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From: edhall@randvax.ARPA (Ed Hall)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.politics
Subject: Re: pro-smut diatribe
Message-ID: <1740@randvax.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 13-Mar-84 02:36:50 EST
Article-I.D.: randvax.1740
Posted: Tue Mar 13 02:36:50 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Mar-84 08:24:54 EST
References: <676@dciem.UUCP> <580@orca.UUCP>, <145@yeti.UUCP> <1712@randvax.ARPA>, <529@ihuxb.UUCP>
Organization: Rand Corp., Santa Monica
Lines: 40

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>                   ...  I don't particularly want to defend Penthouse,
> since I consider it very sleazy, but I have read as many letters from
> women (in the Forum) describing how they turned their men into
> sex slaves as from men.  I also don't see how you can say that the
> camera is spying on someone who is outside on a public beach with no
> clothes on (a very common pose in Penthouse).  I think you may have
> been casting some of your own feelings onto the pictures to get
> the interpretations you came up with.
>
>        Allen England at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Naperville, IL

I'll agree that the beach pictures were usually pretty harmless, but
I don't remember many of them.  And even indoor shots had exceptions,
some of which were tasteful and even erotic without voyeurism or
debasement.  But just because something is absent on some occasions
doesn't mean it isn't there at all.

And, yes, I read some of my feelings into the images, but no more than
in looking at, say, a LIFE magazine photo.  That was the point of my
original article--as soon as I began looking at the pictures for what
they were (photographs of obviously posed individuals, with careful
attention to staging and costume), rather than whatever they pretended
to be, the *intellectual* connection was made.  Try it yourself; ask
yourself just what statement is being made about the individual in the
photograph.  Sometimes--maybe not even half the time, but certainly
often--you'll see the message I described.

Advocating slavery or abuse of either sex is hardly right, and doing
so under the guise of sexual liberation only makes it more wrong.  Of
course, the fact that the `letters' are fictional doesn't detract from
this--in fact, it changes their status from the presentation of reader
opinion into a form of advocacy.

But I'll repeat that I strongly oppose censorship, or the banning of
pornography.  And I'm no prude, either (references available upon
request :-)  ).

		-Ed Hall
		decvax!randvax!edhall