Wendy Kaminer

In the late 1970s, Kaminer worked with Women Against Pornography, where she advocated private consciousness-raising efforts and opposed legal efforts to censor pornography. She contributed a chapter to the anti-pornography anthology, Take Back the Night, wherein she defended First Amendment freedoms and argued the dangers of seeking legal solutions to the perceived problem of pornography. She opposed efforts by Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin to define pornography as a civil rights violation. She critiqued the pro-censorship movement in a 1992 article in The Atlantic entitled "Feminists Against the First Amendment."[2] An ardent free speech advocate, she is currently a member of the advisory board of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Kaminer, a self-described equality or "individual rights feminist", was an early opponent of late 20th-century "protectionist" feminism, reflected in the movement to censor pornography, and of the "difference" feminism associated with Carol Gilligan. She critiqued "Feminism's Identity Crisis" in an October 1993 cover story for The Atlantic.[3]

Kaminer was a member of the board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts from the early 1990s until June 2009. She was a national board member of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1999 until her term expired in June 2006. In 2003, during her tenure on the national board, she became a strong critic of the ACLU leadership and was centrally involved in a series of controversies, including the attempted ouster of the executive director, that culminated in a highly publicized effort to prohibit board members from criticizing the ACLU.[4][5] In 2009 she published a book on her experience and views, called Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity and the ACLU.

As of 2018, Kaminer still comments on the ACLU and what she believes is the appropriate relationship between protecting civil liberties and civil rights. “No one else is doing this work with the kind of national impact, and the kind of skilled lawyering.”[6]