According to speech-act theory, we do things with words every time we speak. The most striking thing one can do with words is to exercise authority over others, such as when a judge issues a guilty verdict in a criminal trial. Some speakers hold this kind of authority without good reason; this kind of speech constitutes an unjust imposition of authority, and thus arguably harms in a direct, non-metaphorical sense; it would seem, therefore, that it should not be protected by freedom of speech. The problem in these cases, however, does not lie in the words that harmful speakers utter, but in the things they have the power to do with them. It is this power, it seems, that must be dismantled: in speech-act terms, we must tackle felicity conditions, not locutions. This paper defends this insight. By providing an account of the (alleged) authority of pornographers as both epistemic and informal, I claim that the presumption against censoring porn is not lifted even if the speech-act argument succeeds in showing that pornography can be constitutive of harm. This does not mean that such harms should not be countered, but they should be countered as the specific kinds of harms that they are.

根据言语行为理论，我们每次说话都是用言语来做事。一个人可以用言语做的最引人注目的事情就是对他人行使权威，例如当法官在刑事审判中做出有罪判决时。有些演讲者没有充分的理由就拥有这种权威。这种言论构成了不公正的权威强加，因此可以说是直接的、非隐喻意义上的伤害；因此，它似乎不应受到言论自由的保护。然而，这些情况下的问题并不在于有害说话者所说的话，而在于他们有能力用这些话做的事情。看来，必须废除的正是这种权力：用言语行为的术语来说，我们必须解决幸福条件，而不是措辞。本文捍卫了这一见解。通过对色情制品作者的（所谓的）权威进行认知和非正式的解释，我声称即使言论行为论点成功地表明色情制品可能构成伤害，反对审查色情制品的推定也不会被解除。这并不意味着不应反击此类伤害，而是应将其作为特定类型的伤害予以反击。