Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site hcrvx1.UUCP Path: utzoo!hcrvax!hcrvx1!tracy 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 Lines: 72 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