Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women's Equality

against them as women in the first place. This alone does not

make them coerced for purposes of the Ordinance; but the fact

that some women may “choose” pornography from a stacked

deck of life pursuits (if you call a loaded choice a choice, like

the “choice” of those with brown skin to pick cabbages or the

“choice” of those with black skin to clean toilets) and the fact

that some women in pornography say they made a free choice

do not mean that women who are coerced into pornography

are not coerced. Pimps roam bus stations to entrap young girls

who left incestuous homes thinking nothing could be worse.

Pornographers advertise for lingerie or art or acting models

they then bind, assault, and photograph, demanding a smile

as the price for sparing their life. Men roam the highways with

penises and cameras in hand, raping women with both at once.

Husbands force their wives to pose as part of coerced sex, often

enforced by threats to the lives of their children. Women are

abducted by pimps from shopping centers and streets at random, sometimes never to return. Young women are tricked or pressured into posing for boyfriends and told that the pictures

are just “for us, ” only to find themselves in this month’s Hustler.

Girls are enticed into posing for the photographer next

door, confused at their feelings of uncomfortableness, shame,

and af irmation. He makes them feel beautiful, with his approval, admiration, solicitude, presents, molestation. Fathers The Ordinance

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sel pictures of sex acts with their own children to international

pornography rings. Aspiring actresses and models are fraudulently induced into posing for nude or seminude shots, told the genitals wil not show or it wil be a silhouette or they wil

not be recognized—until they see themselves fully exposed

and fully identified in Penthouse. Or they are told it wil be

their ticket to the top, only to find that most legitimate avenues

are then closed to them because they appeared nude, so it is

their ticket to the bottom. Until women are socially equal to

men, it wil be impossible to know whether any women are in

pornography freely. And until women can bring an effective

action for coercion into pornography, and get the product of

their abuse off the market, it wil be impossible even to begin

to know how many of them are coerced.

Law has an elaborate tradition of reasons for believing that

women lie about sexual force, reasons that duplicate pornography’s view of women. The Ordinance’s list of conditions that do not alone mean a woman is not coerced is a summary of

these reasons. One or several of these facts—for example, that

the woman signed a contract—may, with other circumstances,

lead a trier of fact (a judge or a jury) to believe that she was

not coerced. But the simple fact that a contract was signed may

not mean that the woman was not coerced. If a woman can be

coerced into having sex with a dog, she can be coerced into

signing a contract. The point of this provision in the Ordinance

is to prevent the mere fact of, say, a contract existing from being

used to preclude inquiry into the coercion that may have produced it. This list is also intended to sensitize courts to the kinds of facts routinely used to undermine women’s credibility.