From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: At the Barricades (was: Re: Catharine MacKinnon, Playboy and feminist propaganda)
Date: 7 Oct 92 21:45:06 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile

barry@netcom.com (Kenn Barry) writes:
| >|                                                   ... Care to
| >| explain why "objectifying" a woman as a doctor (e.g., a picture of a
| >| woman wearing a white coat and stethoscope) is acceptable, but
| >| "objectifying" her as a sexual being is a no-no?

gf:
| >There are two issues here.  One is the question of whether
| >McKinnon is an animist; the other has to do with
| >objectification.  I regard the first proposition as absurd.

kb:
|       Then you probably don't understand it. While I'm not _sure_
| MacKinnon doesn't stick pins in little Hugh Hefner dolls, I wasn't
| speaking quite that literally. I was speaking of animism as a manner of
| thinking rather than as a religion. She externalizes the sexual demons
| of her own psyche into a magazine.

Oh, give me a break.  I strongly suspect you don't know
anything about MacKinnon's sexual demons, or anyone else's,
for that matter.  Do you really want to do this popshrink
in a public forum?  We could carry on at length about your
fixation on MacKinnon.  I mean, you seem fascinated by this 
middle-aged feminist law professor's sexuality, don't you?
Venn did you shtardt to feel ziss vay, Kenn, hmmm?

gf:
| >... seizes the mind of "any man" against his will[?]

kb:
|       Creates itself? No. Seizes the mind? Yes. She's quite explicit
| about it, Gordon. What is MacKinnon most famous for? The
| Dworkin-MacKinnon initiatives, which offer the notion that Playboy and
| suchlike are directly and legally liable for psychic damage to the
| souls of women everywhere.  ...

That's not what I've gotten out of my reading thus far.
What I have seen is a theory that exposure to pornography
degrades women in the minds of some men, who thereafter act
to the women's disadvantage, by, for instance,
discriminating against them, or attacking them physically.
That is, in MacKinnon's theory they suffer bodily and
financial harm.  While I would not agree with this theory
without seeing more evidence than I've seen, the argument
is hardly as mystical as you make it out to be.

kb:
|                     There is nothing vague about such proposed
| legislation in fixing blame. No reader of Playboy is even required. A
| woman could sue and win on the grounds that she felt demeaned by seeing
| the cover of the magazine at a newsstand. 

Don't be silly.  The magazine would not exist without its 
readers.

kb:
|                     ...   She is demonizing "pornography", Gordon,
| commercial erotica. If she were willing to admit where the
| responsibility for sexual pathology lay, she would see no reason to
| abrogate the principle of personal responsibility for one's actions in
| this one, special case. ...

The fact that social conditions and activities have concrete
results does not abrogate the principle of personal 
responsibility.  The principle of personal responsibility
does not obviate the fact that social conditions and
activities have concrete results.  For example, if someone 
shoots someone deliberately, she's responsible.  If I leave 
guns and ammunition on the street, I'm creating a socially
dangerous condition.  The one does not exclude the other.

kb:
|       Your problem, Gordon, is you read your own (presumably) more
| moderate opinions into MacKinnon, and defend them in the mistaken belief
| you are defending hers. You see what you wish to see. Like most people
| with nothing of substance to say, MacKinnon is conveniently vague. "Hmm,
| touch of Freud, there; OK. Touch of Pavlov, too - good science! And a
| page from the psychology of advertising and propaganda - can't argue
| with that". But what she does with it is about as intellectually sound
| as a creationist quoting criticisms of Darwin by Steven J. Gould.

Care to cite passages and demonstrate?  I don't have any
of MacKinnon's works at hand.  All I have is what Hillel,
that noted friend of feminism and especially C. MacKinnon,
has chosen to provide us with.

[ objectification, abstraction ]
gf:
| >To use your initial example of a doctor, suppose "doctor" 
| >represented a minimum-wage, low-status job like 
| >"dishwasher."  Then when we referred to someone as a doctor
| >we might be dismissing them as of no account; we could use
| >the term to deny recognition of them as a person.

kb:
|       Then I take it that a picture of a man washing dishes is
| perforce an attempt to demean the male sex? It's a logical extension of
| MacKinnon's thesis. Guess we'd better outlaw such pictures, eh?

I don't think much of outlawing pictures.  But if you think
pictures can't be used to deprecate categories of people
there are some things from history of racism that might
prove enlightening.  May I add that I am surprised that I
need to make this suggestion?

gf:
| [ sexuality confers low status; examples of sexual 
|   terms which are strongly pejorative ]

kb:
|       Does Playboy refer to women as "cocksuckers"? Does it denigrate
| the women whose pictures it publishes? Does its glorification of women
| as sexual beings suggest that female sexuality is vile? Is it
| responsible for attitudes that predate Playboy, that come from a time
| when such public glorification of female sexuality was illegal?

_Playboy_ exists in a context.  Part of that context is
hatred and contempt for sexuality, especially that of women 
or those who take a woman-like role in it.  That's why 
"cocksucker" is an insult.  No, _Playboy_ did not invent
this context; on the other hand, its safe, sanitized, highly
limited commercial derepression probably does nothing to 
change it either.  This is off the subject, though; it's the 
kind of thing we could discuss if we weren't always called
to the barricades.

gf:
| >I can't help this; it's just one of the ugly facts of life.

kb:
|       No, Gordon, you _can_ help it. You can help it by opposing those
| who want to put human sexuality back in the shadows, to be reviled or
| sniggered at. You can help it by speaking out against the MacKinnons of
| this world, who wish to give their own warped perceptions of sexuality
| the force of law.

It'll take far more than speaking out against the
"MacKinnons" and looking at airbrushed pictures of 
naked women.
  
MacKinnon is not, after all, MacKinnon, but a part of 
DworkinMacKinnon, a necessary gargoyle for the enemies 
of feminism to target in order to attack all feminists 
-- as you can see in this newsgroup.  The particular 
form that the repression of sexuality takes in our 
society -- which, by the way, _Playboy_ exploits and 
probably could not exist without -- can't even be discussed 
here; instead, the ardent need to denounce the demon, and by 
extension all feminism, always comes first.  If you don't
believe me, look around you.

If this were not the case, we would use what we thought was 
useful in the writings of MacKinnon and Dworkin and anybody
else and leave the rest.  But that would mean accepting the
basic validity of feminism.

May I add in closing that if you are as concerned as you
say you are with the First Amendment, and, I hope, the rest
of the Bill of Rights, you will forget about this minor
player who is being used here only as an instrument for an
anti-feminist agenda.  There are far greater enemies of
freedom in far higher places; where is your concern about
them?
-- 
 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )