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From: west@utcsri.UUCP (Thomas L. West)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: How to start getting rid of porn
Message-ID: <774@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 17-Feb-85 01:55:21 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsri.774
Posted: Sun Feb 17 01:55:21 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 17-Feb-85 02:16:43 EST
References: <1612@pur-phy.UUCP> <4716@cbscc.UUCP> <128@v1.UUCP>
Reply-To: west@utcsri.UUCP (Thomas L. West)
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 51
Summary: 


  This sort of thing is fine if you think that pornography promotes sex alone.
However, I think that you will find that a large number of people who are in
favour of censorship dislike pornography because of its attitudes towards women,
NOT of its attitudes towards sex itself.  Since women are increasingly beginning
to stand up for themselves, it is not terribly suprising that a large portion of
the men who bear women a great deal of resentment for one reason or another are
turning towards pornography.  It is also not suprising that the pornography
"industry" is replying by increasing the amount of implicit and explicit 
violence in their publications.  Now that it is harder to victimize women,
some are turning to paper substitutes, or in some cases, towards those who
still can't fight back, children.

  Since these people are looking for victims, I doubt a liberalization of the
laws concerning sex would have much effect on the consumption of pornography
of the type that concerns many of us the most: violent pornography and child
pornography.

  Thus I maintain that the there is little reason to allow pornography to
sustain and encourage the set of attitudes towards women and need to victimize
others that I believe pornography promotes.

  Many have worried that control of censorship could fall to the wrong people.
This is true if (1) The reasons for cutting a movie aren't explicitly laid out
ahead of time in law and (2) There is no recourse the courts in the event of
a disputed judgement.  I oppose censorship without these pre-requisites (which
is why a can not support the Ontario Censor Board in its present state.)

  Just a question to the anti-censorship folk.  If child pornography is made
*outside* the US in some country where it was legal, then no US laws were 
broken in its making.  Now should the end product be banned?  Remember that 
it's not legitimate to ban it because making it in the US would be illegal.
Lots of stuff is imported to the US that is made under conditions that would
be illegal in the US (like safety regulations or minimum wage laws, etc.)
Now this becomes a straight censorship question.  If this should be banned, then
why?  If it should be banned because it is socially harmful, why shouldn't all
pornography?  I've heard anti-censorship people argue this both ways, so the
results, if anyone picks up the challenge, might be interesting.

  But back to the article being rebutted.  While liberalizing laws concerning
what happens to two individuals in the privacy of their home is something I'm
in favour of, I don't think that the legalization of prostitution is likely to
help attitudes much at all.  We *are* North Americans, and as such, we are
unlikely to view prostitution as an honourable or sacred profession.  To
legalize it would just make it more widespread and likely hurt attitudes
towards women in general (remember that given our background, the vast majority
of the population looks down upon prostitution and this *isn't* going to change
with legalization). 

  Tom West
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