Re: Pornography

[chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (chris williams)]

  >     A vanishingly small number of the readers of Playboy and Penthouse
  >  ever commit violent sexual crimes, and sexual crimes have existed as
  >  long as the human race, far longer than the printed image. Claiming
  >  that one caused the other shows, at best a complete lack of
  >  understanding of statistical coorelation.  With all the
  >  real, horrible crimes being perpetrated against women around the
  >  world on a daily basis (female genital mutalation is widespread in
  >  the Muslim areas of Africa), that complaining about Playboy and
  >  Penthouse is the equivilent of going to an emergency room with a
  >  hangnail during a plague.

> I'm sorry you seem to have confused me with someone who's a complete
> fuckwit, but I'm sorry to admit I'm actually a well-informed feminist.

   Pleased to meet you. I'm an egalitarian. I believe in a person's
right to decide what to do with their own bodies. Playboy features
artistic nude photography of the female form. This is one of the
oldest themes in art. The PCism that you seem to be expousing has
gone so far that eMpTyVee is blurring out the breasts of *public
statutes* in recent music videos.

   There are two camps of feminists these days. You seem to be following
the Dworkin/McKinnon line, and I prefer the Suzy Bright/Annie Sprinkle/
Candida Royale "Take control of our own sexuality" camp. :-)

> I already know full well everything you stated, and also much more about
> the issue than you are ever likely to know given that you don't even
> recognize the difference between nudity and pornography.

   Playboy is not, by any rational standard, pornography. Any more than
my family's old home movies. By your standard, they would be, as they
feature plenty of naked women (and men.) As the man said "What I like
is erotica, what you like is pornography." I have my own definition;
you have yours, which seems to encompass any female nude photography,
no matter how "soft."

   I enjoy some pornography, some distrubs me, some sickens me. But,
the vast, overwhelming majority is made by and for consenting adults.
People have the right to produce and consume it, as long as no
unconsenting or underage people are involved. (What really sickens
me is the current US national obsession with tattoos. But I have the
maturity to realize that this is a personal peeve, and try not to
annoy other people with my distaste.)

>   I'm also sorry to say that the articles are the worst feature of
> the magazines.

    So, you read the magazine, eh? Or you don't but can nevertheless 
judge the writing?

    Pick carefully; hypocrite or fool?

>   I'd like to see the streets of Los Angeles if anyone there ever
> tried to publish a magazine as racist as these publications are sexist.

   This is too silly to even reply to. 


                          Chris Williams of
                             Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago
                               chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (his)
                                 vickie@njin.rutgers.edu      (hers)