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From: mat@hou4b.UUCP (Mark Terribile)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Anti-Porn Ordinance
Message-ID: <1285@hou4b.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Jan-85 17:45:20 EST
Article-I.D.: hou4b.1285
Posted: Fri Jan 18 17:45:20 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Jan-85 04:30:53 EST
References: <600@pyuxc.UUCP> <1280@hou4b.UUCP>, <529@mhuxt.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ
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>> 	...			...			...   .   But I am
>> suggesting that there are some things, like dynamite and firearms, that
>> should be handled with care and not sold on the open streetcorner.  Sex
>> can be a very great thing because it is so powerful, but it has a very
>> great potential for harm as well.
>
>     Why do I get the feeling that you're not talking from experience here,
>Mark?  Sex has a great potential for harm?  I've been wounded by love, but
>never by sex.  If you have, then maybe you aren't doing it right. B-)

Either you are being flippant or you are not aware of the damage that is
can be done to people when their sexual feelings become ways for them to
be injured.  The obvious example is sexual abuse of children by family or
friends.  Like dynamite and firearms, sex should be handled under safe
conditions.  It shouldn't be a commodity that one buys off the street, or in
some magazine rack.  It shouldn't be something that you have to go to a
porno show to get.  If you do, you have already been damaged . . . but is
continuing to do so any better?  And is providing sexual gratification for
sale in this way a good thing to do?  And what about possible damamge to the
people involved in producing it?

Which brings me to the next point.  The people who make much of the really
sleazy stuff are into pandering to sickness for profit, and they do so without
any regard for the well-being of the folk that they employ.  I use the word
employ here as in ``They employed a thermal lance to open the safe.''  The
people that are used in the films are OBJECTS ... draft animals.  They are
not treated as people, and the people who use them this way often are not
above hurting someone very badly.  Well, damage to one's sense of well-being,
especially sexually, is something that you ought to be sensitive to, Jeff,
since your sense of well-being seems to be at least big enough.

>Mark Terrible started by talking about pornography, but now he switches to
>talking about forced prostitution:
>> You think that slavery has been abolished?  You think that people are WILLING
>> to sell their bodies on streetcorners? Many of these women have been taken in
>> have used drugs for generations to hold their ``staffs'' hostage.
>> Do you really think that these people are not being damaged?  
>    Of course those people have been damaged.  But how you end up blaming this
>on pornography is totally unclear.  Why is prostitution called the 'oldest
>profession' if it's been caused by pornography?

It's NOT.  The problem is that the people who are causing one are often
responsible for the other -- the people who would sell other people's sex
on the screen often are willing to sell other people's sex on the street.

>>	...
>     And they can't seperate those who like to have a little fun with a frisbee
>from the sickos without catching them in the act either.  Maybe we should
>ban frisbees?  What I'm saying is that you have neither established nor even 
>attempted to establish a connection between pornography and the type of     
>violent, anti-social behavior you seem to be blaming on it.

Put the wiseacre rhetoric back in the drawer, Jeff.  Let's try to state again
what I presented before:

	Turning sex into a commodity that is bought, sold, traded, and
	taken, whether on the street, on a bookshelf, or on a screen,
	presents sex as a commodity that can and should be bought, sold, ...

	Sexual feelings run very deep in the human psyche.  Treating something
	so important in such a calloused way can damage the buyer.  It can
	damage the person whose sex is being sold.  And if it is being taken
	from her (OR him) and sold by another, serious harm seems near certain.

	Making such treatment of sex the established norm without AT LEAST
	providing a set of protective rituals around it (to keep it
	``special'') will damage the self-esteem and sense of self-worth
	of everyone who comes into contact with it.  ``Gee, this thing that
	is so very important and so deeply embedded in ME can be bought ...
	and people sell it.  Gee, I could sell it.  It's not worth all that
	much, is it?  I guess I'm not really worth all that much, either.''

>    I thought we were talking about pornography.  Just what ARE you talking 
>about, Mark?

The attitude that sex is a commodity and that it is/should be either cheap or
a cheap thrill.  What, after all, is pornography?

By the way, I would appreciate it if you would have the common courtesy to
spell my name right.  Or are you too cheap to do that?
-- 

	from Mole End			Mark Terribile
		(scrape .. dig )	hou4b!mat
    ,..      .,,       ,,,   ..,***_*.