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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!pesnta!pertec!kontron!cramer
From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Last night
Message-ID: <204@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 5-Jun-85 11:51:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.204
Posted: Wed Jun  5 11:51:54 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Jun-85 06:17:05 EDT
References: <1557@reed.UUCP> <704@burl.UUCP> <441@rtech.UUCP> <2775@nsc.UUCP>, <186@kontron.UUCP> <785@mtgzz.UUCP>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Irvine, CA
Lines: 61

> 
> >> In article <441@rtech.UUCP> jeff@rtech.UUCP (Jeff Lichtman) writes:
> >> >
> >> >I doubt Ellen would really imprison this man or injure him because
> >> >he yelled nasty things at her.
> >> 
> >> Why the hell not?  I think you miss the point, Jeff, of how vicious this
> >> kind of attack is.
> >> -- 
> >> Richard Mateosian
> >> {cbosgd,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!srm    nsc!srm@decwrl.ARPA
> 
> >From cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969
> >What ever happened to belief in free speech?  I notice a disturbing 
> >tendency in this news group to support police state approaches to problems.
> 
> 	How can anyone say this!!?? Free speech? If you think you can
> say anything you like anytime you like, you living in your own world!
> What do the words libel and slander mean to you? You can sue someone
> for exercising their freedom of speech if what they say injures you.
> Having experienced what Ellen went through on occasion, I can tell you
> that what that slimeball said to Ellen did injure her. It may not have
> cost her money, or ruined her reputation, but it hurt her deeply. It
> hurt her self-respect, and she has felt a lot of frustration and pain
> because of the incident. 

In my experience, libel and slander laws are almost useless, and encourage
people to believe everything they read because, "If it weren't true,
they would get sued!"  The crime that many Soviets have been sent to
jail for is "slandering the Soviet State".  Why am I uncomfortable
with slander and libel laws?  Second, there is a world of difference
between *civil* actions, regarding libel, and the very infrequently
used *criminal* libel laws --- one can send you to jail.

> 	So can some dumb drunk on the street say anything he wants. 
> Well, yes he can. Is anyone suggesting scouring the streets to pick 
> up all the obnoxious people out there? NO! 

Richard Mateosian *did* suggest that it might be appropriate.

>                                       Ellen is trying to impress 
> upon you how much this has hurt her. It would seem that a lot of 
> people have no empathy for this sort of thing. If you'd all stop 
> over-analyzing this and look at what happened to Ellen you'd see that
> she's screaming out "How can someone do something like this to me, just
> because I'm a woman?!" This is the basic injustice in every woman's
> life, something we cannot avoid. We are abused because we were born
> female. And society so twisted up the idea of what it means to
> be female that a lot of people actually believe women want to be abused!
> That's certainly a sad comment on our society.
> 
> Sharon Badian	ihnp4!mtgzz!seb

I am very sympathetic.  This sort of thing is scurrilous and frightening
and really disgusting --- it's even disgusting to watch this sort of
behavior happening when you don't know any of the participants.  My
comments were directed against the idea that this should be a concern
of the police --- the world is full of behavior and speech that I would
distasteful (Communism, Nazism, Democratic Party politics), but I
certainly don't think the government should suppress ideas I find
offensive.