Dworkin Urges Support For Anti-Porn Bill

The co-author of an antipornography law, which Cantabrigians will vote on next week, urged a crowd of 200 at Radcliffe's Cronkhite Graduate Center last night to support the proposed ban.

Andrea Dworkin, a self-avowed radical feminist, called on Cambridge voters to endorse Question Three on the November 5 ballot. The ordinance, co-written by Catherine MacKinnon, would allow victims recourse to sue pornography distributors, sellers and makers for sex discrimination.

"Pornography is used as a recipe for gang and other types of rape, a how-to manual," Dworkin said. "We have empirical proof, real proof--the victims--that pornography creates hostility against women and causes physical abuse."

The proposed law defines pornography as "the graphic, sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures and/or words." It would virtually ban all sexually explict material, giving local courts power to restrict the proliferation of material they deem pornographic, Dworkin said.

Bills similar to the one on the Cambridge ballot have been passed in Indianapolis and Minneapolis, but have been struck down by courts as unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment.

A Cambridge women's group, Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force (FACT), has said it opposes the proposed legislation because it constitutes censorship.

Group members also said they do not believe pornography is a tool of subordination. "How do pictures and words subordinate human beings?" members said in a statement released this month.

FACT members say they believe that the Dworkin-MacKinnon bill "is a quick fix to a deep-seated problem," which should be attacked by legislation guaranteeing equal pay scales, affirmative action, and increased bargaining power.

In defending her bill, Dworkin said the First Amendment was written by white men, most of whom owned women as chattel and Black slaves. She said they saw the First Amendment as a vehicle to protect their power over the people they owned.

"It is a bill of wrongs when it protects tyranny, when it protects pimps. Right now the First Amendment is used to empower pimps. The more speech they have, the more speech we have. I can't agree," Dworkin said.