From: davidc@cs.uwa.oz.au (David Cake)
Subject: Re: Aarnet should not be pornographic!
Organization: Dept. Computer Science, University of Western Australia.
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 04:43:14 GMT

In <1igqfaINNi90@flash.pax.tpa.com.au> dclunie@pax.tpa.com.au (David Clunie) writes:

>The following is an email reply to me, posted with the permission of Phil Ryan, who
>started this thread ...

>David

>Go ahead, post your response to my email.


>You seem to feel that women who work as topless barmaids would rather be 
>doing that than anything else - which is total bullshit. If women and men 

Some (very feminist) women that I know have expressed the opinion that they
wish that they could bring themselves to enter prostitution, because the 
money is SO good. They thought that being able to put themselves through
University on about an afternoons work a week sounded pretty good. And often
the alternative is working at some form of McJob (low pay, shit condition, 
service industry), which is almost as degrading, especially as you are payed
bugger all, and there is very little future in it. Putting yourself through
Uni at Hungry Jacks is very hard. I know people who have done it. I know people
who have done it, and hated every second. I have read interviews with women
who have put themselves through Uni as a part time prostitute. You can see how
some people make that choice very easily. 

>had equal opportunities in this society, and the subjugation of women was 
>not thought of as being OK, then there would not be topless barmaids. You 
>said it yourself - that the women involved would have liked the extra cash: 
>how come a topless barmaid gets paid more than a non-topless one? Because, 
>like prostitution, she is selling her body. (And in any case, the topless 
>women were getting exploited like crazy - no tits, no job etc. etc.)
	And obviously the Chippendales are terribly exploited too. My heart
bleeds for them. I find the commercialisation of sexuality distasteful. I do
not go and see strip shows myself. But what other people do is other peoples 
business, unless it threatens society.
	I agree that often workers in the sex industry are exploited. As someone
(James Pinakis, I think) said, legalise and unionise. Don't allow drug addicts.
Get the Police to actually help prostitutes to get vioent coercion out of the 
industry. I believe legalised prostitution (like in Melbourne) has relatively 
few problems with drugs. This is not a new idea, COYOTE (the US prostitutes 
lobby group)has been around since the early '70s.

>There are two groups of women involved in the pornography debate: those 
>opposed to it, and those in favour of it. Those women in favour of 
>pornography are, like the 'collaborateurs' in France during WWII, like that 
>because they feel that the world cannot be changed (and will not be), so 
>that they may as well make the most out of their lot in the male-dominated 
>world.
And here was I thinking that some of them liked it. Why do things like 
Australian Womens Forum (available at just about every newsagent in the country)
exist if some women don't just enjoy erotica and sexual discussion? That also
contains adds for erotica made by and for women. What about lesbian erotica (lot
of that on sale at good bookshop, like Down to Earth in Perth or Gleebooks in
Sydney). I can guarantee that at least one woman enjoys erotica for its own
sake :-)
	And once you enjoy erotica, and don't want anyone else to remove your
acess to it, it is a short step to extending the same courtesy to others, even 
if their tastes are not the same as yours.

>Now, to help to bring you back to reality: why don't you ask some women 
>that you know - of any socio-economic class - if, for the same money, they 
>would rather be topless barmaids or porn stars, than what they do now.
Hmm.. are you familiar with an American woman called Annie Sprinkle ?? I bet I
know what she would say :-)

>As to the question of 'evidence' of opression in the production of 
>pornography: there is plenty of it. Many cases have been won, where the 
>women involved have won compensation for their forced roles - usually of 
>course, the men involved are then declared bankrupt, but the point is that 
>there _is_ the evidence. Of course, there is also the child pornography: I 
>saw an interview with a woman on television where she said that her whole 
>life had been in the production of pornography, and that, when she gave 
>birth at the age of 16, she was not surprised that her employer/husband 
>wanted to use the baby in a new porn film. The baby was killed. The woman 
>didn't know any better.

And forcing the porn industry underground and illegal would stop these instances
of violent coercion from happening? How silly of me not to have realised.

>You can choose to ignore the evidence of women's oppression in our society. 
>You can choose to consume pornography. You can choose to beleive that some 
>women enjoy having a penis down their throat six inches. But you should 
>start looking at the other side of the coin.
As David said, I don't, I do ocassionally (actually, I prefer written erotica),
some do, and I have.
	I have never even read alt.binaries.pictures.erotica (if read is the
right word). I very little interest in visual erotica, and if I did I would
probably go to the newsagent and buy some. I would even support the removal of
a.b.p.e on bandwidth grounds (I seem to recall that there have been problems in
the past), certainly if there was a real problem. But the sort of people who 
would remove it for moral reasons are the reason why I can no longer read
alt.sex (which I found a source of interesting discussion) . Well, I can still
read it, but its not worth the trouble. And that makes me mad. And I can see 
other groups that I or my friends read ocassionally (like alt.drugs) also 
threatened, so I feel duty bound to attack the first sproutings of the 
censorship lobby on AARNet. 


>Phil Ryan
>(feel free to use any of this material in further postings to the net. 
>Interestingly, I was expecting to get many pro-porn postings, but it turned 
>out that it was about 50/50 onthe question that I put in my original note.)

Dave Cake

-- 
David Cake		|life is easily understood as bit strings with logical
[WLM] Weird Little Man	|depth greater than their length - Rebis, Doom Patrol
Cognitive science, UWA	|..think about a government entirely of fish - JBC