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Path: utzoo!lsuc!msb
From: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: Confining the pornography debate
Message-ID: <351@lsuc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Feb-85 01:59:25 EST
Article-I.D.: lsuc.351
Posted: Mon Feb  4 01:59:25 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 4-Feb-85 03:22:41 EST
References: <206@ttidcc.UUCP> <20980089@cmu-cs-k.ARPA>
Reply-To: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 38
Summary: There is a net.sex already; it's called net.women
Summary: But net.women is crowded, so how about net.women.porn?

Tim Maroney (tim@cmu-cs-k.ARPA) writes:

> The pornography issue is essentially about sex.  There is, however, no
> net.sex, for discussion of sexual issues.  I propose such a group be
> created, and the pornography debate moved to there.

There IS a group that covers most sexual issues, and that's net.women.
I have always claimed that net.sex-roles is a more correct name for
the traffic, and the one actually used shows sexual chauvinism.

However, I agree that there are many too many articles there (and elsewhere)
on the topic of, um, freedom of expression vs freedom from porn.  Therefore
I propose:

	net.women.porn

to which I will be happy to unsubscribe.  At least with THAT name
it will be less likely to be confused with a group FOR pornography!

(As for the proposal to call it net.1st-amendment, I must protest
that the "1st Amendment" applies only to the USA, and the issue doesn't.
That name would be chauvinism in the original sense.)

There would be a certain amount of sense to "net.legal.censorship",
but most of the existing traffic that I've read has been on the narrower
topic and seems appropriate for a net.women subgroup.

> I think the idea of new top-level groups like "net.pornography" to
> accomodate single discussions is a bad one.

Hear, hear.  The trouble is deciding where to put contentious issues.
As soon as you say that net.abortion should have been a subgroup of
net.legal, or a subgroup of net.women, you're taking a point of view.
I'm proposing net.women.porn not because I agree with the implied point
of view (I'm not getting into whether I do) but because a large fraction
of the traffic seems to be on that aspect.

Mark Brader