Judith Levine

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Judith Levine (born 1952) is an American author and civil libertarian who was a co-founder of the National Writers Union, a trade union comprising contact and freelance writers, and No More Nice Girls, a group dedicated to the promotion of abortion rights through street theater.

Levine is best known for her 2002 Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex, in which Levine suggests the liberalization of age-of-consent laws in the United States and the adoption of a conception of minors as sexual beings, which Levine argues is extant in Western Europe. Levine argues for the vitiation of most United States laws governing the possession of child pornography, the procurement of abortions by minors, and the undertaking of that which is classified as statutory rape. The work was heavily criticized by conservative commentators, and its publication by the University of Minnesota Press generated controversy in the Minnesota state legislature.

Levine is also the author of My Enemy, My Love: Women, Men, and the Dilemmas of Gender, in which Levine analyzes traditional gender roles and the relationship between misogyny and feminism; Do You Remember Me?: A Father, A Daughter, and a Search for the Self, in which Levine recounts her father's affliction with Alzheimer's disease; and Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping, in which Levine considers anti-consumerist movements.