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In college I had been exposed to similar extremes of feminist thought. Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin advanced critiques of power and gender that suggested buying a Playboy was an act of aggression tantamount to rape. But by the time I worked at Hustler, the public -- at least segments of it -- was flirting with the notion that porn might be chic. Where I lived in Los Angeles, high-school girls strolled Melrose Avenue in baby T-shirts displaying the "Porn Star" label. Howard Stern brought porn stars into millions of peoples' lives every morning when they appeared as guests on his show.

Pornography had also become a hot topic in highbrow glossy publications such as the New Yorker and Esquire. The basic question of whether pornography is misogynous was brushed aside by most who brought the subject into mainstream media. Magazine stories about porn stars, Hollywood movies about the industry or Wall Street Journal articles about the immense profits made by Internet porn tycoons seldom mentioned the content of the adult industry's main product, porn videos. Much of the public discussion about porn is like a wine tasting at which no wine is served.

As Hustler's main XXX-film critic, I watched hundreds of adult videos. The debate on porn was never abstract for me. Pornography was my life. Not only did I review the videos, but I wrote copy for several of Larry Flynt's magazines, became friends with performers and directors, visited porn sets and wrote scripts for XXX films.

There was an absurd component to my work. The Hustler rating standard is a graphic of a penis, which ranges from fully erect to totally limp, depending on the quality of the film being reviewed. "Porn critic" is perhaps the most ludicrous job title I will ever have. Aside from the ridiculous nature of my job, I was often profoundly disturbed by the aggressively anti-female tone of the films I reviewed. None was more misogynist than those put out by a director and performer who called himself Max Hardcore.

Max Hardcore, who releases nearly two dozen videos every year, is a somewhat out-of-shape, balding middle-age man, with baby-blue eyes and a twangy, Midwestern accent. His trademark is the cowboy hat he wears in every scene. He wears the hat even after his clothes come off. Max refers to his female co-stars as "victims." He dresses them in schoolgirl skirts, ankle socks, pink ribbons and pigtails. They skip into their scenes like little girls. Max pursues them, abducts them, tortures them and more or less rapes them.

Rape is an inflammatory word, especially with respect to the adult industry. Actual depiction of rape may result in an obscenity trial and a prison term for the videomaker. Pornographers such as Max get around the rape issue by ensuring that at some point the female starlet verbally consents to whatever is going on. A typical Max Hardcore scene looks like a rape. A girl is pursued and captured. She cringes and cowers; Max yanks her by the pigtails and slaps her around. But it is not rape, because she tells us it isn't. Images battle with words. Turn the sound down, and it is a rape.

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