From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Subject: Eros and Capital (was: Re: Hate Speech Okay, says the Supreme Court)
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 03:18:43 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile
Keywords: egnilges

My thanks to Andrew Aiken for his amiable anecdote.  Off the
point, though.  As most of the rest of this discussion, in my
opinion.  I accuse you all of Nilges-bashing, instead of
exploring the questions around the ideas of pornography and
censorship which, as I have shown, are closely related.  We
all know about classical liberalism; there are more inter-
esting things here than rehashing Locke.

First, let's remember, as we should know from the low-Q
newsgroups, it is men and not women who are exploited by the
likes of Playboy and Hustler.  That is, the male nervous system
responds strongly to visual images and physical (as opposed to
emotional) fantasies.  The emotional development of the male 
is sidetracked and stunted by the constant proffering of images
from whom there is no real heat, and never can be, so that
magazines and advertising can be sold at high prices and bottom
lines can grow fat while the souls of innumerable young men
grow thin on the vacuous fare.

The answer to this problem, however, is not censorship.  What
censorship would do in this instance would be to make the
censoring party, the government, a partner in pornography, by
adding its tax to the price of the material -- by sharpening
the gradient of acquisition.  This is probably what McKinnon
and Dworkin wish -- I'll get into this in a moment -- but it 
is not what I wish, because I desire erotic freedom as well 
as the other kinds.  The good answer to the problem is better 
pornography -- erotica, if you prefer -- and more of it, and
of the sort in which the girl or boy next door can be 
imagined.  The vague images of airbrushed pornography 
correspond visually to the indefinite sight of the infant;
the better pornography will guide its consumer to discern-
ment and appreciation of the specific, the individual, the
real.

Now, what are Dworkin and McKinnon up to?  Primarily, they are
making a living.  Their particular approach is to exploit
women.  Specifically, they exploit women by emphasizing the
difference between the female and male erotism, which of course
is already being emphasized and exploited by the media we have
been discussing.  An undeveloped erotic consciousness in a
large muscular body can only be disquieting, if not
frightening, to a person of lesser musculature who at the same
time is the possible object, however hazily, of this same
undeveloped consciousness.  Passing in front of any newsstand,
they are aware at once of this dumbed-down erotism and the
powerful corporate forces enhancing it; they see bodies like
their own marketed as oranges are marketed in the supermarket,
rank upon rank, indistinguishable, to be squeezed out and 
thrown away.  Dworkin and McKinnon and people like them can 
profit by exploiting this fear, and by opening as far as 
possible the space between the male and the female; the 
censorship they advocate can be sold directly to the women, as 
a brand of politics, and at the same time it can, if 
implemented, enhance the conditions for further sales.

There are others interested in this process, specifically
certain corporations and the state, whose profits and power
increase as the space between male and female widens.  When the
space between man and woman closes there is no room for profits
and power.  Thus, it is to the interest of the manipulators
of large capital, and of the faded bourgeoisie who infest the
government, to back (but discreetly) the pornography-
censorship structure, to continue the commodification and
governmentalization of Sex, given to us free by Nature or by 
Nature's God.  They have taken almost everything else.
-- 
Gordon Fitch | gcf@panix.com | uunet!cmcl2!panix!gcf 
*       1238 Blg. Grn. Sta., N.Y., N.Y. 10274      *