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From: leiby@yeti.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: pro-smut diatribe
Message-ID: <146@yeti.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-Feb-84 19:27:54 EST
Article-I.D.: yeti.146
Posted: Wed Feb 15 19:27:54 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Feb-84 05:47:28 EST
Organization: Masscomp, Littleton, MA
Lines: 69

> Mike Kelley (tty3b!mjk):
>
> An interesting approach to pornography is being tried in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
> There, woman are suing the pornography outlets  for violation of their civil
> rights.  Given the obvious civil liberties problems with outright banning of
> pornography, I think that this form of retribution might be particularly
> effective.  In a profit-oriented society, to stop something, just take the
> profit out of it.

Explain to me how pornography is a violation of civil rights.  I don't feel
*my* rights are violated by, say, Playgirl magazine (in fact, I'm waiting
for a call from their photo staff!).

> John Hobson (ihuxq!amigo2):
>
> Martin Taylor wonders why women ... are against it [pornography].
> The reason is quite simple.  Pornography, which is almost
> exclusively directed towards men, depicts women purely and simply as
> sex objects. ....  Moreover, much of pornography depicts women as
> subservient and abused by men.

Well, John, maybe the porn *you* read depicts women as being subservient
and abused.  Try something more respectable.  And what, I'd like to know,
is wrong with appreciating the sexual attractiveness of another human
being (or, as they say at the Naperville Anti-Smut Leage meetings (and
you thought NASL was the North American Soccer League!)), "depicting
{wo,}men as sex objects"?  I wish someone would look at me as a sex
object once in a while.

> Ariel Shattan (orca!ariels):
>
> There was a study recently ... where a researcher showed male college
> students some pornographic films, and then three days later gave
> them and a control group a survey that covered additudes [sic] about
> women and about violence towards women.  
> 
> The young men who saw the films were 1/3 more likely to condone
> violence against women, and also, 1/3 more of them said that THEY
> PERSONALLY might commit violence against women if they knew they
> wouldn't be caught.  

I would like to see how this question was worded in the questionnaire!
"Check here if you are likely to brutally rape a woman, given a 60%
probability of being caught.  40%?  10%?"  Perhaps the survey was given
at the University of Illinois (Hi, Vijay! :-) and this accounts for the
strange results.

> Ariel again:
>
> Pornography is that which depicts people enjoying pain and
> mistreatment.  Also, that which celebrates violence as a valid form
> of sexuality.

This has a lot of merit.  How about if we define pornography as above,
and define "smut" to be naughty pictures.  In that case, I am violently
anti-pornography and rabidly pro-smut.

	"Who needs a hobby
	Like tennis, or philatilly?		<--- sp?
	I've got a hobby
	Rereading 'Lady Chatterley'!"

			-- T. Lehrer

-- 
Mike Leibensperger @ Masscomp, Westford MA 01886
{tektronix,harpo,decvax}!masscomp!leiby