From: kowan@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu (Rich Cowan)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Effects of Porn at MIT (Re: Someone Convince Me)
Date: 12 Jan 1993 19:23:20 GMT
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

Maybe this article may help.  Keep in mind that I am talking about
pornography in the form in which it now exists, in a society where
men have more power than women.

[The following article is reprinted from the September 1992 issue of 
the War Research Info Service, a quarterly newsletter for campus 
peace activists (Copyright 1992, University Conversion Project).  The 
theme of this special issue (Volume 2, #1) is Masculinity and War/ 
Feminism and Non-Violence.    For a sample issue, please send $3 to 
University Conversion Project, Box 748, Cambridge, MA  02142.  To 
subscribe, please send $25/yr.  Or call (617)  354-9363  for more 
information.]


The Challenge to Pornography at MIT
By Rich Cowan

	For about 10 years from the mid 1970s to the early 1980s, the 
student movie committee at the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology had a tradition of showing a hard core pornographic 
movie every semester at registration day.  The "Registration Day 
Movie" always attracted over 2000 people -- half the student body 
and two to three times the regular movie attendance.  Like most 
other people on my undergraduate dorm floor, I paid a dollar to 
attend these films.
	As MIT's female population rose above the 20% figure and 
women became more organized and vocal, this tradition came under 
attack.  In a polarized campus debate, feminists who linked 
pornography with rape and male violence squared off with men 
defending their "First Amendment" freedom to show and view X-
rated films.

A Scientific Debate?
	As this was MIT, the two sides invoked science to legitimate 
their arguments.  Many men argued that there was no quantitative 
evidence supporting a link between pornography and violence 
against women, citing studies which linked lower rates of rape in 
countries such as Denmark to more permissive attitudes toward 
pornography.  Women quoted other studies, pointing out that much 
of the research supporting "adult" films is  either funded by the 
pornography industry or focuses on a narrow issue while ignoring 
the larger problem.
	Women also rasied important qualitative arguments against 
pornography.  First, the depiction of sex in pornographic films is 
hardly neutral:  most films are designed for heterosexual male 
viewers who like watching women serve men.  Men in the films have 
lifelike characters, while women are shown as dependent and 
compliant, often learning to "enjoy" abuse.  In the worst of these 
films, the abuse takes the form of violence that serves as 
"entertainment" for men.  Given the level of violence against women 
in our society, the violent films may actually be quite realistic.  
Violence is a common tool used by rapists, batterers, and adult 
filmmakers to enforce women's compliance.  According to Alan 
Rosenbaum, a psychologist who counsels batterers at UMass Medical 
Center, "violence is a way of saying, 'You're going to be who I want 
you to be or I'm going to kill you.'"1  Pornography is one way that 
society conditions men to want women to be something they are not.
	Men often responded, "I watch pornography and I'm not a 
rapist."  But existence as proof is bad science.  Studies that measure 
tiny effects on individual male consumers of pornography may be 
blind to the net impact on each female victim. 
	It may well be true that individual male MIT students were 
only 2-4% more likely to commit date-rape after seeing several 
pornographic films, an increase that is "scientifically insignificant."  
Multiply that small percentage by 2,000 viewers and you have an 
increase of 40-80 date-rapists, each likely to commit more than one 
rape while a student.  Consider that the violence is likely to be 
focused on the women who best fit the physical ideals depicted in 
pornographic films.  And finally, consider the implicit sanction of 
showing these movies as a kickoff ritual each semester, before 
incoming students attend their very first class.

Documenting the Effects
	MIT's mass screenings of pornography produced plenty of 
home grown data on its effects on women.  After each registration 
day movie let out, women were accosted by bands of leering men.  
Female victims of child sexual abuse had flashbacks.  Widely 
acknowledged forms of sexism at MIT, in which male professors, 
students and research colleagues tend to ignore women, stare at 
them, or fail to treat them as serious scientists, seemed to worsen 
after the showings.
	Feminists documented these incidents, lobbied the ad-
ministration, and considered taking legal action against MIT.  The 
controversy peaked in 1983 when the student movie committee 
planned to show Deep Throat.  The MIT administration, facing legal 
threats on both sides, cancelled the showing and attempted a 
compromise, establishing a screening committee and pornography 
policy which prohibited the showing of the most sexist and 
unrealistic films. 
	For several semesters in 1983-4, the administration substi-
tuted films such as "Rated X", on the negative impacts of 
pornography, for the registration day movie.  Typically such a film 
would attract 30 feminists; in this situation, it drew 400 mainstream 
MIT students as well.
	These controversies changed the opinions of myself and many 
others on pornography.  The student movie committee was 
persuaded to eliminate the registration day tradition, and showings 
of pornography using MIT public space such as dormitory lounges 
were prohibited by the MIT administration.

The Power to Decide
	Activists at MIT did not lay all their hopes in the school's 
prohibition.  Due to the widespread availability of hard-core videos 
and the belief on campus and in the courts that pornography is 
protected by the First Amendment, campus bans on public showing 
of pornography are unlikely to be obeyed or enforced.  As attitudes 
toward pornography are only beginning to change, continued 
pressure is necessary.
	In 1988, undergraduate Adam Dershowitz showed the movie 
Deep Throat on campus to a group of about 50 students in a 
dormitory lounge.  The MIT administration did not stop it, fearing 
legal action by Harvard law professor and Penthouse columnist Alan 
Dershowitz (Adam's uncle).  Activists responded by taking direct 
action.  A dozen women and a few men leafletted the audience, and 
then interrupted the movie, cutting the cord of the movie projector.   
The action was successful in substituting a constructive discussion of 
the severity of both actions for an endless debate on how (and 
whether) the MIT administration should define pornography.
	With a Supreme Court influenced by the religious right, one 
might think that bans on pornography would be welcomed by the 
legal system.  The problem is that current law allows only certain 
types of "community standards" to determine what is obscene.  
According to MIT Women's Studies lecturer Ann Russo, MIT's policies 
are more likely to be overturned because they "focus on 
victimization of women."2  Standards which focused on the display of 
genitals or homosexual acts would fare better in the courts.
	The net result is that pornography is shown less frequently, 
but the MIT administration leaves it to the victims to object to public 
screenings.  Says Russo, "people are afraid to bring it up because it 
creates havoc in their lives."  MIT women who have criticized the 
screening of pornography have been "silenced" by hostility, 
intimidation, and harassment.  Some have had to move to other 
dormitories or even transfer to another school.
	Rather than advocate bans, many activists feel it is more 
practical given the current climate to work on strengthening policies 
on sexual harassment on campus.  If pornography is treated as 
sexual harassment, suggests Russo, "someone who is harmed by the 
showing of pornography and doesn't want it shown can have a 
grievance."
	Even without mass screenings of X-rated films, magazines and 
home videos have widespread campus distribution.  College 
readership of Playboy magazine alone was 850,000 in the spring of 
1992, according to Bill Paige, PR Manager for Playboy Enterprises.3  
As long as sex education is restricted by right-wing fundamentalists, 
student expectations for intimate relationships will continue to be 
shaped by pornography.
	Campus peace activists can help by educating ourselves about 
violence against women and its relationship to pornography.  We can 
advocate stronger sexual harassment and pornography policies and 
help to enforce policies the school administration is unwilling to 
support.  We can ask men and women who desire healthy 
relationships to consider pornography's role in cultivating inaccurate 
assumptions by men about what women want.  We can encourage 
men to take responsibility for their violent behavior and encourage 
women to assert their right to not be harrassed or raped.  With our 
help, this burden need not fall entirely on the shoulders of sexism's 
victims.
<1> Knapp, Caroline, "Open Season on Women," Boston Phoenix, August 
6, 1992.
<2>Interview by the Author, July 1992.
<3>Interview by the Author, August 17, 1992.

o	Suggested Action:  Provoke a debate about pornography on 
your campus to obtain quotes from defenders who trivialize concerns 
about sexual harassment and rape.  Then blow up a few of these 
quotes and juxtapose them on posters with statistics about the 
incidence of date rape and harassment on campus and quotes from 
men who have admitted that watching pornography affects their 
behavior.  If you have trouble finding such quotes, you have 
discovered part of the problem.  Two books that may help are 
Pornography and Silence by Susan Griffin and Men and Intimacy (see 
Masculinity, p. 13).





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