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From: mat@mtx5a.UUCP (m.terribile)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,net.legal,net.singles
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Attorney General's Commission on Pornography
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Date: Tue, 9-Sep-86 15:12:57 EDT
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Posted: Tue Sep  9 15:12:57 1986
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> In fact, let's list the major points you and MES seem to have tried to make 
> (I have tried not to unfairly reword any to look more absurd than they are).
> 
> I would appreciate it if you could edit your own version of this summary, 
> adding any I missed, dropping any you did not intend as a major point (ie
> satire and/or personal insults), and correcting any I have misunderstood.
> In addition, of course to replying to anything I have said.

Fair enough.  Here are the ones that you attribute to me.  Most are fair
statements, if a little overbrief.

> o A drastic change has happened in our society since the 1970 porn commission,
>   invalidating the previous results.

In particular, a drastic change in the type and amount of sexually explicit
material, as well as an increase in the amount of research data and the amount
of evidence in the form of testimony.  In addition, two other national
commissions (one Canadian, one British) have asked similar questions and come
to conclusions different from those that Nixon's commission came to, one in
the mid 70s and one in 1985.

The conclusions of the 1970 study may or may not be valid; only an examination
of what we now know can determine that.  This Commission undertook such an
examination.

> o In discussing porn in general it is relevant to bring up an isolated
>   example of one porn film involving an actual rape on camera.

Yes.  In examining *any* activity, it is relevant to bring up an example,
particularly one as extreme and heinous as a rape on film, sold and viewed
by millions of people (making them accessories).

The question you should ask is whether this incident is representative of the
sex industry, or whether it has occurred more than once.  The answer to the
first is not absolutely resolved by the report, which calls for more study,
and involvement of law enforcement experts.  On the basis of testimony, the
answer to the second is yes.  And there is evidence, somewhat weaker, that
these are not isolated cases.  The evidence is strong enough to urge immediate
study, and to urge that measures be taken that will make such abuse more
difficult to accomplish, if this can be done without serious infringement of
individual liberties, and if this can be done within the framework of the
current interpretation of the Constitution.

> o "Scientific data is of no import to constitutional law"

Not quite what was said (which necessarily responds to the context).
Statistical studies are not the only stuff of which constitutional law is made,
or even the principle component.  Constitutional Law speaks of rights and
rules, of legal principles that are not statistical in nature, but absolute or
relative to each other.  Constitutional law existed long before anyone knew how
to write protocols for social and behavioral sciences studies, and it achieved
some pretty notable things.  Also a few flops, most of which have been fixed.

Scientific data is of use in determining fact, not in applying principles,
except insofar as those principles rest upon claims which can be examined
through such data.

> o The results of certain studies are frightening.

Yes.  Would you like references for the studies and experiments?  As I say
below, I cannot type them all in.  A selection would have to do.

> o There exist large numbers of people who could "quite reasonably" be said
>   to be "victims of pornography and the industry that surrounds it".

Depends what you mean by large numbers.  If you mean 40 million people, the
answer is probably no.  If you mean tens of thousands, the answer may be yes.
The commission calls for further study.  But if the witnesses who testified
are representative, we may be talking about numbers in the hundreds of
thousands or low millions.

If one thousand people a year are degraded, humiliated, and left with a threat
of future humiliation of themselves and their loved ones because of what they
did on camera to avoid starvation, can we justify it for the erotic stimulation
of a few?  By few, let us say less than 15 percent of the adult population.

> o There is a "real toll in human misery" all around us, which we (who 
>   argue with you) are pointedly ignoring.

``All around''?  Does it matter whether it is all around you or concentrated
in one area if you are patronizing an industry whose activity that has this
result?  Yes, the testimony before the Commission, by itself, strongly suggests
that such misery has resulted and may result on a regular basis.

> o It is an emergency.

Wouldn't you consider *any* situation that results in the harms alleged to
be an urgent situation?

In particular, the sexual abuse of children by people who collect, exchange,
and sell photographs of that abuse, and who use such photographs to facilitate
the abuse of more children warrants immediate attention.

> o (Something about "psychological violence", but not defined well enough
>   to include here.  Please clarify.)

Such violence includes the cases documented in testimony of women who were
abused physically or psychologically by ``partners'' who sought to have them
duplicate the things viewed on film or in photographs.  It includes women who
have been harassed by men who have filled their traditionally male workplace
with images of women in sexually accessible postures.  In a less definite but
no less damaging way, it includes women who are viewed as objects for the
pleasure of men around them.

The list of victims includes the men who do these things.  To say that they
are sick is much like blaming accidents on drivers:  guardrails, barriers, and
seatbelts help reduce fatalities and serious injuries.  The lack of these
things need not be the direct cause of the accident.

Yes, we *do* need more studies to determine the extent of some of the harms.
But this does not mean that some of them are not well documented.  And others
are offensive simply on egalitarian grounds:  ``When your rape is entertainment
your worthlessness is absolute'' (Dworkin).  Yes, you may disagree with Ms.
Dworkin, but *if* the presentation of rape, date rape, etc, *is* entertainment,
then the relative esteem in which we hold men and women is certainly in
question, especially when the women depicted are shown as ultimately acceeding
to the assualt and calling for more.  The only questions are if such materials
are viewed as entertainment and how large the effect is.

Such materials are viewed as entertainment by some; the Commission found that
quite a bit was available.  Whether it is what *you* like or not is a
different question.  As to the magnitude of the effect: examine the studies
which showed that subjects (college-age males) who viewed such materials were
less likely to bring a conviction, or even believe the victim's testimony, in
a rape trial.  Note that the volunteer subjects are screened to avoid
deliberately subjecting anyone with possibly psychotic tendencies to situations
which might trigger harmful behavior.

> o Studies (which ones, by name, please.  And in the context this seemed to
>   be studies of "psychologically violent" porn, yes?) seem to indicate
>   (unspecified) damage to users, their spouses, and their children.

Some of it has been posted.  If your goal is to establish the reliability of
what the Commission said or to question my interpretation of it, why not get
the $9.95 copy which will soon become available?  Then you will not have the
possiblity of error in my transcription.  But I will transcribe some of the
references and conclusions based thereupon if you like.

> o It is OK to repeatedly refer to victims, w/o establishing the meaning or
>   scope of this group.		*

Over 100 such victims spoke before the Commission.  Many others who considered
themselves victims were interviewed by the Commission's staff.  Given the sense
of shame surrounding such victimization, it would appear that these would be a
small minority of the actual pool of victims in the cities in which hearings
were held.  Very few of these were offenders (whose testimony may well be
self-serving).  Of those sex offenders who testified or provided statements,
many testified to having been abused as children in the same way that they
abused their victims, and this abuse often involved sexually explicit materials
used in the manners that Dr. Deitz outlined.  Such repetition, as adults, of
abuse received as children is well documented in other areas of child abuse,
and it is becoming established in patterns of sexual abuse as well.

Indeed, if victims of abuse that is aided by pornogrpahy themselves become
offenders because of the damage they suffered, their victims are, in a limited
sense, victims of the original material.

I believe that the victims that Dr. Deitz wrote of represent reasonably well
the categories of non-offender victims that spoke before the Commission.  I
cannot possibly type in all of the testimony.  Nor would the backbone sites
appreciate it if I could.

> o The commission could not possibly have been "stacked" and still disagreed
>   so much.

It could not have been stacked with people whose agenda was a blanket
condemnation of all sexually explicit material.  It is possible, given the fact
that the Commissioners were unpaid, that they did approach the subject with
concerns -- concerns which may very well have been based in harms that they had
personally witnessed.  In at least one case, this is true.

The openmindedness with which the Commission approached its job is, I think,
evidenced in their struggles even to define the term ``pornography''.  It is
evidenced in the fact that, excluding explicitly pedophile material, the
Commission voted by a thin margin to recommend the lifting of *all*
restrictions against the written word (as opposed to photographic or cinema-
tographic depictions)  And by the fact that they invited people who might
reasonably oppose restrictive laws to appear before them.  A few did.  Most
such individuals who were invited declined to appear.

But *every* significant disagreement that arose between the Commissioners
argues against the claim that they were merely playing out a fixed agenda.
And every such disagreement, every dissenting opinion, every close vote
reduces the likelyhood that such agendas, had they been present, would have
been the final determining factor in the Commission's findings and
recommendations.
-- 

	from Mole End			Mark Terribile
		(scrape .. dig )	mtx5b!mat
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