Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ora!ambar
From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: comments on violent porn, and violence in general
Summary: No, they are not equivalent.
Message-ID: <19488@cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 25 Apr 91 21:53:17 GMT
References: <m0jVXZi-00004ZC@intelhf.hf.intel.com>
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
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In article <m0jVXZi-00004ZC@intelhf.hf.intel.com> mjm@ahimsa.intel.com (Marjorie Panditji) writes:
> I would like to substitute "violence" (a more general term) for
> "violent porn" (a specific type of violence).

Would Ms Panditji also substitute "war" for "war games" or "rape"
for "rape fantasy" or "murder" for "murder mystery" to show that
those who play chess have a martial spirit, and that Nancy Friday
and Charlotte MacLeod are dangerous criminals?  

No, Ms Panditji, as much as you might like to play this kind of
semantic game, I doubt anyone else will fall for it.  By the time
you have made "violence" a sufficiently general term to call a
book or movie a kind of violence, one can equally apply it to the
violent throes of orgasm or the violence done to my statement by
your disingenuous editing of it.

> Yes, I agree with Russell.  I have a definite predjudice 
> against violence.

Given the way Ms Paditji has generalized this term, I think it 
only fair for us ask her to clarify.  Is she really expressing
a distaste for chess and orgasm?  (In fact, the violence of
these has much more to do with S&M than the violence of rape.) 

> ... It does not strike me as a very compelling argument to 
> say "Try it, you'll like it." ...

I did not ask anyone to like anything.  I have utterly no
desire to change anyone's personal likes or dislikes.

What I see, though, is not just a matter of difference in
personal tastes.  Many people make automatic *moral* judgments
about those who enjoy S&M or violent porn, just as others
automatically condemn gays and lesbians.  I have seen the former
in this newsgroup, indeed, it comes through quite clearly in Ms
Paditji's post.  When a gay man recommends to homophobic writers
that they read certain pieces of gay literature, it is not to
make them gay, rather, it is in the hope that their stereotypes 
and misconceptions might be lessened, and their understanding
increased.  The intent of my post was similar. 

I don't give a tinker's damn what Ms Paditji's sexual preferences
are, nor have I the slightest desire to change them.  But when
she lumps rape and S&M in one bucket labeled "violence", she is
doing the same thing as those who lump rape and homosexuality in
one bucket labeled "perversion".  It becomes more than a matter
of semantic games or personal tastes.  It becomes a matter of
treating people unfairly because of misconceptions about them.
And to that, I do have a right to object. 

Russell