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From: tracy@hcrvx1.UUCP (Tracy Tims)
Newsgroups: net.books,net.women
Subject: Re: Pornography doesn't degrade women ...
Message-ID: <1084@hcrvx1.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Jan-85 22:05:11 EST
Article-I.D.: hcrvx1.1084
Posted: Thu Jan 17 22:05:11 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 18-Jan-85 02:09:39 EST
References: <243@looking.UUCP> <11300010@smu.UUCP> <4560@cbscc.UUCP> <354@ahuta.UUCP> <671@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Organization: Human Computing Resources, Toronto
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	Tom West, utcsrgv:
		*I*, at least, do not think that *totally* free speech is worth
	another holocaust, or in this specific case, I don't think it's worth
	the warping of attitudes towards women that pornography involves.

I have a friend who very effectively argues that the only way to really stop
the spread and appreciation of negative stuff like pornography is to make
the positive ideas that compete as available and as rewarding.  Sort of
a Darwinism of ideas.  He claims that if you restrict what you think is
negative (and *your* basis for believing them to be negative is quite arbitrary
and non empirical) then you run a high risk of suppressing ideas which may
be able to compete and which may (given the 20/20 vision of hindsight) turn
out to be very successful socially.

I don't think that humans have come near to exhausting the range of social
behavior possible to them.  When one looks at society as an organism, one
realizes that it's a organism in the throes of infancy.

	...The potential cost of free speech could (and *has*) reached
	millions of lives.

It is also possible to argue effectively that it was not the freedom of
speech that cost millions of lives, but was in fact the restraint of ideas
that could compete with the ones that were allowed by the alleged freedom
of speech.  To get down to cases, Nazism didn't survive because it was
allowed to be propagated, Nazism survived because the people thought it
to be the best choice at the time.  Nazism didn't allow free speech.
Nazism didn't allow competing ideas.  Tell me, just how successful is Nazism
today in the US?

	Freedom costs.  How much are we willing to pay?  In this case (and
	in the case of hate literature), the cost is too much.

There is a big, big, big, big difference between censorship (applied
automatically before the fact with no peer review) and a judicial solution
where it is possible to bring grave charges of (for instance) incitement
to inhuman or degrading acts.  I agree that some mechanism is needed for
evaluating the fringe cases.  It cannot operate blindly in a prescriptive
fashion.  It must evaluate *after* some effects have been seen.  Otherwise
it will prohibit the spread of useful ideas.  Do you realize that one of
the obstacles to portraying real, healthy sex on the screen in Ontario
today is that you *cannot* show an erect penis?  We are talking about
a phenomenon that practically every one on the planet has experienced (and
perhaps enjoyed!).  It's ridiculous not to be able to show it.  On the
other hand, we are able to show subtle degradations of women, and subtle
putdowns.  That sort of thing is rampant in Hollywood movies.  The
Ontario Censor Board is actively working for the detriment of women by
preventing the spread of ideas that may be able to compete successfully
against the negative ones.  So much for censorship.

Do you realize that if there was a law prohibiting the social degradation
of women (ie. addressing the real problem, rather than the symptoms) that
most people wouldn't stand for it because (example) I could haul the makers
of _The_Last_Starfighter_ into court for making and distributing a film that
callously contributes to the continued oppression of women?  [I'd have to
prove that it actually does that.]

When you talk about censorship, you are talking about a rigid, non-adaptive,
non-learning mechanism for controlling a phenomenon that we don't really
understand.  [We don't understand the relative social effects of various
types of information, let alone the actual outcome of the effects on people's
happiness and survival potential.  We don't really understand how good ideas
compete against bad ideas.  We don't understand how to teach goodness.  I
think the best assumption we can make is that if we give all ideas (unless
we discover specific exceptions in hindsight) freedom to exist, that the
healthy ones will survive in the end.]  If nuclear plants were designed like
censor boards we'd be extinct by now.

                              Tracy Tims    {linus,allegra,decvax}!watmath!...
   Human Computing Resources Corporation                     {ihnp4,utzoo}!...
 Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  416 922-1937                   ...hcr!hcrvx1!tracy