A REINTERVIEW with Rosa Eberly, 4.

The PreText Conversations held a Re/In/View

with Rosa Eberly  about her  article published in P/T

during February, March, April of 1995.

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Date:         Sun, 2 Apr 1995 14:35:28 -0600
Reply-To:     "Re/Inter/Views (a Pre/Text cycle)" 
Sender:       "Re/Inter/Views (a Pre/Text cycle)" 
From:         Victor Vitanza 
Subject:      vjv-re: dworkin/silence

Rosa,

____Where are we now in this re/inter/view concernng Dworkin
and silence, Dworkin and ethos, Dworkin and rape (pornography),
Dworkin and audience?

____Does Dworkin's Subject Matter?

____Is Dworkin's (and other Women's) speaking/writing/thinking
always already in a stateless of silence ... even when she and
other women do, indeed, speak/write/think?

____And hence (?) the silence (lack of public participation) here?

____Or are there other explanations that women would espouse
for the silence that is not founded in speaking (double meaning
consciously intended)?

____Or are there other questions or non-questions?

Rosa, I think that your article brilliantly foreshadows this kind of silence,
in more ways than one.

____Rosa, what are your thoughts?


--victor
================================================
Date:         Mon, 3 Apr 1995 19:10:19 -0400
Sender:       "Re/Inter/Views (a Pre/Text cycle)" 
From:         PreText@MIAVX1.BITNET
Subject:      ph: dworkin, silence, etc.

Dear Rosa,

In the better late than never department, I've finally read
yourwonderful essay on -Mercy-. Significantly, i was "visiting" my
father at the time and fell back into adolescent habits of avoiding
him by "studying." So there was an eerie sense of making silence to
avoid the exercise of power.  And it seems like a good time to stop
tormenting poor Victor with my lurking silence in this venue.

I'm most fascinated by your "scholarly" point about Habermas, genre,
and the difficulty her reviewers had in coming to terms with the
piece. (oops) I'm more sympathetic than you are to Wendy Steiner, who
seems like a semiotician who is just frustrated becuse there are too
many codes for her to deal with at one time.  Semioticians just have
to name codes when they can't deal with them.  Clearly, we have to do
more--and you have persuaded me that Dworkin must be attended to. But
do we have to assume that there's only one voice (subjectivity) at
work here, especially since Dworkin is at such pains to give us more
than one?  That is, we're called upon to listen to the "fictive"
andrea and the actual Dworkin.  One voice says "murder men" and the
other says "don't be silent and don't let yourself be silenced." Then
we need to ask whether the two "messages" are the same (no, is my
answer).  But Dworkin's linking them demands that we construct a
relations between the two????

In nay case, your essay persuades me to read more Dworkin and stop
ignoring her and MacKinnon's position.  That's important.  thanks.

Patty Harkin
=============================================
Date:         Tue, 4 Apr 1995 19:58:50 -0400
Sender:       "Re/Inter/Views (a Pre/Text cycle)" 
From:         PreText@MIAVX1.BITNET
Subject:      Re: there are no innocent bystanders

i'd like to move toward answering your questions, victor, by offering a bit
more of dworkin's writing.  this is from the proofs of dworkin's entry in
_Contemporary Authors Autobiography, Vol. 21,_ and i think it speaks to an
earlier question of yours as well.  i've titled it "there are no innocent
bystanders" because that is what has haunted me about being a rhetorician
and trying to analyze responses to _american psycho_ and _mercy._

i'll respond to patty's post soon and then get back to your larger
questions of silence re this reinterview.

rosa
_________________________________________

(there are no innocent bystanders)

        "I'd like to take what I know and just hand it over. But there is
always a problem, for a woman: being believed. How can I think I know
something? How can I think that what I know might matter? Why would I think
that anything I think might make a difference, to anyone, anywhere? My only
chance to be believed is to find a way of writing bolder and stronger than
woman hating itself--smarter, deeper, colder. This might mean that I would
have to write a prose more terrifying than rape, more abject than torture,
more insistent and destabilizing than battery, more desolate than
prostitution, more invasive than incest, more filled with threat and
aggression than pornography. How would the innocent bystander be able to
distinguish it, tell it apart from the tales of the rapists themselves if
it were so nightmarish and impolite? There are no innocent bystanders. It
would have to stand up for women--stand against the rapist and the pimp--by
changing women's silence to speech. It would have to say all the unsaid
words during rape and after; while prostituting and after; all the words
not said. It would have to change women's apparent submission--the consent
read into silence by the wicked and the complacent--into articulate
resistance. I myself would have to give up my own cloying sentimentality
toward men. I'd have to be militant; sober and austere. I would have to
commit treason: against the men who rule. I would have to betray the noble,
apparently humanistic premises of civilization and civilized writing by
conceptualizing each book as if it were a formidable weapon in a war. I
would have to think strategically, with a militarist heart: as if my books
were complex explosives, minefields set down in the culture to blow open
the status quo. I'd have to give up Baudelaire for Clausewitz.
        "Yes, okay, I will. Yes, okay: I did. In retrospect, that is just
what I did: in _Mercy_ and _Intercourse_ and _Pornography: Men Possessing
Women_ and _Ice and Fire._"


=============================================
Date:         Tue, 4 Apr 1995 20:06:00 -0400
Sender:       "Re/Inter/Views (a Pre/Text cycle)" 
From:         PreText@MIAVX1.BITNET
Subject:      re->ph: Dworkin, silence, etc.

hi patty. good to hear your voice. and to hear you in this public tell
about your material and psychological reasons for writing.  yes:
"studying."

your post raises the question of my "sympathies," and that word tempts me
to tell a bit more about my writing the chapter on dworkin.  because, of
course, reaction to the chapter and its iteration as an article in pre/text
and then here, as reinterview text, has fallen into two classes: the
readers of my dissertation and those who have commented on the article see
me as an apologist of sorts for dworkin and a critic of her critics.  (even
tho i say in the article that it is the metaphor of the "war zone" that in
part creates her critics' responses to her.) dworkin, of course, sees my
critical assumptions as unfair. (even tho i say that her metaphor of "war
zone" was in part created by the responses to _intercourse_.)  but dworkin
did not see the article, significantly, as an attack or as unfair.  she was
pleased to be treated seriously, she said.

my biggest fear was that people would see the chapter/article as an attempt
on my part to be "neutral"--to be a rhetorician/analyst rather than ...
rather than what? a cultural critic? a radical feminist? a liberal
feminist?  (and on and on).  yet i was trying to forge a methodological
stance that explained and critiqued all sides at the same time.  (very few
people have understood that more than anything else my current work is
making a methodological argument about how criticism should be if it is to
speak to social change: i need to make this clearer.)

i could not stand the thought of being an "innocent bystander" in either
direction--any direction: andrea dworkin has in that phrase (and perhaps
others have used it before--it echoes in mah head but i can't place it
now--a DANGEROUS ADMISSION, right?) and in the context of cultural
artifacts articulated what many of us struggle with every day in our
classrooms and our lives: there are no innocent bystanders.  yet--and this
is what (some) theory would add: being an innocent bystander is inevitable;
ya can't help but reify something. and that is the bind dworkin finds
herself in, i think.  dworkin and many others of us.  dworkin and the rest
of us.  "we."

that is, i think, what perhaps has bothered victor so much about WOMEN not
responding to this reinterview (tell us victor, if you like, if this is the
case. please. if you like.) : there are no innocent bystanders:  to be
silent and walk past is to condone things as they are.  i don't know if
that bears up under the weight of--oops--this means of communication: i
guess it depends on how you define "bystander."  i've not taken the silence
personally because i respect the reticence people feel.  patty patty patty:
why is it i will free associate like this in public for you when i chose
not to for others?   perhaps it's time to revise....  but what if i just
sent this out, unedited, to the pretext monster net, eater and regurgitator
of half digested thinkings?  would it CHANGE anything?  would it change
whatever public sense of me has emerged through this reinterview?  am i
brave or foolish enough to find out?  what would "finding out" entail?

===============================================
Date:         Tue, 4 Apr 1995 23:42:16 -0400
Sender:       "Re/Inter/Views (a Pre/Text cycle)" 
From:         PreText@MIAVX1.BITNET
Subject:      __->re: Dworkin/silent bystanders

____________A Litany for Survival

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seek a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children's mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother's milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.

              -- Audre Lorde
                 The Black Unicorn (W. W. Norton, 1978):31-32

==========================================
Date:         Thu, 6 Apr 1995 23:40:57 -0500
Sender:       "Re/Inter/Views (a Pre/Text cycle)" 
From:         sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Subject:      imMODe-rated mode-e-rate-r

Announcement:

Soon, we will begin publishing reviews of books and articles.

if any of our sub-sub-scribers knows of any history of boredom
or history of silence or history of voyeurism, we would appreciate
hearing from him/her about it.

we will give such works the highest priority.

--the committee on (         )
==============================================
Date:         Fri, 7 Apr 1995 00:50:55 -0500
Sender:       "Re/Inter/Views (a Pre/Text cycle)" 
From:         sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Subject:      passages (yet taken)

*****theaters of representation*****

(personification of SILENCE)

<>

--Kate Millett
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Date:         Fri, 7 Apr 1995 11:06:45 -0400
Sender:       "Re/Inter/Views (a Pre/Text cycle)" 
From:         PreText@MIAVX1.BITNET
Subject:      re-ph: one or two subject/ivities, endings


>do we have to assume that there's only one voice (subjectivity) at
>work here, especially since Dworkin is at such pains to give us more
>than one?  That is, we're called upon to listen to the "fictive"
>andrea and the actual Dworkin.  One voice says "murder men" and the
>other says "don't be silent and don't let yourself be silenced." Then
>we need to ask whether the two "messages" are the same (no, is my
>answer).  But Dworkin's linking them demands that we construct a
>relations between the two????

patty's question about subjectivities has made me think more about
something i didn't emphasize in the article about _mercy_ because there was
so little public discussion of it--as i recall, only one critic mentioned
it:  dworkin intended _mercy_ to have two endings: the first ending
describes the character andrea's protest death by self-immolation; the
second ending describes the character andrea's beginning random killing.
the two endings, along with the different voices in the prologue and
epilogue, are the best ways into the questions of subjectivities in
_mercy_.

i've been struggling to figure out--and i need to take the time to look at
the article again--whether and how and why you see the article as assuming
there's only one voice.  have i lapsed into some kind of intentional
fallacy?  or perhaps it's the reportorial quality of the article--dworkin
says/bell says/dworkin says/steiner says etc--that makes it look as though
i'm assuming one subjectivity.  AND because of the article's length, i
didn't go into richard sennett and other theories of public subjectivities
that i use when i think about public selves.

to answer your question: no, we shouldn't assume there's only one
subjectivity at work in a piece of fiction; when that piece of fiction is
discussed publicly by different people, the question becomes, for me, less
psychological and more sociological and rhetorical.  in each piece of
public discourse--and i'd include dworkin's novel in that class--we have a
presentation of a self or selves, and that self or selves presentation are
just a few from the subjecopia of possible selves.  that is part of the
reason why, again, to insist on the "true" quality of _mercy_ is in many
ways missing the point.

but jake baker fuddles that up, doesn't he?

=============================================
Date:         Fri, 7 Apr 1995 11:03:53 -0400
Sender:       "Re/Inter/Views (a Pre/Text cycle)" 
From:         PreText@MIAVX1.BITNET
Subject:      fm: silence

for a fine study of the subtleties of silence and of the words scisseled
about it: strindberg's "the stronger"...

frank

eddress:
fmurray@tribnet.com

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Date:         Fri, 7 Apr 1995 16:14:45 -0400
Sender:       "Re/Inter/Views (a Pre/Text cycle)" 
From:         PreText@MIAVX1.BITNET
Subject:      cjs-->re subject/ivities and jake

______ to the final line of rosa's last response to ph -- 'but jake baker
fuddles that up, doesn't he?', I'd like to know why, and how, esp. in light
of the lines that precede: n.o, we shouldn't assume there's only one
subjectivity at work in a piece of fiction; when that piece of fiction is
discussed publicly by different people, the question becomes, for me, less
psychological and more sociological and rhetorical. in each piece of public
discourse -- and i'd like to include dworkin's novel in that class -- we have
presentation of a self or selves, and that self or selves presentation are just
a few from the subjecopia of possible selves. that is part of the reason why,
again, to insist on the 'true' quality of _mercy_ is in many ways missing the
point."
In retyping this, esp. the final line, I believe to understand that what
the baker post to USENET may 'fuddle' is precisely that line between 'true'
and fiction, by the inclusion within the rape/torture/murder scenario of
a real-life person within his specific real-life geographical environment as
the intended/fantasized victim. But I'd appreciate if rosa could expand a
bit more on this distinction (or correct me where I may have got it wrong).

CJ Stivale, Wayne State U

==================================================
Date:         Fri, 7 Apr 1995 23:18:15 -0400
Sender:       "Re/Inter/Views (a Pre/Text cycle)" 
From:         PreText@MIAVX1.BITNET
Subject:      mm-->ph, re, et al

I've been lurking, too, and have wanted to say something about
Dworkin and language...but haven't known exactly what to say... I haven't
read Mercy but have read Rosa's article--and i have read other
things by Dworkin... I think what I want to say will probably
be disjointed because my own relationship with language
has always been disjointed...
first, Emily Dickinson wrote, "much madness is divinest sense to a discerning
eye"&
perhaps some of you know Audre lorde's *Zami* and Kate Millett's
*The Loony-Bin Trip*

or, first, Victor's question: where do women go in dis/order to speak?
___where do / what do women go/do in dis/order to speak?

from the time I entered language, to one degree or another, "I" was
nearly completely at odds with language or languages that spoke "me"--
girl / woman me, queer me--I like Victor's word "polyethoi"--polyethoi
me-- as a girl, as a tomboy, I wrote a lot, even as a kid, and I giggled
so much I embarrassed my sisters

yes, men were all over me-- I think it's a common experience-- pawed,
maybe not outright fucked, the minister who forced me to masturbate him
in the rectory, the neighbor, the friend of the family (who the
family continued to invite back, even after I told my mother what he had
done--language again, the power of dominant discourses we're embedded in
to blind us to excess, which, of course, is whatever the discourses
don't have room to include

I always felt desperate to find a space
in language for what I needed to say, which never had
anything at all to do with the languages that seemed to
be speaking me-- and so I wrote poetry and went mad and
wrote mmore poetry-- and I'm glad that my queer mad sisters,
Audre lorde and kate Millett, are here with me in cyberspace to
support me as I say this... of course, Audre lorde was
also African American, which further complicated her
own need to find a space in language to say something

I shouldn't forget Emily Dickinson when i count
my queer mad sisters

closeting in queer studies is a wonderful metaphor
for the double/triple/quadruple dynamics at work when
people struggle with language, especially women,
queers, people of color, poor people, mad people--
because closeting doubles/triples/quadruples epistemological ironies...
in fact, closeting can be thought of as a metaphor
for language... rhetoric(s)... itself...  even when
one is out, one's not really out, one must keep
coming out, one goes in (to get a job in an English Dept),
one comes out (with tenure), one stands/moves in the doorway,
sometimes the door is a glass door (in? out? in motion?)...
etc... concealing and revealing and concealing

a re/turning of Victor's question?

the idea that Mercy is Dworkin's method of (road) (like Rosa's
attempt to "forge a methodological stance...a methodological
argument...") trying to say what she has no way of saying and saying
that she's desperate to say something... a dwork-scream...
perhaps fleetingly we or I glimpse something that
cracks us/me up...a mid/riff(t) as we tumble around in the crack?

beats me what I'm trying to say exactly here...I'll
think about it and come back

Margee
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Date:         Mon, 10 Apr 1995 16:17:08 -0400
Sender:       "Re/Inter/Views (a Pre/Text cycle)" 
From:         PreText@MIAVX1.BITNET
Subject:      re-> pfg, mm speaking silence: finding a space

paula's and margee's posts remind me in part of what prompted me to do the
dworkin chapter in the first place and what motivated me to keep fighting
for its inclusion in my diss:  theorists of the traditional liberal
democratic public sphere have regularly insisted that to introduce personal
pain into public discourse is somehow to "degenerate" the public sphere.
("what other response is there," they ask, "than 'i feel your pain.'?")

as i said in an earlier post, because it is based on an ideal rather
than on, in nancy fraser's term, "actually existing democracy," any such
example of a public sphere will be by its nature "degenerate."  let's hear
it for "degenerate" public spheres and "degenerate" public discourses!
then, let's retheorize to account for this "degeneration"!

(i've deleted below many screens of my attempts to write about, with
paula's and margee's words in mah head, as they have been all weekend,
watching on C-SPAN the rally for women's lives in washington yesterday AND
60 minutes segment on AIDS last night. but i'm having even less success
than usual making myself clear.  so: i'm working on it.)

re


==========================================
Date:         Tue, 11 Apr 1995 12:42:03 -0400
Sender:       "Re/Inter/Views (a Pre/Text cycle)" 
From:         PreText@MIAVX1.BITNET
Subject:      re-cgs: the Baker post et al.


[correction of subject heading: re->cjs: the Baker post et al. (vjv)]


yes, cjs, i think you, upon retyping, grokked me.  the baker post fuddles
up distinctions of more than just "truth" and "fiction"; "speech" and
"action" get fuddled up as well.   hence the tie to censorship.

the baker post, in this context, also raises again wendy steiner's point
about dworkin representing (in _mercy_'s one ending) andrea as a random
killer of men: ________is that any less "action" than jake baker using a
real woman's name and carrying out (fictional: as dworkin maintains _mercy_
is fiction) assaults against her?

so much of working through this for me concerns genus/differentia:
classification: definition (for better or worse).  but at least i classify
and differentiate rhetorically rather than as a philosopher: i realize the
categories shift depending on the contingencies.  that was what drew me to
naomi wolf's contrast (which i excerpted in an earlier reply to vjv in the
reinterview) between ellis's and dworkin's representations of a man biting
and tearing a woman's labia: ellis told it from the man's perspective,
dworkin from the woman's; wolf said anyone who can't understand the
differences between those two accounts has no sense of real-life power:
"The critical negotiations surrounding these two books ... have almost
nothing to do with their respective literary merits. They have much to do
with real-life power. This debate is actually a struggle over the proper
gender of literary authority. The issue raised by these books' critical
reception is this: who gets to tell the story of sexual violence against
women, the hunter or the prey? Who gets, textually, to bash women, with
what pleasure, and to what end?"

who gets to tell the story, the rapist or "the one he done it to"?

while i am not (no longer) a first amendment absolutist--that position is,
i fear, practically untenable (see fish, _there's no such thing as free
speech_) and politically a dead-end--i would answer wolf's question: both
get to tell the story.  my job as a critic is to sort through the power
differences and try to make more room for the latter stories, perhaps even
to try to foster more of them.  and to retheorize public discourse in a way
that the latter stories have more public presence.

the baker post, then, also raises the issue of dworkin's other ending of
_mercy_: protest death by self-immolation.  ________where is the outrage
over THAT ending?

re

==================================================
Date:         Tue, 18 Apr 1995 09:29:53 -0500
Sender:       "Re/Inter/Views (a Pre/Text cycle)" 
From:         Victor J Vitanza 
Subject:      vjv: fwd, convs, Strossen on porn

*To: Reinvw-ers
*Re: in the light of Rosa's re/inter/view on Dworkin, I send
another review found on the ACLU free reading room
*From: VJV, moderator

Perhaps if we brink in another interlocutor, we might see something
different to talk about in relation to Rosa's article on Dworkin. I found
at the ACLU web site, the free reading room, a copy of a conversation
with Nadine Strossen, who does most of her talking in defense of
pornography by way of MacKinnon and Dworkin. If time permits, please
read over this brief interview and send in what comments you might
have, pro or con or whatever.

Remember to send your posts to
REINVW@MIAMIU.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU.

--VJV

=================================================


                A Conversation with Nadine Strossen

                             author of

          DEFENDING PORNOGRAPHY: Free Speech, Sex and the

                     Fight for Women's Rights


Why did you write this book now?

     As a human rights advocate, I find myself increasingly concerned
about the growing influence of the feminist pro-censorship movement, led
by law professor Catharine Mackinnon and writer Andrea Dworkin. This
movement has had a devastating impact on many human rights -- not only
free speech, but women's rights, reproductive freedom, and lesbian and gay
rights.  Its influence is especially apparent on college and law school
campuses nationwide, leading to a series of unfortunate incidents in which
feminist students and professors have been instrumental in censoring
speech and works of art, including works by women, which they have
labelled "pornographic."

     I am also disturbed by the aftermath of the Canadian Supreme Court's
1992 decision to incorporate the "MacDworkinite" concept of pornography
into that country's obscenity law.  Since that ruling, more than half of
all feminist bookstores in Canada have had materials confiscated or
detained by Customs.  Lesbian and gay writers and bookstores have also
been hard hit.  American women, as well as the broader public, need to
know that these laws end up punishing the very individuals and ideas they
are supposed to protect.

What is the MacDworkinite definition of pornography?

     Basically, the MacDworkinites argue that pornography is "the sexually
explicit subordination of women through pictures and/or words."  The
problem, of course, is that this definition can sweep in everything from
religious imagery to film footage about the mass rapes in the Balkans to
self-help books about women's health and sexuality.  In Canada, Customs
officials concluded that two of Andrea Dworkin's own books were
pornographic under her own definition, and therefore seized the books at
the U.S.-Canadian border.


Why did you choose the title, "Defending Pornography"?  Isn't this really
a book about free speech and women's rights?

     The fact that the title is so provocative shows how influential both
pro-censorship feminists and their right-wing allies have been in
demonizing the word "pornography" and the sexual expression to which it
refers according to its dictionary definition.  I don't think a book title
such as "Defending Sexually Explicit Expression" would be particularly
provocative, but "Defending Pornography" has a different connotation
precisely because pro-censorship forces have turned the term "pornography"
into an epithet, much the way "communist" was during the McCarthy era.

     Many people use the term "pornography" to stigmatize whatever
sexually oriented expression they dislike.  Similarly, legal powers to
restrict sexual expression are always used to suppress speech on behalf of
relatively unpopular ideas and groups.  Thus, throughout history, laws
against "obscenity" (the legal term for sexual expression that the Supreme
Court now deems to lack constitutional protection) have always been used
to stifle feminist speech, information about contraception and abortion,
and lesbian and gay writing and art.

     I defend pornography against all efforts to suppress it -- including
in the name of feminism -- because those efforts are so damaging to
women's rights.

But how can you defend pornography?  Isn't it harmful to women?

     The pro-censorship feminists' claim that pornography causes direct
harm to women is unsupported by the facts.  In writing the book, I
searched the social science literature for evidence that exposure to
sexually explicit pornographic material causes sexism and violence toward
women.  But I discovered that a causal connection has never been
established.  In fact, studies suggest that if anything, the greater
availability of sexually explicit material is positively correlated with
greater gender equality and lower rates of violence against women.
Compare, for example, Singapore, which tightly restricts pornography, with
Sweden, where pornography is freely available.  Singapore has a much
higher rape rate than does Sweden, where women also enjoy much greater
legal and social equality.

     As I show in my book, the largely unexamined claim that censoring
pornography would reduce discrimination and violence against women is
overly simplistic and diverts attention and resources away from far more
powerful forces such as sex-segregated labor markets, sexist concepts of
marriage and family, and pent-up rage.  Worse yet, the pro-censorship
feminists' claim that pornography drives men to commit sexual violence
feeds a "porn-made-me-do-it" defense for rapists.  It's not surprising,
therefore, that leaders of the battered women's movement strongly oppose
the feminist pro-censorship movement.

What about the women who pose for pornography? Aren't they directly harmed
in the process, in some cases even beaten and raped?

     As a feminist and civil libertarian, I, of course, strongly oppose
any type of force or coercion in the pornography business as in any other
context.  All women (and men) should be protected against coercion and
exploitation at work. But I reject the pro-censorship feminist assertion
that women are always or usually coerced or victimized when they pose for
pornography.  Far from protecting women, this view infantilizes us; it
assumes, that like children, women are incapable of giving voluntary,
informed consent in the realm of sexuality.  Sex industry workers should
receive the same legal protections of their health and safety that other
workers have; outlawing their line of work would make it impossible to
extend such protection.  It is no surprise that the women who work in the
sex industry so strongly oppose censoring pornography.

You argue in your book that the First Amendment has furthered the struggle
for women's rights. Can you give examples?

     The guiding principles of the First Amendment -- freedom of speech,
press, and association -- have historically benefitted civil rights
struggles, whether of women, African- Americans or lesbians and gay men.
From the sit-ins and picket lines of the Civil Rights Movement of the
1960's to the pro-choice and gay rights demonstrations of today, the First
Amendement, as the Supreme Court now interprets it, guarantees freedom
from government repression of unpopular images and ideas.  This was not
always so.  During the first women's rights movement at the turn of the
century, Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman, and others were repeatedly
arrested and charged with "obscenity" for giving birth control information
to poor women.

     Ironically, the current feminist anti-pornography movement depends on
free speech rights including the right to display pornographic pictures on
sidewalks and in other public places. These feminists have effectively
used their First Amendment rights to raise public consciousness about the
serious problems of violence and discrimination against women.  Therefore,
they themselves demonstrate the wisdom of our constitutional principle
that the appropriate response to any speech you disagree with or that
offends you is not to censor it but rather, to answer it.  More speech,
not less, is the solution.

You are the President of the ACLU. Where does the ACLU stand on these
issues?

     Ever since its founding 75 years ago, the ACLU has battled the forces
of repression and upheld all fundamental rights for all members of
American society.  We neutrally defend all rights because experience shows
that they are indivisible; if the government gets the power to suppress
one right for one person, then no right is secure for any person.  That's
why the pro-censorship feminists are so wrong when they argue that we have
to choose between free speech and gender equality. Nothing could be
further from the truth!  Women, along with everyone else in our society,
are entitled to both free speech and equality, and it hardly advances the
women's rights cause to say we can have only one, but not both. Moreover,
history shows that we can't have one without the other -- that without
free speech, women will never enjoy political equality or reproductive
freedom.

     This mutually reinforcing relationship has been clear in many ACLU
cases.  In our earliest years we defended Margaret Sanger and other
pioneering birth control advocates when they were prosecuted under
anti-obscenity laws. More recently, we brought a lawsuit challenging the
"gag rule" all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that the bar on
information about abortion at federally funded family planning clinics
violated women's reproductive rights and free speech rights.

     I'm especially proud of the ACLU's landmark work and achievements on
behalf of women's rights.  Under the leadership of Ruth Bader Ginsberg,
the founding director of our Women's Rights Project, we won many important
cases securing women's constitutional equality rights and that work
continues today through such historic cases as Faulkner v. Jones, in which
we are representing Shannon Faulkner in her challenge to the exclusion of
women from The Citadel, a taxpayer-funded military school in South
Carolina.

     I am also proud of the ACLU's leading work on behalf of lesbians and
gay men.  We handle more cases in this area than any other organization.

     And the ACLU has always been the preeminent defender of free speech
rights for all unpopular expression, including sexual expression. ACLU
lawyers have played a major role in defending the victims of today's
pornophobia -- writers, artists, filmmakers, and others whose work has
been censored because it deals with sexual themes. Many of these
censorship victims are women and gay people, who have explored issues of
feminism and homoeroticism. Again, the interrelationship of all rights,
and the importance of the ACLU's unique commitment to defending all of
them, is reaffirmed.

Some have said that your attacks on MacKinnon and Dworkin are personal.
Why have you focused so much of your book on what they have said and
written?

     I make no personal attacks on MacKinnon and Dworkin. Rather than
criticizing them as persons, I criticize their ideas. I do so because, as
I previously noted, their ideas have been so influential. In fact, too
many people seem to think that Dworkin and MacKinnon speak for all women,
or all feminists, on pornography and censorship. This is absolutely wrong,
but the feminist anti-censorship movement has not gotten nearly as much
media attention. To correct this imbalance, and the resulting
misperception, my book quotes extensively from the many women, in all
walks of life, who have powerfully explained why censoring pornography
would do more harm than good to the crucially important causes of women's
safety and equality. My book focuses far more on what other women have
said and written, in response to MacKinnon and Dworkin, than it does on
what MacKinnon and Dworkin themselves have said and written.

Do you think you are out of the mainstream of the feminist movement on
this issue?

     No, I don't.  As I just said, many leading feminists, including
activists, academics, artists, journalists, lawyers and writers, agree
with the thesis of my book: that censoring sexual expression hurts the
fight for women's rights. To underscore this point, several organizations
have been formed to oppose censoring pornography specifically from a
feminist perspective. Prominent anti-censorship feminists include Betty
Friedan, the founding President of the National Organization for Women;
Karen DeCrow, another former NOW President; Faye Wattleton, longtime
President of Planned Parenthood; and writers Judy Blume, Nora Ephron,
Susan Isaacs, Molly Ivins, Erica Jong and Katha Pollitt.

     Although the anti-pornography position has a certain cachet today,
largely because it has received a great deal of media attention, I think
that it is the MacDworkinites, and not the anti-censorship feminists, who
are out of the mainstream. Their view, for example, that all sex is
inherently degrading to women, is certainly out of step with what most
women, much less most feminists, think. Support for the First Amendment
has always been a central tenet of the women's liberation movement.

You point out in your book that the anti-pornography feminists have joined
forces with the radical right.  In light of today's political situation,
what do you hope your book will accomplish?

     Given the growing influence of the Christian Coalition and other
radical right groups in the country's political life, I believe it is more
important than ever for the public to understand the link between the
pro-censorship feminists and the right wing. For example, an unholy
alliance between the MacDworkinites and a prominent leader of the STOP-ERA
movement in Indiana pushed through an anti-pornography ordinance in
Indianapolis in 1984 -- an ordinance that was later held unconstitutional
in a federal court lawsuit in which the ACLU participated. Likewise, the
religious and political conservatives who drove the widely criticized
Meese Pornography Commission collaborated with anti-censorship feminists
and used their progressive rhetoric to camouflage a profoundly reactionary
report. I hope my book will persuade people that this mutually reinforcing
relationship does a great disservice to the fight for women's equality
because it lends credibility to the radical right and its anti-feminist,
anti-choice and homophobic agenda.

Why should people read your book?

     I think my book discusses a range of important human rights issues
and informative but interesting way. As a constitutional law professor, I
have tried to explain the important legal principles at stake in
non-legalistic language. I have also given many concrete examples of the
diverse and important sexual expression that has been threatened in the
current sex panic -- on topics including abortion, AIDS and other sexually
transmitted diseases, gender discrimination, contraception, and sexual
orientation. The specific censorship incidents I described are amusing,
outrageous, and shocking. Likewise the quotes I have included from many
other voices in this debate are alarming, eloquent, funny, inspiring and
wise.

Are there any pictures?

I thought you'd never ask! Yes indeed! The book's photo insert reprints a
tiny sampling of the innumerable photographs and art works that would be
censorable pornography under MacDworkinite laws, many of which have
already been suppressed by anti-porn activists. They include a drawing by
a feminist woman artist that she intended as a protest against domestic
violence and a cover of a lesbian erotic magazine.

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copyright 1994 Victor J. Vitanza, James J. Sosnoski, and Rosa Eberly.
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