Claire, I'm willing to re-read her but not to forgive the work she did around the ordinances. It took a lot of political energy in the mid 1980s to fight the ordinances. I am still not sure this was the way to help stop the problem of pornography. I'll always be part of the pro-sex, No More Nice Girls, wing of then women's movement. I suspect we didn't take sexual violence as seriously as we should have, I'll give her and you that. But I still don't think getting the state involved that way was useful. My two cents.
I think this is a well-established position, and I respect it. But it isn't accurate that the ordinance got the state involved: it permitted civil suits, filed by people who believed they had been harmed by pornography. I am agnostoc on whether this was the right approach or not--but I do think it is noteworthy that the pro-sex arm of the sex wars never dealt with the fact that women were being exploited in sex work and pornography. And I think that was a mistake too, because the underlying conditions that push many women (and trans women) into sex work, and the viral marketing of pornography that women themselves do not control, was never dealt with.
And while I'm at it, telling women to punch their sexual harassers is not a very good strategy for many of us: getting hurt, getting jailed. Think about who can get away with this, and who could not.
Clarie, I don't think we didn't deal with the violence but I will have to go back to the history on this to deal with it. We were really concerned that with the ordinances (and they did involve the state or city in passing them) was the wide brush: is Our Bodies, OurSelves pornography?'
Claire, I'm willing to re-read her but not to forgive the work she did around the ordinances. It took a lot of political energy in the mid 1980s to fight the ordinances. I am still not sure this was the way to help stop the problem of pornography. I'll always be part of the pro-sex, No More Nice Girls, wing of then women's movement. I suspect we didn't take sexual violence as seriously as we should have, I'll give her and you that. But I still don't think getting the state involved that way was useful. My two cents.
Susan
I think this is a well-established position, and I respect it. But it isn't accurate that the ordinance got the state involved: it permitted civil suits, filed by people who believed they had been harmed by pornography. I am agnostoc on whether this was the right approach or not--but I do think it is noteworthy that the pro-sex arm of the sex wars never dealt with the fact that women were being exploited in sex work and pornography. And I think that was a mistake too, because the underlying conditions that push many women (and trans women) into sex work, and the viral marketing of pornography that women themselves do not control, was never dealt with.
And while I'm at it, telling women to punch their sexual harassers is not a very good strategy for many of us: getting hurt, getting jailed. Think about who can get away with this, and who could not.
Clarie, I don't think we didn't deal with the violence but I will have to go back to the history on this to deal with it. We were really concerned that with the ordinances (and they did involve the state or city in passing them) was the wide brush: is Our Bodies, OurSelves pornography?'