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From: gazit@cs.duke.EDU (Hillel Gazit)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Pornography AGAIN (was Re: Posting re. Andrea Dworkin)
Message-ID: <658887835@lear.cs.duke.edu>
Date: 18 Nov 90 06:45:04 GMT
References: 78710@grad17.cs.duke.edu> <46878@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Organization: Nefolet shel nemushot (Fallout of Wimps)
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In article <46878@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> (Elissa Feit) writes:

>Well, I hate to rekindle this old tired chestnut (how's THAT for mixed
>metaphor! 8-) but the sense I got from reading _Pornography_ [Dworkin,
>1979] is that the proposed legislation is NOT about freedom of speech,
>but about someone being able to collect damages when someone else's
>actions (eg, their portrayal of women) hurts them.

OK, let's spell it out.

If Jesse Helms feels degraded because a Holy symbol for him is put in
urine, should he be able to sue for damages because of the emotional
pain?

What kind of freedom of speech will we have with laws like that?

The difference between Helms and Dworkin is that he has not tried
(yet...)  to rewrite the laws in such a way that he will be able to
sue for damages, just to cut federal funding to what he finds
offensive.

>THAT'S HOW ONE TREATS WOMEN. Thus, according to Dworkin, all-men gay
>porno may in fact degrade women.

And she wrote this concept into law, without even bothering herself to
ask gay people what *they* find in all-men gay porno...

>Premise 1: People's fantasies tend to be tied to distresses they
>suffered. If someone is abused as a child, that abuse (even if not
>conciously retrievable) finds its way into "what turns them on" - it's

How many S&M people have you talked with, Elissa?

How do you *know* that they like S&M because they were abused as children?

>just a way of acting out the hurt so that it can be healed, though
>it's as ineffective as marrying a drunk because your dad was a drunk.

Assuming that you are right, how dare you
criticise the way they *choose* to work on their pains?

>Theorem: (?) If what turns us on is what had once distressed us, then
>pornography CREATES its own market.

Feminist Cow-shit.

People who grew in porno-free societies (or in societies that were
porno free like the small towns in the U.S. 30 years ago) still
consume porno, with great hunger...

>MY proposal is to fill the demand for arousing material with
>"erotica", defined as different than pornography in that it DOES NOT
>degrade women.  How to tell if something's degrading?

You can always use the usual definition:
what turns you on is erotica, while what turns me on is porno.  :-(

>Elissa  Feit    (feit@cs.buffalo.edu // {rutgers,uunet}!cs.buffalo.edu!feit)

Hillel                                                    gazit@cs.duke.edu

"WAVMP has yet to make any public statements in support of gay rights, sex
education in schools, birth control and abortion, children's right to sexual
information and freedom, decriminalization of prostitution or civil rights of
sexual minorities.  They continue to grow larger to grow larger, more powerful
and more pro-censorship and antisex in their positions.  Few members of the
liberal press will risk opposing or criticizing them because they travel under
the protective, self-applied label `feminist'.  It is obvious that no one in
the conservative press will oppose them, either - unless they get too public
about having a large lesbian membership."
   --  ("AMONG US, AGAINST US the new puritans", Pat Califia)