fact, she wants to take his power over her from him. He has
power disguised as rights protected by law that fosters
inequality. The mathematics are simple: his diminished power
wil lead to an increase in her rights. The power of the pornographer is the power of men. The exploitation of the woman gagged, hung, photographed, and published is the
sexualized inferiority and human worthlessness of women. If
men cannot gag, hang, photograph, and publish women, men
wil have les power and women wil have more rights.
Because the establishment of equality means taking power
from those who have it, power protected by law, those who
have wrongful power hate equality and resist it. They defend
the status quo through bigotry and violence or sophistication
and intellect. They find high and mighty principles and say
how important rights are. They say that rights wil be lost if
society changes. They mean that power wil be lost, by them.
This is true.
The Constitution, including the Bil of Rights (the first ten
amendments to the Constitution), has served to defend
wrongful power and to protect inequality and exploitation.
This is primarily because Blacks and women were not recognized as fully human and their inequality was built into the basic structure of constitutional law. We need to establish a
legal imperative toward equality. Without equality as a fundamental value, “rights” is a euphemism for “power, ” and legally protected dominance wil continue to preclude any real equality.
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Pornography and Civil Rights
Principles:
1. Equality means that someone loses power; it is taken from
him. He does not like this and fights it. He cal s his power
“rights” and so does the law.
2. The mathematics are simple: taking power from exploiters
extends and multiplies the rights of those they have been
exploiting.
3. The U. S. Constitution, including the Bil of Rights, has
protected wrongful power disguised as rights. Strong
equality law can change this. We need to put the highest
social value on equality.
Pornography and Civil Rights
Law has traditionally considered pornography to be a question of private virtue and public morality, not personal injury and collective abuse. The law on pornography has been the
law of morals regulation, not the law of public safety, personal
security, or civil equality. When pornography is debated, in
or out of court, the issue has been whether government should
be in the business of making sure only nice things are said and
seen about sex, not whether government should remedy the
exploitation of the powerless for the profit and enjoyment of
the powerful. Whether pornography is detrimental to “the social fabric” has therefore been considered; whether particular individuals or definable groups are hurt by it has not been, not really.
Since, in this traditional view, pornography can only violate
