THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, Marcy 5, 1995 TAG: 9503020440
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY SUSAN MISLE FINCKE
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
DEFENDING PORNOGRAPHY
Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights
NADINE STROSSEN
Charles Scribner's Sons. 279 pp. $22.
THE ISSUE OF pornography - what it is and what to do about it - has some of the best thinkers of the modern feminist movement squaring off against each other.
In one corner is Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, a First Amendment watchdog. She is joined by feminists such as Betty Friedan and Planned Parenthood's Faye Wattleton, and an alphabet soup of organizations including the Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce and Feminists for Free Expression.
Among those in the other corner are writer Andrea Dworkin and University of Michigan law professor Catharine MacKinnon, perhaps best known for her network TV commentary during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Another cadre of feminist organizations, including Women Against Pornography and Feminists Fighting Pornography, has lined up on this side.
In Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights, Strossen argues vehemently that, instead of helping women to achieve social, political and economic equality, the censorship of pornography would impede their progress. MacKinnon and Dworkin contend that pornography is sex discrimination and violence against women. Many other feminists are split on the issue.
Strossen contends that the ``anti-sex, pro-censorship'' - a questionable description of viewpoint - feminists like MacKinnon and Dworkin have joined with ``traditional conservatives and fundamentalist advocates of tighter legal restrictions on sexual expression'' to create a dangerous liaison.
Citing ample precedents, Strossen walks the reader through her legal defense of pornography. She points out that while the term is often cast in a pejorative light, the dictionary defines pornography in morality-neutral terms as ``a depiction of erotic behavior designed to cause sexual excitement.'' Strossen uses the term broadly to describe sexually oriented expression.
A former editor of the Harvard Law Review and a law professor at New York Law School, Strossen points out that ``pornography'' has no legal definition or significance. The sexually oriented expression that the Supreme Court has ruled can be censored is called ``obscenity.'' But even the nation's highest court cannot provide a clear, objective definition of what obscenity is.
In 1964, former Justice Potter Stewart expressed his frustration over the issue in his well-known statement: ``I shall not today attempt further to define (obscenity) . . . and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.'' (emphasis added)
Strossen contends that definitions of obscenity change with the times. Margaret Sanger, an early advocate of birth control, was prosecuted under obscenity laws. Her clinic in New York, where she distributed literature on contraception, was shut down by the police, and she was indicted for dispensing ``obscene'' materials. Sanger was jailed in New York and Oregon and banned in Boston.
Strossen also ventures into sexual harassment law, opining: ``They (the anti-sex, pro-censorship feminists) have used the concept of sexual harassment as a Trojan horse for smuggling their views on sexual expression into our law and culture.'' She insists that ``real women don't need Big Sister any more than they need Big Brother.''
Contending that the intense focus on sexual harassment has diverted policy-makers' attention away from true sex-based discrimination, Strossen argues: ``The notion that women are inherently demeaned by sex and sexual expression reflects archaic, infantilizing stereotypes that long have been used to deny women full equality, not only in employment and education, but also in our society at large.''
Like a good lawyer, Strossen builds a well-researched and well-documented case. But her incessant attacks on ``MacDworkinites'' become tiresome, and her accounts of confrontational posturing with the opposition and name-calling detract.
Readers easily offended by sexually explicit passages and four-letter words, including some of Dworkin's, may want to skip portions of this one. Those looking for a balanced discussion of pornography won't find it here. MEMO: Susan Misle Fincke is a former president of the Tidewater chapter of
the National Organization for Women. She lives in Virginia Beach. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Nadine Strossen
by CNB