NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/misc/legal/20270

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-21 | 10.7 KB

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From: [e-mail] (William December Starr)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Brouhaha at U. of Michigan Law?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 21 Nov 92 17:24:31 GMT
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Organization: Northeastern Law, Class of '93
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This article is mostly a slightly reformatted (but _not_ edited)
reprint of an alt.censorship article that's mostly a reprint of a
soc.feminism article that's mostly a reprint of a New York Times
article.  Over the river and through the woods, to misc-dot-legal we
go...  Anyway, if anybody in the legal and/or law school community --
especially somebody at or near the U. of Mich. Law School -- has any
info or insights on this, please post 'em here.  Thanks.

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 From: [e-mail] (Joseph F. Mays)
 Newsgroups: alt.censorship
 Subject: Story on Censorship
 Article: <[e-mail]>
 Date: 18 Nov 92 19:33:22 GMT

Gordon Fitch posted the following on soc.feminism.  It seemed relevant
to this group too, so I am reposting a copy here...

--------------------------------------------

 From: Gordon Fitch ([e-mail])
 Subject: NY Times Reports Furor at University of Michigan
 Date: 18 Nov 92 18:11:13 GMT

Most of this article is an extract from an article which appeared in
_The_New_York_Times_ on Friday, Nov. 13, 1992.  I have shortened the
article somewhat and have removed the typos, so the remaining typos
are mine.  Some notes:

1.  It seemed to me that the article had been cut in a peculiar way.
Important information may be missing.  I notice, for example, curious
disjunctions, like that between the reason given by one of the
students for the action which sparked the dispute, the reason the
artist whose work was removed reports, and some of the other
rationales given by interested parties.

2.  I found the paranoid quality of the anti-prostitution speakers
odd.  They said they feared the tape in question would inspire
attacks, but not how and from whom.  MacKinnon said that the dispute
was an "attempt to smear."  The anti-prostitution people accepted only
if there were no people from the other side -- an admission of
considerable weakness on the face of it.

3.  I noticed an ironic resemblance between MacKinnon's unitary view
of feminism -- she must deny that her feminist opponents are feminists
-- and those who attack feminism using MacKinnon.  They form, it would
appear, a mutually supportive ideological structure.

4.  It is interesting that I first heard about this in the New York
Times, rather than through some other channels, including Usenet.  It
seems like a fairly important and interesting event from the _Times_
account, yet I have seen no mention of it elsewhere.  Maybe the
_Times_ is playing it up?  Is anyone from the University of Michigan
out there?

=====================================================

Furor on Exhibit at Law School Splits Feminists

by Tamar Lewin

The closing of an art exhibit on prostitution two weeks ago has
plunged the University of Michigan Law school into an angry debate
about free speech, feminism, pornography, and censorship.

Legally the issue is whether students at the school viiolated the
First Amendment guarantee of free specch by removing from the exhibit
a two-hour videotape featuring works about prostitution by five
artists, including two former prostitutes.

But politically, the fracas is the latest and most virulent outbreak
of tensions between two camps of feminists: those who seek to suppress
pornography and prostitution, arguing that they incite sexual violence
and violate women's civil rights, and those who say the
anti-pornography, anti-prostitution movement is a form of censorship
that limits women's sexuality and free-speech rights.

     Feuding Feminist Lawyers

It is no accident that the furor occurred at the University of
Michigan, whose law faculty includes Catharine MacKinnon, a leader in
the fight against pornography and one of the moving forces behind a
newly organized student publication, The Michigan Journal of Gender &
Law, which sponsored the art exhibit as part of a three-day conference
on prostitution.

Ms. MacKinnon has long been at odds with other feminist lawyers over
her support of legislation that would allow women who could show that
they had been harmed by pornography to sue the manufacturers and
distributors of the material and to stop it from being distributed.

Carol Jacobsen, the Detroit artist who put together the art exhibit at
the request of the hournal staff, has been an outspoken ciritc of Ms.
MacKinnon's anti-pornography efforts, and she supports abolishing laws
against prostitution.  Her exhibit, part of which opened more than a
week before the conference, included her own video inteviews with
Detroit prostitutes, who are referred to as "sex workers" by
conference organizers.

When the conference began, she also installed a two-hour videotape
featuring five works, including one by Veronica Vera, a former
prostitute.  Ms. Vera's work included footage from sex films and a
brief clip of her testifying against an anti-pornography measure
before a [sic] United States Senate.

     "Trafficking Women"

The next morning, that videotape was removed by a group of law
students from the journal staff who said they were acting in reponse
of complaints by two of the speakers, Evelina Giobbe, the director of
an anti-prostitution group in St. Paul, and John Stoltenberg, a New
York writer.  [ I note that the _Times_ article omits the relationship
of these parties with the tape -- whether they had viewed it, heard
about it, or whatever. - gcf ]

"We really didn't think of it as a censorship issue, but as a safety
issue, because two of our speakers said that based on their experience
at other events, the tape would be a threat to their safety," said
Bryan Wells, one of the students.  "It wasn't our place to assess that
threat.  It was out position to trust our speakers.  Seven of us from
the journal made the decision to remove the tape, and while I regreat
that it made people unhappy, I don't regret the decision."

Ms. MacKinnon, who stressed that she was not involved in the decision
to pull to video, said that she supported the students' action.

"It is one thing to talk about trafficking women, and it is another
thing to traffic woemn," she said.  "There is nothing in [the] First
Amendment to require that this school, or students in it, be forced to
traffic women.  If these materials are pornography -- and I haven't
seen them so I can't say -- it is not a question of their
offensiveness, but of safety and equality for women.  Showing
pornography sets women up for harassment and rape."

Ms. Jacobsen said that when she arrived at the gallery on the morning
of [the] second day of the conference and discovered the tape was
missing, she assumed it had been stolen and installed a second copy.
On the way back to the conference, she ran into some of the students
involved and became infuriated when she found out what had happened.

"I told them they couldn't just pick out a selected artwork and remove
it from the exhibit, but they didn't seem to get it," Ms. Jacobsen
said in a telephone interview.  "They said it wasn't censorship, they
were just trying to protect people from getting their feelings upset.
I said if they wished to censor any part they would have to censor the
whole thing.  They came back and said, 'Take it down.'  And that's
what happened."

     Issue is Now Free Speech

The law students involved said they had decided quickly and informally
to pull the tpae.  They said that in doing so they did not consider
either the free-speech implications or alternatives such as seeking
increased security.

"Everybody's raising the free-speech question now, and the analogy of
the Nazis marching through a Jewish suburb like Skokie," said Laura
Berger, one of the students.  "But one thing that bothers me is that
while everyone understands that Jews are scared of Nazis, no one seems
to understand that sex workers might have real reasons to be afraid of
pornogrpahy.  That was what the symposium was all about."

Since the symposium, the issue of prositution has taken a back seat to
First Amendment discussion, both in the pages of The Michigan Daily,
the student newspaper, and among ... feminist civil libertarians.
Many of the latter were already organized to lobby against the Federal
anti-pornography legislation Ms. MacKinnon supported.

Ms. MacKinnon sees the furor as an attempt to smear her and another
speaker at the conference, Andrea Dworkin, a New York writer who has
been her ally in years of efforts against pornography.

"My real view, so far as this pertains to me, is that this is a
witchhunt by First Amendment fundamentalists who are persecuting and
blacklisting dissidents like Andrea Dworkin and myself as arts
censors," said Ms.  MacKinnon.  "I don't see it as a fight within
feminism but a fight between those who wish to end male supremacy and
those who wish to do better under it."

Civil libertarians say the events at the Ann Arbor campus illustrate
the extremism of Ms. MacKinnon's views, and how easily they can be
used to censor women's free expression.

"It's hard to articulate how damaging the femino- censors can be, but
this is a perfect example of how the MacKinnon crusade hurts women,"
said Marjorie Heins, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's
National Arts Censorship Project.  "Censorship of sexually explicit
material is not in women's interest.  It's also unconstitutional.
Michigan is a state school, and when any government institution
removes an art exhibit or book because it expresses ideas some people
find offensive, there's a First Amendment problem."

Lee Bollinger, the dean of the law school ... said, "[Apart from the
constitutional issue] there's the academic question of whether it's
reasonable to put on a one-sided conference."  Several of the students
who organized the conference said it had been impossible to get both
viewpoints.

"We had a problem as soon as we invited speakers, because some of the
key anti-prostitution people accepted on the condition that they
wouldn't speak if there were people from the other side there," said
Lisa Lodin, one of the students who organized the conference.  "We
agonized about it, because we felt we were being manipulated, but we
went ahead anyway.  Part of the reason we wanted Carol Jacobsen's
exhibit so much was to show the other side, without confrontation."

Ms. Lodin and several other students said they were so discouraged by
the turn of events that they have begun to reexamine their attitudes
toward feminism. ...

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-- William December Starr <[e-mail]>