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Path: utzoo!utcs!lsuc!pesnta!hplabs!sdcrdcf!randvax!edhall
From: edhall@randvax.UUCP (Ed Hall)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: What's degrading?
Message-ID: <2285@randvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Feb-85 13:40:30 EST
Article-I.D.: randvax.2285
Posted: Mon Feb  4 13:40:30 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 7-Feb-85 09:44:12 EST
Organization: Rand Corp., Santa Monica
Lines: 19

A point to ponder: the camera itself can be an instrument of degradation.
To take one's clothes off or to engage in particular sexual acts isn't
the degrading thing--it's the camera that makes such things degrading.

There is something fundamentally different between written and
photographic pornography.  A photograph of someone turns them into an
object.  That's the nature of photography, more so than any other
pictorial art.  Through the photograph, the photographic subject becomes
completely passive.  Once a picture is taken, that image can be used any
way someone possessing it sees fit.  Primitive cultures almost uniformly
fear being photographed, as they feel that part of their essence is
somehow being captured by the photographer.

What does all this have to do with pornography?  Just this: you don't have
to show that sex and nudity are degrading to say that photographs of them
are.

		-Ed Hall
		decvax!randvax!edhall