From: perez@mgr.hjf.org (Charles Perez)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,misc.legal,alt.postmodern,alt.censorship
Subject: Re: Hate Speech Okay, says the Supreme Court
Keywords: egnilges
Date: 29 Jul 92 17:32:57 GMT
Organization: HJF AIDS Research Project, Washington DC

In article <1992Jul27.230108.10941@Princeton.EDU> egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) writes:
>In article <1992Jul27.190001.5960@nocusuhs.nnmc.navy.mil> perez@mgr.hjf.org (Charles Perez) writes:
>>In article <1992Jul25.034520.17957@Princeton.EDU> egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) writes:
>>
>>Which is to say that there is no clear distiction between thought and
>>action, but that contradicts the first part of your statement. Dworkin
>>& Co. *are* interested in criminalizing (not banning - they want to
>>make certain thoughts (or at least their *expression*) crimes, sins
>>even, and then cash in on the guilt) thoughts.
>
>Completely incoherent.  What do they want to ban?  Thoughts?
>Expression?  And there's at least one unbalanced parenthesis.

Unbalanced parenthesis? Let's see... yank that text here...
>>& Co. *are* interested in criminalizing (not banning - they want to
                                          1
>>make certain thoughts (or at least their *expression*) crimes, sins
                        2                              1
>>even, and then cash in on the guilt) thoughts.
                                     0

and inserting paran counts shows us that the parenthesis are indeed
balanced. Check your facts before you go shooting your mouth. While
I admit that my paragraph above is poorly written, it parses
unambiguously. Sorry to the rest of the netters here, I fell into
the trap of writing the way I think. :-)

>>
>>>
>>
>>So, naturally, PEI, Penthouse, EFF, and others, are dastards operating
>>for crass profit, while Dworkin, MacKinnon, et al. are benevolent
>>reformers operating from the highest of motives ;-). Don't make me
>>laugh, Ed.
>
>Penthouse et al. makes millions of dollars as do the companies (like
>Lotus) funding EFF.  Whereas feminists aren't in it for the big bucks.
>Do you seriously claim that MacKinnon is as rich as Bob Guccione?
>
>We all act from a mixture of motives, but this is a laughable equation.
>Penthouse and Lotus are motivated exclusively by money; it's a part of
>the creed.  Whereas part of the critique of feminism is that feminists
>are starry-eyed idealists and altruists.

Penthouse and Lotus both make money by providing valuable products to
their customers. You would have them defamed by this. Is everyone who
produces values for others evil while everyone who disparages them good?

Just because someone isn't "in it for the money" does not make them
good. Look at Hitler. If he was money-hungry, he wouldn't have killed
all those Jews, he would have used fascist laws to milk them for all
they were worth. What he was after, though, was not money but power.
Power to say, "look at me, I have the power to make an end of all
these Jews." His actions make this obvious.

Dworkin and MacKinnon are trying the same tactic of showing power by
destroying, although on a much pettier scale, with their doctrines
of sexual intercourse=rape and "pornography"=violence.

>
>>
>>>
>>
>>Violence begins with the first violent move, not with words. Or are you
>
>Oh?  "You fucking asshole!"

That's the expression of an opinion, not violence.

>"Hey babe, howd'ya like to get raped!"

That is indeed a violent move - communicating an actual threat. Police
and prosecuting attorneys call that assault.

>"Do that again and I swear to God I'll beat you within an inch of your
>life!"

This could be assault or self-defense, depending on the circumstances.
Trying to snow us with non-sequiturs and fuzzy thinking again, Ed?

>
>>rationalize his motives, suddenly good when he says what you want
>>him to say (answered my own question :-) )? The studies *I* read
>>list reading Playboy and Penthouse as counterindications to violence
>>against and disrespect of women. Reading Playboy because I *hate*
>>women? Really.
>
>Dworkin/MacKinnon don't say you read Playboy because of a preexisting
>hatred of women, Dworkin/MacKinnon claim that Playboy induces this
>hatred by turning women into sex objects.

Oh Nooo!!!!! I've been a Playboy reader for over 4 years, and now I'm
a raging misogynist! Auggghhh!!! ;-)  [editor's note:  I've known
this guy for 6 months, and really, he is - V.P.K.].


>And I trust my perceptions
>rather than studies which are apt to be funded by the Playboy
>Foundation, which (like the EFF) has an axe to grind.  Why don't you?
>Do you have to be told what to think?

And I trust my perceptions more than I do yours, my perceptions
including which studies ring true.

>>
>>
>>Not relevant. Censorship is censorship, no matter what the motive or
>>what you want to censor. Ed, you are such an easy mark when it comes
>>to refuting you. Maybe your postings should be in a rhetoric textbook.
>
>Fine, censorship is censorship.  And there is microcensorship and benign
>censorship, as when I 86'd Henry Schaffer after he lied.  I suggest that
>you not worry about rhetoric and cultivate basic reading skills, for
>I've been saying all along that the fact that something is "censorship"
>does not automatically imply that it is evil.

Why don't you post what it was that I refuted, so the net can see what
it was you say I misread.

>>
>>>What they advocate is consistent with accepted
>>>legal doctrines concerning pornography and "fighting words",
>>
>>"Accepted"? By whom? You can always find someone who "accepts" what you
>>have to say.
>
>How about Brandeis for starters, who in 1941 promulgated the "fighting
>words" exception to blanket free speech?  
>
>>>
>>
>>>This is probably the result of the way in which our society is
>>>structured, in which personal behavior is "free" but economic and
>>>political arrangements are insanely rigid.
>>
>>How do you define "rigid" in this context?
>
>We live in a society in which pop songs can read "boom boom boom let's
>go back to my room we can do it all night we can make it all right."  I
>don't have a problem with this (although the message may contribute to
>the spread of AIDS.)  I do have a problem with the fact that we shuttle
>between a Democratic tweedledum and a Republican tweedledee in politics.
>I do have a problem with the increasing contraction of choice in
>economic life-styles, such that people can no longer experiment with
>their lives or walk away from bad jobs as members of my generation used
>to be able to do.  

So, what does all of that have to do with rigidity?

>>
>>>So maybe in the past the
>>>"steam engine" theory had validity which it nowadays lacks.
>>
>>Again, learn some psychology before you go running your mouth.
>
>Learn some history first.  The Freudian "steam engine" theory was
>developed for 19th century bourgeous Viennese, a population different in
>many respects from contemporary American lumpenproles.  It's
>unscientific to assume, without argument, that psychological laws apply
>to both populations without change. The assumption that they do drives
>Playboy's "philosophy."

The notion of repression is far from being exclusively Freudian. As for
psychological laws not applying without change to two populations, if
they have to change, then they're not laws, they're just history.
They didn't teach you scientific method in Kindergarten, did they?

>
>>
>>>
>>>Addicts in successful recovery often report that they think of the
>>>object of their addiction every single day and they welcome these
>>>thoughts.  These thoughts, it is said, "keep the memory green."  Perhaps
>>>we need Dworkin and MacKinnon to remind us of the way in which women are
>>>victimized.  Perhaps here, too, silence=death.
>>
>>Huh?
>
>Dumb looks are still free, I can see.

They *always* are, especially for *you*, Ed. ;-)

>I guess your incomprehension of a
>key point didn't make you decide that silence was the better part of
>valor.  But this point undercuts Gordon's post, for he accuses
>Dworkin/MacKinnon of creating the problem by presenting it in their
>prohibitions, of encouraging violence against women by always talking
>about it.

So, *that* was the point you were trying to make. Gordon's post did
not say that talking about violence to women encourages such violence.
He said that forbidding thinking about such violence, for example,
never sucessfully supresses the thoughts, and just makes them more
pervasive.  Why don't you cultivate those reading skills you say I
don't have? A close reading of what Gordon *actually* said could
prove rewarding.

>He presented the piano leg as an example, for the piano leg
>reminded the repressed Victorian of the naked limb which was forbidden;
>the taboo caused the Victorian, in Gordon's account, to see the taboo'd
>object everywhere.
>
>This is the "repression" model.  

What he said was that trying to avoid thinking about the taboo "naked
limbs" actually brought them to mind. This is hardly repression, which
you would know if you were the psychologist you *pretend* to be.

>
>But on my "addiction" model, which accounts for violence against women
>as an addictive process, presenting violence won't cause it IF the
>violence is presented in a context which deglamorizes it.  Addicts in
>recovery deal successfully with the content of their addiction every day
>by presenting it to themselves and explicitly rejecting it.  Note that
>Hustler, say, has only one-half the formula; it an other porn mags
>present the object but make light of its use and actively encourage
>violence against women (it should be noted that in a blundering apology
>to feminists, Larry Flynt presented a notorious cover of a woman being
>fed into a meat grinder; but because of his track record, feminists
>interpreted this as further incitement to violence, and I personally
>witnessed outraged feminists screaming about this cover on the streets
>of NYC in 1988.)  Dworkin and MacKinnon present sexual violence but
>Gordon was wrong in claiming that this would encourage it, for they
>present it only to reject it, as do addicts in recovery.
>
>By the way, psychology (which you recommend I study) is completely
>unsuccessful with addiction and also responsible for the denial of
>sexual assault in early childhood.  Its failures outnumber its
>successes.

Which psychology are you talking about? There are more than one school
of thought in psychology, you know (that's right, you don't know!).
Also, you say that no one going into therapy as an addict comes out any
better for it? Okay, will you back up that assertion's correlary, that
no recovered addict received any phychological help? As for sexual
abuse, why don't you take your talk to alt.sexual.abuse.recovery? Tell
them that the trade of every therapist they ever met is *responsible*
for the denial of their condition. Tell them that psychology will
not help them. Go ahead and prescribe what is good for them. Go ahead,
then see what *they* say to *you*.

>>
>>
>>You said it yourself. They want to shut *other* people up. Their true
>>motives, lusts for power others, come shining through.
>
>What's a "lust for power others?"

It's a typo. Maybe you've heard of them. I meant to say, "lusts for
power over others". Okay, I made a typing mistake, and you mistakenly
accused me of using unbalanced parenthesis. Are we even? :-)

>Is a "power other" like a "power
>lunch", a spouse with a big income?  I doubt that that's what they want,
>or what you meant to say.  And you want me to shut up.

No Ed, please pretty please with sugar on it do NOT shut up! You posts
are entirely too entertaining. Just one of them is enough to make my
day! :-)

>The Prez wants
>to shut MIA hecklers up.

If MIA means anything besides Missing In Action, please tell us. I don't
think anybody could see how that above sentence relates to anything I
said. Besides, I never told anyone to shut up, *you* did. Anything that
looks as if I did is sarcasm. Have you heard of sarcasm? Do you know it
when you see it?

>Why don't you stop blithering about other
>people's motives

Does the phrase "power over others" make sense? It's what I *meant* to
say. If someone takes a swing at my face, is it safe to say he wants
to punch my face in? If some self-proclaimed "feminist" makes a power
grab, is it safe to say she wants power?

Don't tell me that trying to have a law passed targeting "pornographers"
for destruction by lawsuit isn't a power grab.

>and engage the substance of what Dworkin/MacKinnon
>say?

That sexual intercourse always, *always* makes a victim out of the
woman? That anything falling under the heading of pornography is
actually violence toward women? Is that the substance of which you
speak?

>Why is it okay for Charles Perez to want Ed Nilges to shut up, but
>not okay for Dworkin to want pornographers to shut up?

*Please* don't shut up, Ed. :-)

.sig
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,misc.legal