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From: mat@hou4b.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Anti-Porn Ordinance
Message-ID: <1300@hou4b.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 27-Jan-85 00:23:00 EST
Article-I.D.: hou4b.1300
Posted: Sun Jan 27 00:23:00 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Feb-85 23:42:02 EST
References: <2779@ncsu.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 43

>From: mauney@ncsu.UUCP (Jon Mauney)
>. ..  that commercial exploitation of sex is worse than commercial exploitation
> of other human activities.  I argue that this is not true.
>  >	Turning sex into a commodity that is bought, sold, traded, and taken,
>  >	...   presents sex as a commodity that can ... be bought, sold, ...
> ...  But stipulating that for the moment, let us ask why sex is affected
> this way, and nothing else is ...  What is more important than sex?  ...
>
> How about religion? Is religion more important ... than sex? ... I expect most
> of you to reject that line of reasoning ... at least to find it is not
> sufficient to justify restricting freedom.  ...  the same is true of sex.

Psychology, concerned with how we are strung together, has spent much effort
on sexual issues.  An awful lot of our truly instinctive capabilities -- like
the ability to learn to speak -- are used in the early part of our lives and
then lost.  Sex works in just the opposite way.  It becomes important somewhere
between the ages of two and ten (depending upon whom you ask) and remains
important throughout our lives.  Phrases like ``psycho-sexual development''
highlight centers of attention.

> (1)Sex is not the only important aspect of our lives, and it is not the only
>one being warped by commercial exploitation.  (2)But it is the only one
>surrounded by such a mass of taboo.  That taboo tends to cloud our vision and
>keep us from seeing sex in proper perspective.

	Agreed on the point one.

	Point two is reminiscent of the 1900's high-brow amateur anthropolgist
bemoaning ``primitive'' cultures and their ``taboos''.  The word taboo is a
*dangerous* one.  Even used in proper context, it distorts the meaning of what
it is applied to.  Taboos surrounding sex exist in most all human cultures.
Their exact forms DO differ.  That strongly suggests that cultural institutions
about sex exist for some *basic human need*, or for some basic need that a
culture composed of humans will have.

	It may be that the proper view of sex depends on some part of that
``mass of taboos''.  It just might be a context rather than a fog.  It wouldn't
be the first time that Humane Reformers threw the baby out with the bath water.
-- 

	from Mole End			Mark Terribile
		(scrape .. dig )	hou4b!mat
    ,..      .,,       ,,,   ..,***_*.