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From: riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.politics
Subject: Re: Child molestation and pornography
Message-ID: <947@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-Feb-84 00:44:27 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.947
Posted: Fri Feb 17 00:44:27 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 15-Feb-84 04:56:50 EST
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I find the more extreme feminist stance against pornography rather
hard to swallow.  I have no argument with the assertion that much
pornography is sexually exploitative, reduces women to the status of
objects, and contains a great deal of (sometimes) barely-concealed
hatred and violence against women.  (I might add that a smaller but
significant amount of pornography is equally exploitative of men, but
since two wrongs don't make a right, that may be a moot point.)  When
it comes to arguing on the basis of the above that pornography should
be outlawed, however, I couldn't disagree more.

I have what some may consider to be a radical view on freedom of the
press, namely that the restriction of expression is ultimately much
more dangerous to society than the material which we might like to
restrict.  There is much that appears every day in the newspapers,
magazine racks, bookstores, movie theaters and airwaves which I find
unpleasant, offensive, or even dangerous; nevertheless, I would prefer
to see the crap flow freely than to see any individual or group given
the power to decide what is crap and what is not.  This applies just as
much to pornography as to anything else.  The only valid exceptions I
see to an absolute right to freedom of expression are slander, libel,
false advertising and copyright laws.

One obvious problem with the radical feminists' stance on pornography
is that one person's smut is another person's beautiful erotica or
educational work.  When I moved away from Oklahoma six years ago, they
were still jailing bookstore owners for selling "The Joy of Sex", and
in some parts of the country much worse things have happened since.  I
don't think that many feminists would call Alex Comfort an oppressor of
women, but what the anti-pornographers don't seem to realize is that
the power to censor, once established, will not be used according to
their criteria of what is wholesome and what is exploitative.  Today
"Hustler" might disappear from the newsstands; tomorrow Anais Nin and
books on birth control will be banned; the next day the feminists may
wake up to find their own writings being confiscated, sexual or not.

I think that a much healthier response to the whole issue has been made
by those feminists who have refused to retreat to a neo-puritanical
stand on pornography, instead realizing that the erotic has at least as
strong a capacity for beauty as it does for violence and inhumanity.
Real progress will be made not by closing theaters and burning
magazines but by producing works of art which appeal to the sexual
impulses of women and men without pandering to hatred or turning anyone
into a faceless object.

--- Prentiss Riddle
--- ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- {ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle