“I do have a cause, though. It is obscenity. I’m for it.” –Tom Lehrer
When I first became politically aware, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, AIDS was making lunch meat out of every gay boy and leatherman within reach, and the term “feminist pornography” was an oxymoron to all but a very, very few people. What has come to be called the “feminist sex wars” was going at full bloody force back then.
Things have changed a lot since then, but not as much as I allow myself to think. Yes, Reagan has been put into his grave, but his legacy remains in the body politic like a festering tumor. Yes, gay men no longer have to bury their friends and lovers 25, 50, 75 times a year, nor are HIV-positive people classed as “innocent” or “guilty” and fed poisons disguised as medications. And yes, you can now declare yourself pro-feminist and pro-pornography without your fellow progressives staring at you like you’d just admitted that you moonlight as a contract killer.
