Phyllis Schlafly is wrong about the regulation of pornography, but her views need to be taken more seriously than they typically are in the overwhelmingly liberal academy. She represents an important tradition in thinking about gender issues, and she has advanced her views vigorously and articulately. Schlafly's preeminent concern is to preserve a pattern of gender-specific roles and relations that, she thinks, have helped protect women and children from desertion and abuse. She wants to suppress pornography because it helps to reinforce a vernacular masculine culture that is indifferent or even hostile to the needs of women and children. Schlafly's worries about this culture are legitimate. But the suppression of pornography, I will conclude, is the wrong solution to the problem.
