Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site pyuxc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxc!chris From: chris@pyuxc.UUCP (R. Hollenbeck) Newsgroups: net.women Subject: Anti-Porn Ordinance Message-ID: <600@pyuxc.UUCP> Date: Fri, 11-Jan-85 10:45:06 EST Article-I.D.: pyuxc.600 Posted: Fri Jan 11 10:45:06 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 12-Jan-85 07:58:23 EST Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway, NJ Lines: 38 Some thoughts on pornography and the anti-porn ordinance. I think it's clear to most people the that the anti-pornography ordinance is unconstitutional. I'm glad of that. I find it hard to agree with most everyone's automatic assumption that pornography is degrading to women, men, or both. How so? Obviously, scenes of rape and violence are degrading, but they do not constitute the bulk of pornography. (To answer the comment I can hear you all making, no I don't watch pornography often, or even occasionally, but I've seen enough to know that there's far more porn that deals with plain old garden variety heterosexual coupling than there are rape films.) As I understand it, the language of the proposed ordinance would proscribe scenes that present women in "submissive" postures. To some people, that would include simple fellatio (or cunnilingus). How are women (or men) degraded by such images? Why do so many assume that scenes depicting acts of love (or lust, what difference does it make) are automatically degrading? You don't have to watch pornography if you don't want to. you're not "subjected" to it; in fact, you have to seek it out and pay to see it. In short, pornography is a type of entertainment indulged in and made by a relative minority who basically don't inflict themselves on anyone. (This of course does not include the makers of snuff films or child pornography, who are, I agree, reprehensible.) Where is the real harm in this stuff? An old hippie who still feels people got to be free.