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In the documentary film about the hard-core pornography industry Not a Love Story (Bonnie Klein, 1982), various feminists who have led the fight against pornography speak emotionally about the horrors and harms invading from this industry's nether world.

(Linda Williams: Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible, 1989, p. 265.)

I am again puzzled by the usage of the present perfect in the above sentence. The only reason for the present perfect resides in im opinion in the fact that the author (L. Williams) wants to tell that feminists appearing in the mentioned documentary (1982) were in the year of the book publishing (1989) still fighting against the porn industry. Am I right or the reason for the usage of this particular tense is quite different?

Nathan Tuggy
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bart-leby
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    The perfect here expresses a prior eventuality which in some sense constitutes a current state. The perfect is useful and complicated. Read and understand this link, and the perfect will begin to make sense. – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Aug 02 '16 at 18:05
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    What @P. E. Dant said. Partly, the writer doesn't want to settle on simple present or past tense because some of those feminists might no longer be leading the fight (whereas some are). Using present perfect neatly avoids this problem, since it carries an implied link to time of utterance (that may or may not apply precisely to any particular feminist who speaks in the film). – FumbleFingers Aug 02 '16 at 18:11
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    Note (in addition to P.E and Fumble's cogent remarks) that outside of the behavioral sciences it is customary to speak of past works, and their creators and actors, using present-tense constructions, because they are felt to be still immediately 'present' -- the feminists speak and have led. – StoneyB on hiatus Aug 02 '16 at 18:18
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    Also, these feminists might well be alive. We wouldn't use the present-perfect when speaking of a documentary about those who led the fight for women's suffrage in the early years of the 20th century, who were in their prime or older a century ago. They are gone now, and the fight for suffrage is over. – TimR Aug 02 '16 at 18:27

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