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From: riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Anti-porn ordinance
Message-ID: <550@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 29-Dec-84 11:56:54 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.550
Posted: Sat Dec 29 11:56:54 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 31-Dec-84 01:59:33 EST
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I think the ordinance is ridiculous and unconstitutional, too, but I want to
respond to Helen Anne Vigneau's comments:

>> This is the most ridiculous thing I have read in a long time!!!  Where in
>> the hell do the narrow-minded Fallwellites who wrote that law...

They weren't Falwellites, they were feminists.  Misguided feminists, perhaps,
but certainly not Falwellites.

>>                                                            ...get off
>> saying that if I want to make blue movies (or what have you) and sell them
>> in their nasty little backwoods town, *even though I wanted to make these
>> movies* I am being degraded by making them?...

Whether or not the women in the blue movies are being degraded isn't the issue
here.  The claim the proponents of the ordinance are making is that  a l l
women are degraded by pornography.  To quote from the ordinance again:

|| Special findings on pornography: The Council finds that pornography is
|| central in creating and maintaining the civil inequality of the sexes.
|| Pornography is a systematic practice of exploitation and subordination
|| based on sex which differentially harms women.  The bigotry and contempt it
|| promotes, with the acts of aggression it fosters, harms women's
|| opportunities for equality of rights in employment, education, property
|| rights, public accommodations and public services; create public harassment
|| and private denigration; promote injury and degradation such as rape,
|| battery and prostitution and inhibit just enforcement of laws against these
|| acts; contribute significantly to restricting women from full exercise of
|| citizenship and participation in public life, including in neighborhoods;
|| damage relations between the sexes; and undermine women's equal exercise of
|| rights to speech and action guaranteed to all citizens under the
|| constitutions and laws of the United States and the state of Minnesota.

To me this seems like a considerable overstatement of an argument which
nevertheless contains a grain of truth.  In my opinion, there can be little
doubt that pornography contributes to the oppression of women in general by
fostering in the minds of many of the people who read or watch it a distorted
view of women as things, not people, and by the strong undercurrents of rage
and violence which are present in most pornography.

There are a few problems, though, in going from this argument to the
Minneapolis ordinance.  First of all, pornography isn't the only offender in
this regard.  Any genre of pop culture you can name, from tv ads to the top
40, is overflowing with distorted and degrading views of women.  You could
burn every sexually explicit book, magazine and film in North America and
still have only scratched the surface of the problem.  Secondly, one person's
pornography is another person's healthy erotica -- I am firmly convinced that
women as well as men benefit from the more open sexual attitudes that have
developed as we put Victorianism further behind us; any given piece of
erotica can be a pleasant and harmless release for one person and stimulate
another to bigotry, harassment or even rape.  Third is the matter of choice:
as Helen Anne Vigneau might have said, "where do we get off" protecting women
from books and movies which they not only help produce but are becoming a
growing part of the audience for?

The most convincing reason to oppose the ordinance, though, is that it is a
two-edged sword.  Who is to say what is prohibited and what is not?  Will
control of its enforcement stay in the hands of well-meaning feminists who
will use it only for the protection of society?  Hell, no.  The ordinance
itself contains such a broad definition of pornography that it could be used
to ban even the works of many feminists themselves, and it sets a precedent
that could ultimately be used to ban absolutely anything.  What piece of
literature couldn't be interpreted to encourage someone, somewhere to think
thoughts that violate someone else's civil rights?

The idea behind our first amendment is a good one: although there are indeed
ideas which are dangerous, none are so dangerous as the act of limiting their
expression.  That's why the Minneapolis ordinance must be struck down.

--- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle