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4.2.12
WC: 191694

to establish a causal connection between porn and rape. Here is the definition as set out in a model statute introduced in several state legislatures by radical feminists:

Pornography is the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women, whether in pictures or in words, that also include one or more of the following: (i) women are presented dehumanized as sexual objects, things or commodities; or (ii) women are presented as sexual objects who enjoy pain or humiliation; or (iii) women are presented as sexual objects who experience sexual pleasure in being raped; or (iv) women are presented as sexual objects tied up or cut up or mutilated or bruised or physically hurt; or (v) women are presented in postures of sexual submission, servility or display; or (vi) women’s body parts—including but not limited to vaginas, breast and buttocks—are exhibited, such that women are reduced to those parts; or (vii) women are presented as whores by nature; or (viii) women are presented as, or penetrated by, objects or animals; or (ix) women are presented in scenarios of degradation, injury, torture, shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual. (emphasis added).

The italicized words—“subordination,” “dehumanized,” “objects,” “scenarios of degradation”—are so vague and subjective that they could apply to the writings of Shakespeare, Checkov, Roth, Hemingway, Mailer, DeSade, Miller and many others. The only element this new definition of pornography has in common with what Justice Stewart “knew” when he “saw” it is the requirement that the material be “sexually explicit.” Without this element, the government would have no historical basis for banning speech. I then went on to show that there was no correlation (to say nothing of causation) between the sexual explicitness of a film and the likelihood that it will induce violence by its viewer. Indeed the available evidence suggests that there may well be a negative correlation, since rape has gone down considerably in those societies in which sexually explicit films are pervasive, while rape has certainly not gone down in those societies that persist in censoring films with explicit sex.

I argued therefore that “pornography is a red herring” and that in the absence of compelling evidence—of which there is none—that it causes actual harm beyond offending those who can choose not to see it, the government should get out of the business of censoring films and other media.

There are, however, other types of speech that pose far greater potential dangers. These communications include the divulgence of state secrets, the dissemination of classified information and the publication of news stories that compromise the national interest and endanger citizens. The problem is that the censorship of such expression may also pose far greater risks to democracy and liberty than the censorship of obscenity. Put another way, democracy could survive the censorship of hard-core pornography, despite the “slippery slope” from “porn” to politics (or from Harry Reems to Helen Hayes.) A society that banned pornography would, perhaps, be less vibrant, less tolerant, less pluralistic, less committed to choice, than one that did not. It might also be more subject to sliding down the slope toward other forms of artistic censorship at the margins. But so long as core political discourse remained free and open—as long as political dissent continued to thrive—democracy could survive. The same could not confidently be said about the widespread censorship of expression regarded by the government as state secrets, classified information and “dangerous” news stories. These go to the very heart of

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