Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ubc-cs.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcsri!ubc-vision!ubc-ean!ubc-cs!andrews From: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews) Newsgroups: net.women Subject: Slippery definitions Message-ID: <85@ubc-cs.UUCP> Date: Mon, 4-Nov-85 20:35:41 EST Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.85 Posted: Mon Nov 4 20:35:41 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 5-Nov-85 00:41:57 EST Reply-To: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews) Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada Lines: 44 Thanks to the Sojourner article poster. The article points up the approach the Dworkinists take to talking about porn. Let's start with my definitions. (non-legalese, hopefully non-slippery) Harmful sex: sexual acts in which one or more participants are unwilling, or under the age of consent, or in which one or more participants are physically injured. Pornography: material in the communications media that depicts or describes harmful sex acts, regardless of whether it was made by such acts; or material made by acts of harmful sex, whether or not it depicts or describes such acts. What to do with pornography: make it a criminal act to produce or distribute it. I ban things in this definition because I don't believe in absolute freedom of speech (flames on that subject will be ignored), and this kind of material has been shown (by Donnerstein and others) to be sufficiently inducive to rape and aggression toward women. I don't ban some Dworkin-definition pornography in this definition because I believe that some sexual material is erotica, and this kind of material has been shown (by Donnerstein and others) to be not at all inducive to rape and aggression toward women. Dworkin and Mackinnon (sp?), on the other hand, come from the political viewpoint that all current sexual media material aimed at men is dangerous enough to be outlawed -- whether or not this has been shown. Hence, when they talk about porn, they usually begin by describing material whose production or content is highly objectionable to most; and then they slide into their political connection between that extreme porn and the other forms of what *they* call porn. (I've heard both talk about it, in person.) Their definition is equally slippery, as some of the clauses discuss extreme porn, and others (such as the one about "servility or display") are very vague, refer to our ingrained Judeo-Christian attitudes about sex, and are designed to take in the majority of the sexual material available today. I object to a lot of the available erotica on the grounds that it is sexist. I think it would be great if a good, non-sexist erotica magazine were available. (Has anyone seen _Yellow Silk_, the magazine advertised in _Ms._ magazine all the time?) But "because it is sexist" is no more grounds for taking action against this material than it is for taking action against, say, _The Saturday Evening Post_ or _Women's Day_. "Because it induces rape", is. --Jamie. (spokesman(jamie, X) <-> eq(X, jamie)) ...!ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews "I believe in Santa Claus, and the DoD believes in Ada" -- D.Parnas