is just part of liberated sex, and if they say so it must be true
for them so you aren’t even right when you say pornography
hurts women because it doesn’t hurt al women (it doesn’t hurt
these “gnT’-women), and if we listen to them we don’t have to
listen to you, which means, shut up.
And that is the sad consequence of yet another double standard. Large numbers of feminists listened with serious and honorable attention to women who exposed rape, incest, and
battery; but not as many feminists have listened with serious
and honorable attention to women who have been exploited
in pornography or raped or tortured or violated because of it.
Final y, feminist lawyers are responsible for yet another double
standard, this one cynical in the extreme. Feminist lawyers especial y seem not to want to do anything real about pornography.
They tel audiences of feminists that law isn’t the answer, that law
can do nothing, and that women should not go to the male state.
These women spend their lives and make their livings (substantial for women) going to the male state. These women take other sex-discrimination issues to the male state. These feminists have
clients who must think the law is some of the answer. These feminists who appear on behalf of their clients in court must have empirical proof that law can do something. They win sometimes.
It is not just that they oppose a specific legal remedy—for instance, the Ordinance. It is that they say as political truth that law is useless and make women feel like fools for doing something as ridiculous as contemplating “going to the male state. ”
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Pornography and Civil Rights
Either these women lie to their clients or they lie to their
audiences. If they are lawyers and they practice sex-discrimina-
tion law and they go into court, how dare they tell other feminists it is sil y to do any of the above? They have used these broad and basical y indefensible arguments to undercut support for
the Ordinance in particular, but they do not have the courage
to say that (1) they use male law, (2) they use sex-discrimination
law, (3) they make money practicing law in the male courts, (4)
law is essential to social change, which is partly why they practice it;
speaking as lawyers making anarchist arguments and speaking
as female functionaries of the male courts making separatist arguments. What they say and what they do never meet on the plane of reality. They are especially dishonorable in the double
standard they apply to pornography because they are specially
qualified to help women who have been hurt by it.
Al of these various applications of a double standard to pornography happen sometimes, not all the time. Small numbers of people, their voices and arguments enhanced by the purposeful support of the pornographers, manipulate everyone’s sense of reality or sense of justice.
Most women hate pornography; all pornography hates
women; and the masses of feminists here and in other countries are not confounded by these strategic uses of the double standard in defense of pornography. We note when a double
standard is used and try to understand how it works political y. The acceptance of a double standard for pornography is particularly painful when it happens within the scope of the
women’s movement. But the real political damage is done
when a double-standard tactic is used by those who have real
power: media, politicians, lawyers, publishers.
Q: Why are you dividing the women’s movement? The pornography issue is too divisive.
A: There have been many angry splits in the women’s movement over the years. The arguments and antagonisms have Questions and Answers
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