From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: the US elections...
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 9 Nov 92 18:29:08 GMT
Distribution: usa

In article <19043@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> darsie@eecs.ucdavis.edu (Richard Darsie) writes:
>In article <gate.LD0PTB1w165w@pil.UUCP>, alizard@pil.UUCP writes:
>> 
>> 
>> WE WON!!! As I type, Bush is conceding. An important battle has
>> been won. The war for America's future has NOT been won.
>>  
>> I do not know if Clinton is going to keep his e-mail address. I'll let people 
>> know if he keeps it or gets a new one.  
>> Areas to watch in a Clinton Administration:
>> 1. Gun control. If you feel as I do that it's a bad idea, make a
>> habit of contacting the White House...
>> 2. Censorship. Tippe Gore is the Vice President's wife. She is
>> potentially much more dangerous than Marilyn Quayle, especially
>> as her husband, unlike Dan Quayle, is going to be allowed input
>> at the highest levels of power.
>
>How many times does this have to be said:  LABELS WARNING OF
>POTENTIALLY OBJECTIONABLE OR OBSCENE CONTENT DO NOT CONSTITUTE
>CENSORSHIP!!  

People are just not used to seeing them on records; nobody shrieks
bloody murder when new movie ratings come out because well, they've
always been rated.  And hell, some movies won't even let you IN if
you're too young!  The records only have warning labels.

The problem I have is that I just don't trust the people who judge
whether something is explicit or not to judge as I would.  It reminds me
of a furor caused by a respected painting featured on the label of a
bottle of wine.  What was the problem with this, you ask?

It had a full-frontally nude man.  *Gasp!*

The goddamned Louvre is filled to the brim with fat naked women and the
ONE TIME someone puts a naked man on something for popular consumption
everybody screams bloody murder.  The female body IS "art," or
considered art -- meant it's there for mass consumption.  The plonker,
though?  Now, we can't have everyone secularizing that -- it's far too
sacred!  Men's genitals are protected and totemized, women's are for
mass consumption.  It's double standards like this that make me object
to the rating schemes used.

But is it censorship?  No.  Only if the records are not allowed to be
played or bought does it constitute censorship.  A mere warning label is
not enough.  Like I said, how many people who supposedly are afraid of
Tipper Gore boycott Paramount, Universal, Touchstone, Warner brothers,
20th Century Fox, and other movie/TV products because they support a far
more legitimately labelled form of censorship in the form of movie
ratings that prohibit them from being shown to certain people? 

I think -- and I'm aware of the oncoming flames here -- one of the
reasons why Tipper Gore has become a national joke is because she is a
woman and the wife of a Senator who is not supposed to be taking any
stand whatsoever on issues -- regardless of whether they are issues
impacting children or not.  Granted, I think she's attacking the symptom
and not the disease, but I'm amazed at how quickly people trivialized
her and made her into a joke.  She's just a Senator's wife fer
Chrissake!  Go bake cookies and shake hands for your hubby, sweetheart,
and get the hell out of the spotlight.  Just some stupid assed, uptight
bluenose bitch -- the same stream of accusations about personal and sex
life that follows any women who identifies herself as a feminist, by the
way.  That follow any woman who identifies herself as ANYTHING but a
wife and mother.   

While I agree that music nowdays has gotten totally out of hand, I think
that it is not so much the cause of the present nihilistic attitude of
young people as it is simply springing from the same well.  It's a
symptom of a far larger problem, and not the problem itself.   

I know, I know, as an American I should go to court and fight for some
spoiled metalhead's dubious "right" to call me a pussy and a cocksucker
in his supposed "music."  Fucking forget it.  I'm tired of fighting for
men's rights to express their "freedom of speech" using my body.  Fight
for yourself.  I am not in favor of censoring ANYTHING, though, chiefly
because it has in the past been treating iffy stuff in this manner that
has gotten us INTO this mess.  The Victorians were the most sexually
repressed assholes in recent history -- or at least the most well-known.
They had a porn industry that was worth a fat fortune, too.  Porn
doesn't cause sexual dysfunction, it is a symptom of it, and it has been
repressing stuff that has gotten us to this point.  (I use porn because
of it's recognizability and because it is just so near and dear to my
heart.)  Hence, I do not agree with censoring anything.

But just because the First Amendment protects your "right" to read Screw
magazine or listen to lyrics glamourizing rape or violence, don't think
it ennobles it.  The First Amendment also protects your right to pick
your nose and eat it if you call it a form of political protest.
Doesn't mean it still ain't gross, though. 

This is a major problem I have with the way people use the First
Amendment.  They act like whatever they do becomes instantly noble just
because the fucking First Amendment protects it.  They also act like the
worst sort of brain-dead fundie when they whip the Constitution out like
some sort of conversational secret weapon against which there is no
defense.  I mean, honestly, what IS the difference between "The Bible
says it so I believe it" and "The Constitution says it so I believe
it."  They are both simple documents written by flawed men -- and I mean
MEN.  Jesus, people.  How hypocritical can you get?  We scream our asses
off about the fundies who use the Bible as a defense for everything and
then go and do the same thing with the Constitution?

Starhawk quoted Mary Daly about this.  People decry one paradigm, and
then -- thinking themselves liberated -- go and create another one with
new names and faces.  For "Christ" insert "Karl Marx," "Werner Erhard,"
"Robery Bly."  For "Bible" insert "Constitution," "Communist Manifesto,"
"Iron John."  Now I KNOW someone is going to follow up and add "Z
Budapest" and "Starhawk."  For the record, I have NEVER met ONE Pagan or
Witch who thinks shit doesn't stick to Starhawk's ass.  It's a common
form of denial to say, "Well, well, well . . . YOU do it, too!" and
ascribe faults to those who try to point them out.  Again, it doesn't
mean the faults don't exist; it just means we all have to work on them. 
And, I'll await some jackass who says, "Well, women do it, too!" and
thus exposes him or herself as having had my entire post fly right over
their head.

Just to recap my position, since it seems so often to get lost in the
fray:

1) I am not in favor of censoring anything since de facto censorship of
sensitive topics has gotten us where we are now.

2) I am sick and fucking tired of being expected to defend some
asshole's "right" to free expression using my body.  Like the black
woman said, "If I end up cooking grits for the revolutionaries, it ain't
my revolution." 

3) I think Tipper Core is fundamentally harmless.

4) I think consuming movies while bitching about record rating is
hypocritical.

5) I think Tipper Gore was trivialized in part because she is a
Senator's wife.

6) I think appealing to the Constitution to solve all life's little
problems is the same as appealing to the Bible to solve all of life's
little problems.

7) I think doing one while denouncing the other and making jokes about
it is hypocritical.

Now awaiting all the nonsense and accusations about how I support
censorship and am a Tipper groupie and a castrating, man-hating bitch. 

Blessings,
Janis