In this gracefully written, accessible and entertaining volume,
John Semonche surveys censorship for reasons of sex from the
nineteenth century up to the present. He covers the various forms
of American media-books and periodicals, pictorial art, motion
pictures, music and dance, and radio, television, and the Internet.
The tale is varied and interesting, replete with a stock of
colorful characters such as Anthony Comstock, Mae West, Theodore
Dreiser, Marcel Duchamp, Opie and Anthony, Judy Blume, Jerry
Falwell, Alfred Kinsey, Hugh Hefner, and the Guerilla Girls.
Covering the history of censorship of sexual ideas and images is
one way of telling the story of modern America, and Semonche tells
that tale with insight and flair. Despite the varieties of
censorship, running from self-censorship to government bans, a
common story is told. Censorship, whether undertaken to ward off
government regulation, to help preserve the social order, or to
protect the weak and vulnerable, proceeds on the assumption that
the censor knows best and that limiting the choices of media
consumers is justified. At various times all of the following
groups were perceived as needing protection from sexually explicit
materials: children, women, the lower classes, and foreigners. As
social and political conditions changed, however, the simple fact
that someone was a woman or a day laborer did not support
stereotyping that person as weak or impressionable. What would
remain as the only acceptable rationale for censorship of sexual
materials was the protection of children and unconsenting adults.
For each mode of media, Semonche explains via abundant examples how
and why censorship took place in America. Censoring Sex also traces
the story of how the cultural territory contested by those
advocating and opposing censorship has diminished over the course
of the last two centuries. Yet, Semonche argues, the censorship of
sexual materials that continues in the United States poses a
challenge to the free speech that is part of the f
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