Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!ora!daemon From: feit@acsu.buffalo.edu (Elissa Feit) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Pornography AGAIN Message-ID: <47331@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> Date: 23 Nov 90 07:55:28 GMT References: <78710@grad17.cs.duke.edu>> <46878@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> <658887835@lear.cs.duke.edu> Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz) Organization: State University of New York at Buffalo/Comp Sci Lines: 124 Approved: ambar@ora.com In article <658887835@lear.cs.duke.edu> gazit@cs.duke.EDU (Hillel Gazit) writes: >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? First off, for the sake of argument I am defending Dworkin, which was NOT necessarily the purpose of my original post. I agree with her in part and disagree in part. Dworkin's basic assumption is that pornography teaches us how women "like" to be treated: that we like to be objectified, we like to be raped, called derogatory names, and so on. Similarly we are taught that mistreating women is men's correct sexual posture. (For the record, I think this is true that SOME sexual explicit material does this.) This is what Dworkin is trying to get to in HER definition of "pornography". Suppose that this is true and a man learns these attitudes and harms a woman because of these attitudes. Then, the law would allow her to sue the pornographers for damages. A response to this may be: gee, we learn all kinds of things which can be misued. Does that mean we should be able sue indiscriminately, just because some fool misinterprets a piece of information? Dworkin's response would be: it is not that *A* fool misinterprets *A* piece of information. The case is that a whole sector of the population, MEN, are misconstruing the information and hurting not just *A* woman, but a whole class of people: WOMEN. >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. This is not comparable to Sereno's "Piss Christ" in that the class of objects, RELIGIOUS ICONS in this case, are not being hurt in the same way that people are hurt. Furthermore, is Helms being discriminated against? Will he presumably not get a job because of "Piss Christ"? Will he be beat up as a Christian because of "Piss Christ"? >>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" >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? (So you're saying that S&M is "abuse"? I never equated the two. Many S&Mers would not actually come right out and say that...) I think people LEARN many parts of their sexuality. I DON'T think things such as hurting people in order to be aroused is inherent. And by the way, I used abuse as a "eg" to the PREMISE that (and I quote) "People's fantasies tend to be tied to distresses they suffered". I'm not claiming that early abuse is concious is every case - far from it (and I don't know percentages). I do know several people whose fantasies ARE tied to early abuse - and they found out after years of struggling with the fantasy, not knowing where it came from. I am also reporting this from knowing some counselors who have found that by working with a client's fantasies, they (the counselor and the client) could unlock some of the early abuse stuff. (Allow me to add that the counselor does NOT make the assumption that the fantasy = the previously unremembered incident of abuse. The knowledge that X is a true incident comes from the fact of LARGE amounts of anger/grief/fear that is tied to X.) >>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? Again, Hillel, why do you assume that they ARE "working" on their pain? People ACT OUT all kinds of emotional trauma without conciously knowing that they are replaying old hurts (or are you a behavioralist?). I'm not criticizing the way people choose to live - if it happens to be the case that your INTENTION is to heal from hurts X, Y, and Z, you probably don't want to CHOOSE a life where X, Y, and Z. >>Theorem: (?) If what turns us on is what had once distressed us, then >>pornography CREATES its own market. >Feminist Cow-shit. "Bullshit" is a generic enough term. Or is your choice of the term "cow-shit" to imply that I am a "cow"? That women are livestock? (I was hoping that we'd somehow come furthur 8-( ). >>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. :-( Say! Now THAT'S an idea! ...ummm, you sure you don't mind, Hillel? No, all kidding aside. I do NOT agree with much of what Dworkin says. *I* think the problem is as stated above: "porn" teaches men and women how they are to be sexually, and those ways happen to degrade people. Somehow, violence has been sexualized, degradation has been sexualized, racism has been sexualized. We need to rethink our sexuality outside of oppressive ways of being. One way to do this is to stop producing material that teaches oppression. Likewise, I think that TV should be less violent. I am NOT proposing that we outlaw TV either.... Elissa Feit (feit@cs.buffalo.edu // {rutgers,uunet}!cs.buffalo.edu!feit) I know it's over, and it never really began, but in my heart it was so real - The Smiths