NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/soc/feminism/2558

Text File | 1992-11-18 | 10.1 KB | 253 lines

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From: [e-mail] (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: NY Times Reports Furor at University of Michigan
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 18 Nov 92 18:11:13 GMT
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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 some-
what 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. ...

--
--

 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    [e-mail]    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )


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