dnc@dartvax.UUCP (David Crespo) (10/30/85)
Dear posters:
As promised here is [excerpts from] a Sojourner article
(Sept. '85) on the Dworkin-MacKinnon Referendum in Cambridge.
I have taken liberties with capitals and italics.
The article consisted of a For and an Against Open Letter,
and a box on the referendum (ordinance) itself.
--For the Ordinance--
The [ordinance], launched in Minneapolis, and now in Los
Angeles, makes pornography actionable as sex discrimination.
Rather than placing pornography under the legal heading of ob-
scenity or zoning laws, it places it for the first time in the
legal arena for what it truly is--a gross violation of women's
civil rights. Dworkin and MacKinnon's legal initiative carefully
defines pornography as the graphic sexually explicit subordina-
tion of women through pictures or words that also includes women
presented dehumanized as sexual objects who enjoy pain, humilia-
tion, or rape;...women bound, mutilated, dismembered, or tor-
tured; women in postures of servility or submission or display;
women being penetrated by objects or animals.(Men or children
who are sometimes violated, like women, through and in pornogra-
phy can sue under this law also.) This Dworkin-MacKinnon civil
rights legislation would allow victims of four activities--
coercion, force, assault and traf- ficking to sue civilly those
who hurt them through pornography.
What some of you may not know about is the immense public
initiative that prompted the writying of the legislation to begin
with, and the groundswell of public sup- port that has been
behind the law in each of these three cities. In Minneapolis,
poor and working people living in neighborhoods where pornography
had been forcibly zoned, and whose lives were horren- dously af-
fected by it, asked Dworkin and MacKinnon to work with them to
tell the city how pornography hurts women in particular. Dwor-
kin and MacKinnon responded with leglislation that would address
grassroots issues and problems. The ordinance in Minneapolis was
supported by many progressive groups there. In Indianapolis,
similar neighborhood groups, including many Blacks, supported the
ordinance.
It is important to understand that this legislation is both
a product of the feminist anti-pornography movement and a ca-
talyst for coalescing thousands of women, working people, gay and
lesbian groups, and racially mixed supporters abused by pornogra-
phy. Hundreds more have spoken out in private to Dworkin and
MacKinnon about the abuse to which they were/are subjected by
the pornography indus- try, describing the pictures for which
they were positioned to pose, the knots in which they were
tied, the expressions that were facially forced, how the abuse
was orchestrated--all con- forming to the magazine's code of
creating pornographic women for male use. Dworkin has written: "I
have heard women who have been raped in every sort of way,
with every sort of device, with an- imals, filmed during the
rapes, the photographs of the rapes now being sold as pro-
tected speech; I have heard transgenerational stories of mother-
daughter abuse premised on pornography; Playboy and Penthouuse
rapes; women of all ages talking about being violated at all
ages, used on one end of pornography or the oth- er. "The
hearings in Minneapolis included testimony of women raped in
marriage, prostituted, and gangraped, all finding por- nography
at the heart of what happened to them. Many courageous women not
only testified at these hearings but also went to the press and
demanded to be believed.
Dworkin's and MacKinnon's work, persistence, and leader-
ship have brought this testimony into concrete political action.
Thousands of women have risked public exposure, harassment,
assault, and even their lives, in testifying for this initia-
tive. Once it is law, many of the women whio have been abused by
pornography are prepared to bring complaints against the por-
nographers. These women KNOW (ital.--ed.. note), not only in
their minds but in their bodies, that pornography itself is a
form of sexual abuse. Thousands of other women KNOW the same: fe-
minists who work with victims of sexual abuse KNOW that pornogra-
phy is central to the abuse; clinicians who work with sex of-
fenders KNOW that pornography provides rapists with the ideas and
energy that often comprise the reality of sexual abuse and muti-
lation; wives and girlfreids of men who use pornography KNOW that
what is demanded of them sexually is constructed by the por-
nography these men read. For example, "deep throat" became a
household "word made flesh" after men saw Linda Lovelace
(Marchiano) do it in the movie. Linda Marchiano now tells that it
took kidnappoing, death threats, and hypnosis (to repress the na-
tural gag response) in order for her to do in this film what men
think is a lark. But many refuse to believe her testimony.
Among the many wnho do not believe either Linda Marchiano
or the thousands of women who have testified in favor of this
legislation is a group called FACT. This group, and its sup-
porters, have filed a legal AMICUS CURIAE (ital.) brief
against the anti-pornography ordinace in the U. S. Court of Ap-
peals, Seventh Circuit in Indianapoolis. FACT's central argue-
ments are that "the ordinance suppresses constitutionally protec-
ted speech in a manner particularly detrimental to women," and
that "the ordinance unconstitutionally dicscriminates on the
basis of sex and reinforces sexist stereotyupes." It does
this, they say, because the ordinance depicts men as "attacking
dogs" and "women as incapable of consent." The FACT brief main-
tains that statutory rape laws "reinforce the stereotype that
in sex the man is the offender and the woman is the victim."
FACT also contends that "the ordinace is unconstitutionally
vague because its central terms have no fixed meaning, and the
most common meanings of these terms are sexist and damaging to
women; sexually explicit speech does not cause or incite
violence in a manner sufficiently direct to justify its suppres-
sion under the First Amendment; constitiutional protection of
sex- ually explicit speech should be enhaced, not diminished;
and the ordinance classifies on the basis of sex and perpetuates
sexist stereotypes.
Worse, the FACT brief says that women need pornography to
realize ourselves sexually--that freedom for women depends on ac-
cess to pornography, and that sex is synonymous with pornogra-
phy. It says, "Even pornography which is problematic for women
can be experienced as an affirming of women's desires and of
women's equality... The range of feminist imagination and expres-
sion in the realm of sexuality has barely begun to find voice.
Women need the freedom and the socially recognized space to ap-
propriate for themselves the robustness of what traditionally has
been male languyage." "Male language" is another euphemism for
pornography. In this context, they quote Ellen Willis, who has
written: "...A woman who enjoys pornography (even if that means
enjoying a rape fantasy) is in a sense a rebel, insisting on an
aspect of her sexuality that has been defined as a male
preserve...[Pornography] in refecting sexual repression and
hypocrisy....expresses a radical impulse." This is a vision of
sexual and women's liberation that would keep us on our knees.
Worse, it is a lie.
Unfortunately, FACT is not a fiction. But what they say
about the anti-pornography initiative, and its so-called
dangers to "free speech," is a fiction. And they have many
supporters--some who have the reputation of being prominent
femin- ists, such as Adrienne Rich and Kate Millet, but mostly
male and female academics and lawyers. They parade the
abstract flag of First Amendment as fundamentalist treat the
Bible--as abso- lute, not as subject to any unorthodox interpre-
tation or amenda- tion, and as admititting no legal counter-
balance, such as the Fourteenth Amendment, or the right to
equal protection under the law. International feminists will
recognize their obsession with First Amendment preservation
as a specifically American fetish.
FACT and its supporters prefer deceptive abstraction to
real- ities. To define pornography, they prefer the empty
abstraction of terminology such as "sexually explicit speech"
over the reality of what pornography really is and what it
does to women. Their priorities are misplaced, and that is an
understatement. They de- grade and caricature the word "femin-
ism" by using it to describe their defense of pornography.
FACT and its supporters express no concern about how their
position will be used by the pornographers, pimps and the eight-
billion-dollar-a-year pornography industry. Their public position
could allow Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccione, and the likes of Larry
Flynt to use signers' names in their magazines. Picture the
next issue of PLAYBOY with the headline, "Lesbian feminist poet
Adrienne Rich defends women's access to pornogra- phy. Instead
FACT raves about the dangers of how the political right will
supposedly use the anti-pornography legislation for its own
purposes. Dworkin, MacKinnon, and all feminists in the anti-
pornography movement have consistently disavowed any connec- tion
with the right.
FACT's position is a "do-nothing" approach to pornography.
Nowhere have they proposed any redress, any protection, for wom-
en whose lives have been ravaged by "sexually explicit speech,"
so explicitly that some are dead from that "speech." Witness
the death of Dorothy Stratton [Ed. Note: I think it's Stratten]-
-Playmate of the year, said to be raped by Hugh Hefner pimped up
to him by a husband who forced her into posing while under the
age of eighteen. Stratton was killed at twenty after being
tortured and raped then was raped again after she was dead. Her
murderer-pimp husband was obssesed with pornography and acted
it out on her. [Ed. Note: see Peter Bogdonavich's biography of
her.]
Feminism is a reality to us, not an empty abstraction. Fem-
inism is about real women. WE are real women who have real
voices, and whose "speech" is no more protected by pornography
than Black "speech" is protected under segregation. We think it
time that our voices be heard in support of the real women and
the real work that has been done by Andrea Dworkin and Catherine
MacKinnon, and the thousands of women whoi have had the courage
to testify for this legislation.
[At this point the names of the 139 signers of the letter
are given, since "Sojournerr was notified that the letter
...could not be printed without the names of its ...
signers. Descrptive material about each was omitted for
space reasons;..."
If required, or inquired, I'll post the list of names
separately. Yours truly, the editor.]
--Against the Ordinance--
An Open Letter to Readers:
THis summer, people in Camnridge, Massachusetts, were asked
to sign a petition to put an anti-pornography ordinance on the
city's November ballot as a binding referendum question. The
women behind the campaign were from Feminists Fighting Pornog-
raphy, a New York City group. These migrant solicitors using
secretive and often hostile tactics, failed to contact
most local grassroots feminist groups to discuss whether we
wanted our city to be the next experiment in the yet-to-be-
sucessful quest to enact the Dworkin-MacKinnon law. When people
were asked to sign the petition, they were allowed to see only
part of the proposed ordinance. The full local version of
the Minneapolis-style legislation has yet to be revealed.
Although most local feminists were unaware of the campaign enough
signatures were gathered so that Cantabriginans will be given
an opportunity to place one of the most repressive, insidious
pieces of legal hyperbole on the books of one of the most li-
beral cities in the country.
We are a group of long-timne feminist activists who have
united in response to this outside organizing by forming a local
chapter of the Feminist Anti-Cansorship Taskforce (FACT). Most of
us have worked in varying capacities against violence directed at
women. However, none of us believes that the anti-
pornography/civil rights approach is a cure for the ills of a
mysogynist society. We think that, if passed, the ordinance
will be used against women and sexual minorities by those in
power and further circumscribe our writing, art, work, and sex-
uality.
The version of the ordinance introduced in other cities is
extremely broad and vague. The most controversial section is that
which defines pornography. Proponents say that the definition
will only restrict "hard-core" pornography, which they define as
violent, sexist, and sexually explicit. In fact, the definition
would include material which lacks one or two of those three ele-
ments. It could include books like 'Our Bodies/Ourselves' or An-
drea Dworkin's 'Pornography'. It could be used to shut down fe-
minist bookstores. It can and will be used against lesbian and
gay media such as 'Gay Community News' and 'Bad Attitude'. It al-
lows anybody including other women and gay people to become the
self-appointed censor of our communities. These are not just
spurious speculations: 'Our Bodies/Ourselves' and alternative
bookstores have been the victims of censorship under the auspices
of other laws seeking to protect us. The proposed ordinance gives
another tool to an already erotophobic state.
The fact that this proposed law may have been written by
women soes not allow it to escape the fact that the judiciary
will interpret it. Judges are people schooled in the tradition of
preserving the status quo, a male version of reality. They rely
on legal precedent and laws designed to protect the interests of
a white, male propertied class in a system structured by men. One
of the interests to be "protected" is the sexual subservience
of women. Unless "feminist" laws are given a "feminist" politi-
cal, legal, and cultural context, they exist only in the
abstract. By using this law, we are giving power to the state,
not to women, to make more decisions about women. In an area
where even feminists cannot agree about the meaning of a sexu-
al image, it is a grave mistake to give that control to the legal
system. By encouraging courts to restrict expression, we jeop-
ardize our own expression and our ability to create our own sexu-
al culture.
The proposed ordinance does not censor violent miogynist
images generally, but only sexually explicit images. It doesn't
touch sexism in the media and in advertising. It doesn't ad-
dress television's ubiquitous dim-witted woman. It doesn't
require film-makers to cut out the violence. It is incomprehen-
sible to give sexually explicit images special treatment, unless
feminists believe, as do many people on the right, that there is
something wrong with most sex.
A goal of feminism has always been the elimination of
repressive and constrictiong stereotypes about women. In earlier
years of the movement, women eagerly discussed sex in CR groups
and wrote about the advantages of freeing ourselves from the
sexual double standard. The ordinance, however, codifies the dou-
ble standard by its characterization of women as weak and passive
victims of sex. The presumption that women need protection from
men makes it the legal equivalent of a chastity belt. In both
cases, women are infantilized. Women are vulnerable to sexual
abuse and violence. But women can also be enthusiastic sexual
actors. As feminists, we want to challenge and eliminate sexual
violence without having to deny our capacity for secual pleasure
or give up our own exploration of sex. We don't want to remain
mored in an ideology that focuses solely on our victimization.
Both heterosexual and lesbian women have rebelled by creating our
own sex punlications, books, poetry, photographs, and painting.
Call them erotica, call them pornography, or call them art--if
they are sexually explicit, they can be eliminated by this law.
It is not surprising that a law like this is being advanced
at this particular time. Five years of the Reagan administration
have taken their toll and the country is gripped buy repressive
forces to an extent that is appalling to those of us who came of
age in the '60s. A "pro-family" ideology is rampant not just
among the right wing, but among lestists, as well. This
translates into increasing attacks on women, gay men, and and
lesbians. Already marginalized, we are being squeezed out of ex-
istence by laws that would deny us access to abortion and deny us
equal rights in employment and housing. Anti-pornography laws are
a sign of the repressive times and resonate so perfectly with the
right-wing political agenda that Phyllis Schlafly has supported
them enthusiastically. Although Dworkin and MacKinnon disavow
any alliance with the right, their law has already been
usurped by the Moral Majority. In Suffolk County, New York, when
a conserva- tive legislator [legislature?] introduced a ver-
sion of the anti-pornography legislation, the hearings were
packed with members of the Eagle Forum, Citizens for Decency,
and other right groups in support of it. Anti-pornography legis-
lation is the perfect mechanism for the right to further res-
trict women, define our sexuality, and con- trol our access to
information.
Defining pornography is so difficult that the word becomes
an emotional amd political Rorschach test--revealing more about
the definer than the material. The language of the proposed
anti-pornography laws is so broad, however, that women with a
variety of opinions about pornography oppose them. The laws have
been condemned by many women, including those who work in the
sex industry and women active in the anti-violence movement.
When New York's FACT submitted an AMICUS brief opposing the
Indi- anapolis anti-pornography ordinance, over eighty individu-
als and groups signed it, including Adrienne Rich, Kate Mil-
let, Betty Friedan, the editors of "Conditions," Susan Schecter,
and Michelle Cliff. The common element among the many signers
was the belief that anti-pornography legislation is a serious
political mistake that would hurt more than help women. Since
the brief was submit- ted, however, many of these women have been
publicly attacked and discredited by supporters of the or-
dinance. In a public statement currently being circulated, the
politics of FACT are ludicrously distorted and other op-
ponents of the legislation are condemned. These ardent ordinance
supporters advance the naive political argument that anyone
who does not support their position cannot be a feminist. This
continuous credential-baiting does not deepen or enhance
political dialogue. Instead, it divides our movement even
further. Clearly, there is no single feminist "line" about
pornography. Clearheaded discussion and de- bate about the issues
will take us even further than name-calling and discrediting
dedicated feminists.
As members of FACT, we think it would better serve the fe-
minist movement if we returned to some of the original goals
which the women's movement advanced to eradicate sexual oppres-
sion. Workplace equity, abortion rights, lesbian/gay liberation,
welfare rights, and access to childcare will free women far more
than the elimination of pornographic images.
Janice Irvine & Donna
Turley
for Boston FACT
[Sojourner Editors' Note: to obtain a copy of the FACT AMICUS
brief submitted in opposition to the Indianapolis ordinance, send
$5 to: FACT,c/o Hunter, 132 W. 43rd St., New York, N.Y. 10036]
--Box on the Dworkin-MacKinnon Ordinance--
The anti-pornography ordinance on which Cambridge, Mas-
sachusetts, residents will vote in November (see News Briefs)
closely resembles the legislation proposed in Minneapolis, Indi-
anapolis, and Los Angeles. It defines "pornography" as follows:
"Pornography is the graphic sexually explicit subordination
of women through pictures and/or words that also includes one or
more of the following: (i) women are presented dehumanized as
sexual objects, things, or commodities; or (ii) women are
presented as sexual objects who enjoy pain or humiliation; or
(iii) women are presented as sexual objects who experience sexual
pleasure in being raped; or (iv) women are presented as sexual
objects tied up or cut up or mutilated or bruised or physically
hurt; or (v) women are presented in postures of sexual submis-
sion, servility, or display; or (vi) women's body parts--
including but not limited to vagina, breasts, or buttocks--are
exhibited such that women are reduced to those parts; or (vii)
women are presented as whores by nature; or (viii) women are
presented as being penetrated by objects or animals; or (ix) wom-
en are presented in scenarios of degradation, injury, torture,
shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised or hurt in a con-
text that makes these conditions sexual.
The proposed ordinance goes on to say:
It shall be sex discrimination through pornography to engage
in any of the followong activities:
a. To coerce, intimidate, or fraudulently induce (hereafter,
"coerce") any person into performing for pornography.
Complaint(s) may be made against the maker(s),, seller(s),
exhibitor(s), and or distributor(s) of said pornography.
b. To produce,sell, exhibit, or distribute pornography, in-
cluding through private clubs. (i) City, state, and federally
funded public libraries or private and public university and col-
lege libraries in which pornography is available for study shall
not be construed to be trafficking in pornography. (ii) Isolated
passages or isolated parts shall not be actionable under this
section. (iii) Any women has a claim hereunder as a woman acting
against the subordination of women. Any man, child, or transexual
[sic] who alleges injury by pornography in the way women are in-
jured by it also has a claim.
c. To assault, physically attack, or injure any person in a
way that is directly acaused by speciific pornography.
Complaint(s) may be made against the perpetrator of the assault
or attack and/or against the maker(s), and/or exhibitor(s) of the
specified pornography.
d. It shall not be a defense to an action filed under a-c
that the defendant did not know or intend that the material were
pornography or sex discrimination.
The proposed ordinace would amend the Cambridge human rights
ordinance already in force, and would offer claimants the relief
permitted by that law, injuctions against proscribed material and
"civil damages, including both punitive and compensatory."
[Ed Note: At long last, done. As to my own viewpoint, I
refuse to have one, simply because it is expected. Anyone
wishing to infer a stance from previous postings, or
by any other means should be warned this is mere fortune
telling, and should not waste their time and mine getting
back to me to voice theirs. Let's keep matters of the
net to the net. Nonetheless, I hope the article thought
provoking. The editor.]
from dnc @ dartmouth collegerobert@fear.UUCP (Robert Plamondon) (10/30/85)
In article <3766@dartvax.UUCP>, dnc@dartvax.UUCP (David Crespo) writes: > Dear posters: > As promised here is [excerpts from] a Sojourner article > (Sept. '85) on the Dworkin-MacKinnon Referendum in Cambridge. > I have taken liberties with capitals and italics. > The article consisted of a For and an Against Open Letter, > and a box on the referendum (ordinance) itself. > > --For the Ordinance-- > > [...]. Dworkin and MacKinnon's legal initiative carefully > defines pornography as the graphic sexually explicit subordina- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ > tion of women through pictures or words that also includes women ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > presented dehumanized as sexual objects who enjoy pain, humilia- > tion, or rape;...women bound, mutilated, dismembered, or tor- > tured; women in postures of servility or submission or display; ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > [...] Good use of Newspeak! To confuse the public, take a word in common use and redefine it. By the definition presented there, most "hard core" pornography (showing couples in sex acts) isn't pornography at all, but most "soft core" pornography (showing indivuduals) is. "Postures of servility"???? A picture of a women in a maid's uniform taking the hat and coat from her employer is pornography??? "Postures of display"???? Health spa ads are pornography then, I guess, since they usually include people showing off their attractive health-spa bodies. There's always a paternalist Dudley Do-Right screaming "I'll save you, Nell!" Don't you feel good knowing that some of your legislators think that women are so weak and defenseless and vulnerable that censorship is necessary to protect them? -- Robert Plamondon {turtlevax, resonex, cae780}!weitek!robert