Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!ora!daemon
From: falk@peregrine.Eng.Sun.COM (Ed Falk)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Posting re. Andrea Dworkin
Message-ID: <3039@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 23 Nov 90 07:55:48 GMT
References: <272090CA.26470@ics.uci.edu> <1741@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> <45691@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
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In article <45691@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> feit@acsu.buffalo.edu (Elissa Feit) writes:
>In article <1741@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> falk@peregrine.Eng.Sun.COM (Ed Falk) writes:
>>This is incomplete.  What is Andrea Dworkin's definition of
>>"Pornography"?

>(Since I'm responding so late, I think this may have been answered?)

No it hasn't, thanx for posting it.  Although I like some parts of the
Dworkin-MacKinnon law (i.e. it would let women who were abused or
raped in the making of pornography to stop it), the law is somewhat of
a blank check.  Read Dworkin's definition of pornography carefully:

>Re: The Amendment to Minneapolis's Civil rights law:
>(I quote from Dworkin's _Pornography_:)

>"The law itself is civil, not criminal. It allows people who have been
>hurt by pornography to sue for sex discrimination.  Under this law,
>...  it is sex discrimination to produce, sell, exhibit, or distribute
>pornography--- ...

>"The law's definition of pornography is concrete, not abstract.
>Pornography is defined as the graphic, sexually explicit subordination
>of women in pictures and/or words that also includes women ...
>presented in postures or positions of ... display;

This definition easily includes Playboy and other soft, nonviolent
porn.  It would be illegal to ship Playboy magazines to areas with
this law.  (Or more precisely, Playboy magazine could get sued by
anybody who wanted to.)

I can easily see the fundies getting ahold of this law and using it to
ban "On Our Backs" or "Our Bodies Ourselves"

	-ed falk, sun microsystems -- sun!falk, falk@sun.com
	"What are politicians going to tell people when the
	Constitution is gone and we still have a drug problem?"
			-- William Simpson, A.C.L.U.