Feminism and Censorship in the United States
John Lauritsen


The Old Wolf, Censorship, is prowling around the United States, decked out in the garb of Little Red Riding Hood's suffragette grandmother. The purpose of this masquerade is to bypass the free speech guarantees of the First Amendment. The strategy is to get an opening wedge by attacking pornography, not through the traditional channels of the criminal code, but rather as “discrimination against women”, a violation of human rights.
    Strange alliances have been formed. In crusading against the evils of pornography, feminists have embraced some of the staunchest opponents of women's rights: fundamentalist Christian and Jewish groups and elements of the New Right.
    The feminist anti-pornography movement was launched a decade ago by Susan Brownmiller's treatise on rape, Against Our Will. Notwithstanding this book's status as a best seller and a Book of the Month Club selection; it was a shoddy piece of work: ludicrously inaccurate, flagrantly dishonest, patently reactionary and vulgarly written. By special pleading, falsification of evidence and atrocity-mongering, Brownmiller created an atmosphere of hysteria and misinformation conducive to assaults upon civil liberties, as well as to diverting the women's movement from its rational priorities.
    Brownmiller and a few “feminist leaders” founded the New York Women Against Pornography (WAP), which gave birth to similar groups across the United States. Rape, WAP claims, is all omnipresent danger to all women. Pornography is an expression of violence against women. If men are allowed to look at pictures of naked women, they will he inspired to commit rape upon such bodies.
    Slogans were coined: “Pornography is the Theory; Rape is the Practice”. Hysteria fed upon hysteria. Anti-porn agitators created the “Snuff Hoax” in 1976. According to this rumour, there existed a genre of movies known as “snuff” movies. “Snuff” movies, so the horror story went, were produced for the sexual titillation of depraved men; they featured the actual torture, dismemberment, and murder of unsuspecting actresses.
    The Snuff Hoax was investigated thoroughly by the authorities and found to be a rumour without the slightest factual basis. Nevertheless, new censorship boards were created to deal with this horrible, if imaginary, threat to women's lives.
    Big Lie techniques came into play. A frequent occurrence at conferences and forums would be a female stentor declaiming: “It is a Fact That One Out of Every Three American Women Will be Raped in Her Lifetime!” People began to believe this sort of thing.
    In 1933 the anti-porn movement entered a new phase when the Minneapolis City Council hired Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin to draft a feminist anti-pornography bill. In return For their $14,000 “consultants' fee”, MacKinnon and Dworkin delivered seven double-spaced pages of strident feminist rhetoric, lame-brained generalisations, half-truths and Big Lies. The central contentions of the bill appear to be: (1) Pornography is central to the oppression of women (2) Pornography is itself discrimination against women (3) Pornography prevents equal rights for women in the areas of employment, housing, education, property rights, public accommodation. etc. and (4) Pornography promotes “injury and degradation such as rape, battery and prostitution”.
    Pornography is defined as “the sexually explicit subordination of women”, which is broadly defined in terms of multitudinous possibilities, including when “women are presented in postures of sexual submission” or when “women's body parts . . . are exhibited, such that women are reduced to these parts”. So broad is the range that almost any conceivable form of erotica could qualify as “pornography”.
    What about gay male porn? Could a film or magazine with an all-male cast still qualify as “sexually explicit subordination of women”? Yes it could. The clever “consultants” stipulated that “the use of men, children, or transsexuals (!) in place of women . . . is pornography.” Still not clear? Well, according to Dworkin and MacKinnon, some of the men in all-male porn are really playing the parts of women. Therefore, even all-male erotica serves to prevent women from achieving equal rights in employment, education, property rights and public accommodation.   
    The Minneapolis bill would enable any “woman, man, child, or transsexual” to bring an unlimited series of civil actions in court against producers, distributors, or exhibitors of pornography. The courts could forbid the future display or sale of such commodities and award monetary damages to the alleged victims.
    Supporters of the bill claim that it is not censorship, since the law is civil rather than criminal. The difference, however, is illusory. Few bookstore owners, for example, could afford to pay legal expenses to defend works which censorious feminists might interpret as depicting the “subordination of women”.
    The MacKinnon-Dworkin bill was twice passed by the Minneapolis City Council, and twice vetoed by the Mayor.
    A similar bill (for which MacKinnon and Dworkin were also paid a generous “consultants' fee”) was passed in Indianapolis. It was then ruled unconstitutional by a woman judge in Federal District Court, and is now being appealed in Federal Circuit Court.
    In Suffolk County of New York, feminists joined with extreme Right-wing elements to introduce a much more blatantly censorious version, which was defeated. In Los Angeles County in California, two similar-bills are pending.
    Censorious feminism is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, a current of irrationalism and intolerance has run through the women's movement since its inception. One recalls such slogans as “Chastity for Men” (Christabel Pankhurst, England, 1910-1914), “Castrate Rapists” (USA 1970s) and “Dead Men Don't Rape” (England, 1984).
    A generation ago, the French sexologist, René Guyon, pointed out a few “feminist errors”:


    What is new and encouraging is the emergence of feminist opposition to censorious anti-porn politics. Such prominent feminists as Betty Friedan and Kale Millett have spoken out against the Minneapolis legislation. Last year the Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce (FACT) was formed. They have sponsored forums, appeared on talk shows and written articles to inform the public that not all women support censorship and that the anti-porn movement is basically a handful of media stars based in New York City. FACT opposes the Dworkin-MacKinnon law as a “misguided, dangerous, and ineffective strategy in the battle against sexism and violence”.
    The women in WAP have responded with vindictive fury, branding their opponents in FACT as “sexual degenerates”, “racists”, “anti-semites” and “male-identified women”. WAP adamantly refuses to enter into public debate with FACT. WAP forums do not allow for discussion: if critical discussion should occur, the WAP speakers simply pick up their papers and make a sanctimonious exit. On several occasions, WAP supporters have succeeded in persuading colleges to “disinvite” speakers from FACT.
    In contrast, during the discussion period of a FACT forum, one of the panelists asked two WAP supporters in the audience if they wished to say anything. No response. She again gave them the opportunity to speak. The two WAP women squirmed in their seats; then one replied that they were only there “as observers”.
    FACT makes it a practice to distribute copies of the Minneapolis bill so that one can read exactly what its provisions are. Between FACT and WAP, it is clear which side feels its cause is best served by Free Enquiry.
    Although Dworkin and MacKinnon have been praised for their “sincerity”, one is more impressed by their boundless cynicism. Just last month on “listener-sponsored” Radio WBAI, Catherine MacKinnon several times cited “snuff” movies as among the horrors her bill is intended to counteract. Surely the woman knows better.
    No one who values the free expression of ideas ought to hesitate in opposing the anti-pornography movement. The historical precedents are all too clear. On 23 February 1933, as one of the very first acts of the Nazi government, a decree banned pornographic literature of every description. After that, one thing led to another.
    The feminist anti-pornography legislation should be recognised for what it is: a ploy designed to bring us one step closer to a police state.

                                                 #   #   #

The above article appeared in the December 1985 issue of The Freethinker (London).