This text challenges the position that pornography perpetuates misogyny and sex crimes. It opens with the case of man convicted - the first computer bulletin board entrapment case - of conspiring to make a snuff film and sentenced to 33 years for merely trading kinky fantasies with undercover cops. Using this textbook example of social hysteria as a springboard Kipnis argues that criminalizing fantasy - even perverse and unacceptable fanyasy - has dire consequences. She demonstrates that the porn industry, with multibillion dollar annual revenues, knows precisely how to tap into our culture's deepest anxieties and desires, and that this knowledge more than all the naked bodies, is what guarantees its vast popularity.
