Cambridge and MacKinnon's Folly

The argument must have seemed second-hand to Catherine A. MacKinnon, the nation's leading crusader for anti-pornography legislation.

But to one young woman in the audience, the potential impact of a pornography ban hit close to home for the first time at a weekend symposium on feminism.

"I am an artist," she told MacKinnon. "I have painted a woman from the waist down. Some men might look at my picture--which is very beautiful to me--and jack off. How is your law going to protect me and my picture?"

Without flinching, the feminist lawyer shot back with a question for the artist. "How do you feel...about living in a society where men use your art in the way you described?"

Reluctantly, the young woman replied, "I can't put things in people's heads, I can't tell them what to feel."

"What if someone who saw something you did went and forced a woman to do it?"

"They're sick and I'm not," the artist responded to a standing ovation.

Not intimidated a second time, the Stanford legal scholar condemned the artist and explained that under a pornography ban she might very well have to sacrifice her work to the cause. "When a pornographer makes something, he doesn't care about other women either."

MACKINNON, THE DRAFTER of Cambridge's November 5 pornography referendum told local feminists that pornography is a longstanding violation of women's civil rights that must be stopped--no matter what the cost to free speech, artistic integrity, or the women's movement itself.

Delivering the keynote address at a local two-day conference last weekend, the feminist lawyer made some hard to dispute arguments about pornography, saying that "it institutionalizes a subhuman, second class, victimized status for women."

"Pornography in the feminist view is not a question of good or bad, false or true, edifying or pleasant, but rather of power and powerlessness," MacKinnon told an estimated crowd of 300 at MIT. "It's a question of sexual politics."

"Because the pornographers have credibility and rights--and women do not--the products of these acts are protected--and women are not. And this is called freedom. Our freedom."

Few would deny MacKinnon's diagnosis that pornography exploits, subordinates and abuses females as well as males. Nor would many disagree with the intent of anti-porn legislation aimed at halting pornographic coercion, force, assault, and trafficking.

What the legal scholar fails to understand, however, is the danger inherent in her ordinance. By defining pornography as simply the "graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures or words," MacKinnon is in effect writing a blank check for unbridled censorship of all printed material.

How are we--or for that matter America's predominantly male judiciary--supposed to know what is "sexually explicit" and what is not? If "sexually explicit" is a legal term, fine. But even Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was at a loss for defining prurient material. "I know it when I see it," he said in a famous ruling.

A U.S. COURT OF APPEALS, which ruled the law unconstitutional, rightly believes the definition is not as clean-cut as MacKinnon thinks. But don't just trust the courts. Ask the experts what impact they think censoring erotica would have on any community.

Or ask the previously mentioned artist who painted a women's mid-section. In accordance with the ordinance, females cannot be exhibited if they are reduced to mere body parts. The artist and any gallery where her work is shown could potentially be fined under the MacKinnon-Dworkin law if some court finds the picture sexually dehumanizing.

Just ask the organizers of the MIT-Harvard symposium who planned a slide program showing sexually explicit, pornographic images to the conference's participants for educational purposes. Because of MIT campus guidelines, the feminists, some of whom support the Cambridge referendum, could not exhibit the slides without prior approval from the university six weeks in advance.

Though the women moved the slide presentation down the street to Harvard, it's ironic that these feminists were trapped by their own reasoning and were not able to show explicit images for a legitimate reason.

Other feminists at the conference agreed that the ban's wording is entirely too ambiguous and potentially damaging to the very women who fight against violent pornography.

"People who don't care about the women's movement have adopted this ordinance as theirs," says Nancy Ryan of the Cambridge Commission on the Status of Women. "They want to remove from circulation publications like 'Our Bodies, Ourselves,' which have been the cornerstones of the women's movement."

Noted feminist and author Kate Millet accurately described the moral quandry many of us face over the banning of sexually explicit materials we find offensive.

"If you don't like the ordinance, and still dislike pornography, what are you going to do about it?" asked the self-proclaimed artist, anarchist and lover of free speech. "If I don't support the ordinance does that mean I'm a pro-pornography hound? No."

MacKinnon is undoubtedly a brilliant orator and a true pioneer in the women's movement. But unfortunately, her shortsighted political acumen has divided that movement, alienated male feminists and failed to address in a practical manner the social problem that is pornography.

Sorry, MacKinnon, but don't expect Cambridge to give up its Venus de Milo's and D.H. Lawrence novels without a fight.