 Many of the important initial moves in this literature were crafted by feminist legal scholar Catherine MacKinnon, along with Andrea Dworkin. One of MacKinnon’s most significant claims that has received sustained philosophical attention is the idea that (degrading and misogynist) pornography silences women. With some modifications, a similar claim may be applied to hate speech, namely, that hate speech silences its targets. However, as the literature has focused on the case of pornography and women, it’s worth examining these arguments in detail first.