 Some liberals have accepted that pornography may contribute to women’s subordination: if not by directly causing crimes of sexual violence, then at least by conditioning consumers to view women as sex objects, rather than as autonomous individuals worthy of equal concern and respect. They grant that this may contribute to discrimination against women in society and that it may prevent women from having the same social and political influence that men generally possess. But, they argue, this harm is not sufficiently great to justify interfering with pornographers’ freedom of speech. The right to freedom of expression is a more important right. So, if we have to choose between the right to equality (of women) and the right to freedom of speech (of pornographers), we must choose freedom of  speech.[5] But MacKinnon’s argument, if successful, would turn the tables on these traditional liberal defenses of pornography: Pornography could no longer be defended simply on the grounds of the primacy of the right to freedom of speech, for permitting pornography violates women’s right to freedom of speech too. We now seem to have a conflict of rights: not simply between pornographers’ right to freedom of speech and women’s right to equal civil status, but within the right to freedom of expression itself between pornographers’ right to freedom of speech and women’s right to freedom of speech. Why should pornographers’ right to freedom of expression take precedence over women’s? The next section turns to the debates surrounding this question.