of their sex to be independently defined, condemned, compensated, and, preferably, prevented. The purpose of changing ubiquitous state practice may appear ambitious, but it is not too ambitious for the needs of our time.'
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