Why have feminists historically opposed censorship - particularly of material with sexual content? Because no matter how we are assured that the censorship is meant to protect us, the targets of such censorship invariably turn out to include feminist ideas and ideals, information that benefits women and challenges sexism.
Modern attempts to suppress "pornography" in the English-speaking world have sometimes relied on more modern language, but the aims and results, in the end, are the same. "Feminist" alterations to the law in Canada have resulted in targeting of genuine lesbian material there, made by and for women, and allegedly feminist anti-pornography campaigns in the US and Britain have handed new credibility to the moral right's age-old drive to stamp out sexual openness.
We are meant to believe that the new "decency" legislation in the US Congress will protect us from deluges of child pornography and the predations of aggressive pedophiles who trawl for innocent victims. This imaginary "deluge", like the equally imaginary army of rapacious net-pedophiles, is a convenient myth, but the legislation that purports to curb it mysteriously contains restrictions on discussion of abortion. Does this sound familiar? It should. It is the predictable outcome of moves to censor sexual material.
When we fall for arguments against pornography or "obscenity", we hand repressive agents the tool for censoring our speech. It is not their speech - their remarkably sexist speech - that will be censored; it is our own. Because the view that women really do own, and have a right to control, our own bodies and our own sexuality is still a subversive and modern idea, and the legislators who support "decency" legislation don't like our idea very much. These are people who believe that women's liberation is the very Devil himself. Don't let them exploit your fears to fuel their repressions.
© 1996, Avedon Carol
Feminists Against Censorship, based in London, England, was founded in 1989 to fight censorship from a feminist perspective. We are unfunded and operate on a strictly voluntary basis; no one is paid to campaign for FAC. E-mail us for information: avedon@cix.compulink.co.uk.
Avedon CarolFeminists for Free Expression, based in New York, was founded in the wake of the introduction of a federal version of the "Dworkin-MacKinnon" anti-pornography legislation. Write to them at:
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