From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Subject: Re: MacKinnon (was Re: Please explain this quote)
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 20:10:59 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile

barry@netcom.com (Kenn Barry):
| >|         No, just inane. You're squirming, Gordon. I take my culture and
| >| attitudes into the bathroom when I relieve myself, too, but that's
| >| hardly the question. Rather, it is whether the magazine selectively
| >| reinforces negative cultural attitudes. Shit, _anything_ can be evil in
| >| the wrong brain; Manson got inspired by an innocuous Beatles song.

gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
| >That's not quite what I meant. [...]
| >
| >Now, if sexual availability is taken to be a mark of low 
| >status and vulnerability, as our language would seem to 
| >indicate, then a fairly reasonable argument can be made 
| >that _in_our_cultural_context_ such a picture might 
| >contribute to the disempowering of the category of person 
| >it represents.

kb:
|         Gordon, do you realize what you just said? Guess what: if sexual
| availability were a mark of low status, few men would have any status
| at all :-).

I suppose the only way I could protect my writings against
this sort of gibe would be to include qualifiers like
"passive" or "receptive" ahead of "availability."  Actually,
though, I don't think men are as universally available as
they like to think, even when they are taking the
traditional active role, and I think those who are, are
deprecated for being such.

I can think of three men in my recent experience who
both professed and practiced a sort of universal
availability; that is, they approached all the women in
their vicinity sexually (not necessarily offensively).  All
of them were gossiped about and put down for this practice.
One of them was kicked off a BBS which he was using to meet
women, another lost his job partly, it seems, because he was
supposed to be a manager and his undiscriminating sexuality
caused him to lose repute.

Here's another data point which I wish I could remember the
source of -- but I think you will find it believable: the
enemies of a woman who was up for either tenure or an
advanced management position mailed pictures of her taken
when she was a model for cheesecake to those who were to
decide on the promotion.  She was denied the promotion.  I'd
suggest that the same thing would have happened if she had
been a male model for sex photographs, whether or not the
photographs appeared to be homosexually oriented.

In overt manifestations of sexuality, the idea that one
is exercising one's will over others may remove some of
the taint from admitting that one is sexual at all -- this
is the traditional male position -- but otherwise sexuality
is a negative.  A male who does not select, or who is
selected by others (male or female) seems to be looked down
upon.  Or so it seems to me.

kb:
|         The feminists of 20 years ago figured out that sexual freedom
| was a privelege unfairly hogged by men, and set out to change that.
| Unfortunately, that part of women's liberation seems to have gotten lost
| along the road to the millenium. I'll tell you what disempowers people:
| letting censors and fascists and bluenoses tell 'em how to run their
| lives. Freedom was never free. Sometimes you gotta go against the grain.
| It takes a lot of guts to pose for Playboy. The fundies will call you
| immoral, the pseudo-feminists will call you a traitor to your gender,
| and a lot of clueless folk of both sexes will write you off as an
| airhead. Me, I like people with the self-confidence to tell 'em all to
| go to hell.

I think you're taking a naive view of freedom.  As I've
tried to point out, freedom not only isn't free, it's not an
absolute.  Freedoms often conflict.  In the area of
sexuality, where you usually need another whole person (if
not more than one) to carry on, there is a great deal of
impingement upon one another.  To protect freedom, I think
you have to know what it is and what its problems are as
thoroughly as possible, which means going into what someone
like MacKinnon says and taking it seriously even if some, or
much of it, is wrong.

For instance, from the MacKinnon's criticisms as thus far
printed, it seems to me -- this was already my opinion, but
it seems confirmed -- that what is required is not a
suppression of pornography (erotica, if you prefer) but an
expansion of its scope.  That is, depictions should include
situations which cannot be taken as demonstrating passivity
or victimization on the part of women.  For this reason, the
bland, soft-core pornography typical of the copies of
_Playboy_ I have seen are of little use, since the set of
depictions is itself rather passive, allowing a great many
constructions, including malevolent ones, to be put upon it.
-- 

 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )
Newsgroups: alt.feminism,soc.women,soc.men,soc.singles