NPN has attempted to frame the debate by talking about "balancing" free speech against other concerns. We link to the following article, which asks the question Is censorship a civil right?
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About Me
- Always Controversial
- Always Controversial ("AC"): B.A.: St. John's College, the Great Books college, Santa Fe, New Mexico. J.D.: Indiana University. Admitted: NY, MA and IN. Professional Expertise: Litigation and, subsequently, Business & legal affairs in the entertainment and book publishing industries, particularly with respect to classic family and children's entertainment and book properties. Favorite Slogan: There is no God higher than Truth - Mahatma Gandhi. Political Affiliation: None. Marital Status: Widowed from my common law wife.
9 comments:
While Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon said many valuable things, NoPornNorthampton does not support calls for increasing state censorship over speech. By censored speech we mean speech that is flatly illegal, no matter where it takes place.
We already live in a society where free speech is not absolute. For example, speech likely to cause "imminent lawless action" is not protected:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
The value of free speech is part of a balance of interests, always shifting, always negotiated. Are you so mistrustful of the people that you won't even permit them the smallest regulation of harmful adult businesses? Is there no harm they can demonstate that would move you to make a reasonable accomodation?
As a life long student of history, I am indeed mistrustful, yes, indeed. History teachs us that even persons known to be ordinary and reasonable become swept up in the repressive hysterias ...
Further, if one takes the time to study the materials at the NCAC website about art and censorship, one may be very surprized to see how often well intentioned laws, but not truly content neutral laws, such as the zoning law Nopornnorthampton endorses, become levers for censorship in unaniticipated manners. I do not believe content specific laws are necessary to protect women, children or men from the abuses that may occur in the adult publishing and entertainment business.
Do not confuse the bad acts that may occur and should be prohibited with the consumption of their representation. One may have strong feelings against a war or all wars, but nonetheless find all sorts of meaning in the grahpic representations of it.
Sincererly,
Always Controversial
It seems rather telling that Mr. Cohen invokes a legal precedent aimed at protecting communities from the incitement of riots to argue against adult businesses. Does he actually believe a riot to be equivalent to the "secondary effects" he speaks of?
Additionally, I now offer the following "valuable" quotes from MacKinnon and Dworkin, the Keystone Kops of the anti-sex movement whose anti-pornography "civil rights" legislation has been used to ban their own works (!!!) in Canada on grounds of misandry.
MacKinnon:
All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman.
In a patriarchal society, all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent.
In my opinion, no feminism worthy of the name is not methodologically post-marxist.
Dworkin:
A commitment to sexual equality with males is a commitment to becoming the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the murderer instead of the murdered.
Erotica is simply high-class pornography; better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer.
Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership.
Only when manhood is dead - and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it - only then will we know what it is to be free.
No woman could be Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized.
-NP
McKinnon & Dworkin have said some speculative and extreme things, it's true. So have you, on this blog. (E.g. the "Erotic Specialty Store Raided" hypothetical.) Does that mean none of your arguments are worth taking seriously?
It's interesting that the NoPorn people bring up the issue of trust. In reading their material, it seems clear that they don't trust anyone other than themselves to be able to make a rational decsion about pornography. Those who choose to look at pornography are, according to NoPorn, misguided souls, addicts, pedophiles, criminals, or people to feel sorry for.
to A:
The campaign of NPN seems to be less about secondary effects and more about a broader agenda of what people should and should not be allowed to do in the privacy of their own homes. How do NPN differ significantly from groups that move against contraception- emergency or otherwise- through the back door of cutting off access?
I cannot stress enough that I want to mitigate secondary effects. I am deeply concerned, for instance, about one proposal which involves moving the store further down King Street. The semiotics of this seems obvious to anyone who knows that Northampton does not end at Stop and Shop. One message of the anti-porn movement generally, if not NPN specifically, is that these secondary effects are ok as long as they're near the more working class areas of the city. Unacceptable.
The secondary effects of moral panics seem far more insidious than the managable secondary effects of an adult entertainment retailer. They effectively add fuel to the fire in the so-called "culture wars".
It seems fair to ask if NPN plan to continue their weekly vigil against pornography outside of the store if and when it opens. Such protests- picketing the stores once they are open- create invasions of privacy and confrontations (physical and otherwise) which seem far more dangerous to the fabric of our community than pornography, or even secondary effects. The effects of such a cultural climate sharply affect the artistic community. Please see The National Coalition Against Censorship's Timeline of Censorship in America.
jendi:
I don't really know what I personally have said that is particularly "extreme." I also have no problem with speculation. What I have a problem with is a bizarrely moralistic, extreme ideology getting a foothold in American jurisprudence. Dworkin and MacKinnon are, frankly, dangerous. Let's weigh my modest internet presence against tenured positions, book deals and written law, shall we?
I first began reading Dworkin and MacKinnon closely while working at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a group which often tangles with crusaders for decency. I am curious to know specifically which of their arguments you feel are "worth taking seriously."
We're not talking about Ezra Pound's fascism here, a sad footnote on a brilliant career. We're talking about two lifetimes' worth of written, academic and legal work consistently aimed at limiting people's choices and establishing a legal "victim" status on women. In that respect I find them closer to the Taliban than any "feminism worthy of the name."
NP
Dear Jendi,
I am sorry I have not had the opportunity to meet you as I have Adam. With respect to your point of view that the A&P saga is extreme, no one else I am aware of thinks it was too far-fetched, rather they find it to be all too plausible.
Twenty years ago our President was regarded as merely a rich party boy whose only success in life was losing money in the oil business of all things...
Please note that I did not portray you or Adam as unreasonable, but rather as victims of the hysteria and fear that history shows can grip a community that is regarded as relatively educated.
I also took into account the experience most of us have had in either business or politics that the leaders we may trust today in an institution may be gone tomorrow... surely you and Adam have observed this before?
Sincerely yours,
Peter Brooks a/k/a "A.C."
Thanks for your reasoned response, Peter. If you want to see hysteria and fear, take a look at how porn films and magazines view women. So many films are about giving women the "punishment" they deserve. How dare women try to be more than pieces of meat? The porn explosion may be partly a backlash against feminism's gains in the 1960s and 70s.
I get the impression that you are mainly concerned about keeping this a free and tolerant society, not about defending porn itself. Adam and I share that concern. But what I see right now is a culture that's increasingly "intolerant" of innocence, destructive of intimacy and tenderness, and unsafe for children. A culture where rudeness and explicitness are shoved in your face in every TV ad, billboard, or email inbox. Where's my free choice to avoid these things, unless I hide under the bed and unplug the computer? How are those folks in our diverse community who prefer a less vulgarized culture supposed to carve out a space free from this multibillion-dollar media assault? All speech pushes out other speech, because space and time and attention are limited. (The same argument that campaign-finance reform advocates make, in a different context - corporate free speech, via contributions, drowning out the little guy.)
You're right that big cultural shifts can happen unexpectedly. Just 30 years ago it would probably have been unthinkable that porn stars would be lecturing at high school career days. A backlash may well be in the works. Perhaps it would be wiser for hardcore free-speech folks to compromise now by allowing some modest regulation of the worst excesses of the porn culture, to reduce the chances that outraged conservatives will overshoot the mark.
Cultures yo-yo between puritanism and libertinism all the time throughout history (compare the 18th and 19th centuries). Our society has already gone about as far as you can go in the latter direction, short of people bonking on Main Street. Let's try to dampen the pendulum swing instead of insisting that it stay stuck in one direction forever. It's not gonna happen.
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