From: antonsen-AT-alf.nbi.dk Subject: forwarding...forwarding...forwarding... Date: Mon, 09 Dec 96 16:39:26 +0100 Hi all, Here is another posting from the a-infos list which is of relevance to us. Frank ------------------------- -AT--AT--AT--AT--AT- IIII II II IIII III III -AT--AT--AT- -AT- -AT--AT--AT- II II II II II II II I -AT--AT- -AT- -AT- -AT--AT- II III II II II II II -AT- -AT- -AT- -AT- II II III III II II II -AT- -AT- -AT- -AT- II II II II II II II -AT- -AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT- -AT- II II II II II II II -AT--AT- -AT--AT- II II II II II II II -AT--AT--AT- -AT--AT--AT- II II II II II II I II -AT--AT--AT--AT--AT- IIII II II II III III - The alternative newsservice - http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/ainfos.html EXTRACT FROM FREEDOM - 30TH NOV 1996 FOOD FOR THOUGHT AND FOR ACTION This is a regular column in FREEDOM giving news about recent publications. It often aims to be contraversial. --------------------------------------------------------------- Soft Core: moral crusades against pornography in Britain and America* by Bill Thompson, Cassell. Anti-pornography campaigns have been used over centuries to prevent the dissemination of material on sex education, contraception and venereal disease; to justify flogging prostitutes' husbands or boyfriends; to incarcerate and torture 'nymphomaniacs' in mental hospitals; to deny women's sexuality: and to get rid of unwanted racial minorities who supposedly controlled prostitution or pornography Britain has about the most repressive censorship in Europe, yet pornography is rarely out of the news. It began with the 1580 Obscenity Bill, since when innumerable attempts have been made by the moral guardians and thought police to suppress free speech From the Victorian morality campaigns by Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers and Listeners Campaign; from the American witch-hunts by McKinnon, Dworkin and Meesem right up to the recent crusades of the Campaign Against Pornography, Women Against Violence Against Women, and the Lesbian Avengers, among others. Most use the pretext of 'cleaning up' prostitution or protecting 'the public' from corruption; latterly it has been groups trying to demonise porn by repeatedly claiming 'new' and 'conclusive' evidence that it causes sexual discrimination and sex attacks against women. The lack of any real evidence over the centuries that pornography causes anything doesn't bother the crusaders at all: they either distort the scientific findings or quite simply invent their own and there are plenty of examples Thompson, a criminologist at Reading University specialising in sex crimes and moral issues, brillianty debunks the myths and ideologies of these pro-censorship crusades, demolishing their pseudo- science and exposing their hidden political agendas which would silence all dissent from their views and enforce conformity of personal behaviour to some supposed norm. Soft Core is also about hard core, the tide being merely a punning reference to the emptiness of the pro-censorship lobby's arguments (although most British 'hard core' is classed as soft core in Europe and the US) The book reveals that despite all the media hysteria about hard core child pornography, Internet porn and 'snuff movies', the vast majority of material seized by police and customs is mundane newsagent-type soft core - a policy which devours millions of pounds of public funds each year and to date not a single genuine snuff movie has ever been found (the origins and development of his mythical bete noire of porn is nicely exposed in chapter eight) Tuppy Owens points out that the moral indignation is often "a mask for something more sinister and .. is built on a myth a fear of sex and an ideologically-motivated craving for power" Thompson shows how the current separatist femmist anti-porn campaigners (who are largely refugees from the defunct Stalinist political parties seeking a new home for their authoritarian attitudes) have allied themselves with the right-wing Christian fundamentalists and have, as their ultimate aim, not the prevention of sexual abuse against women and children at all (which has not been reduced by any anti porn campaigns, of course), but the inhibition of women's free sexual expression The anarchist group Feminists Against Censorship say it is a fallacy "to believe that anti-pornography ideology has any place in movements to improve life for women and children", and Women Against Rape split from the WAVAW Stalinists (Thompson calls them Marxists) over this very issue. Despite the amount of empirical evidence, Thompson combines a scathing critique with a lively and entertaining polemic and makes suggestions for "a more healthy and rational approach towards the enjoyment of erotic material" A very readable book with a comprehensive 'further reading' list and index Highly recommended, whatever your views. Now available from us at £3 99 (reduced from £13 99) for 300 pages Tales from the Clit: a female experience of pornography* edited by Cherie Matrx, AK Press. By sheer coincidence this book arrived at about the same time as the one above, and how snugly they fit together. Until the 1960s most women were expected to submit to male domination, sexism and being told what they thought about a whole range of things including sex and sexual imagery, by men. They were nor expected to complain. By the end of that decade many were fed up and began meeong to discuss woman's liberation, later known as feminism. By 1969. says the preface, after years of some of those women trying to tell us that we all hate pornography, that no woman likes it and that every woman wants to see it 'off the shelf," other women were fed up with being stereotyped by their erstwhile sisters and formed Feminists Against Censorship in response. Quite a courageous move with Thatcherism and the Victorian family values nonsense in full flood, growing reaction to feminism by many in the male half of society (Neanderthal branch), and increasing desperation on the part of the separatist-feminist police who were eager to demonstrate how well they could do the state's work (unpaid) by attacking both verbally and physically those who dared demand free expression. This book is a collection of pro-sex essays by FAC members their fifth to date and comprises intimate, soul-baring (and body-baring) true stories about what pornography means to them. No stereotypes here, and they have all found it liberating >from sex writers to a feminist porn teacher, from a British-born Indian lamenting the suppression of India's Gupta period erotica, to sex magazine publishers not to mention the poor little convent girls who missed out early on and are now gagging for it. Well, we all know about convent girls! There's a piece by a blind and deaf woman who reads hers in braille, a sex toy manufacturer and loads more. Some are intellectually stimulating, others are just plain horny Their criticisms are that porn is still not easy for women to obtain, is too expensive, is produced mainly by capiralists and by men, for men. However the increasing amount being produced by women should solve some of these problems. My criticisms are only two: the editor's claim that the image on the cover stands up on its own as a brilliant piece against censorship is just silly, it nothing of the kind: and one writer credits Nabokov's Lolita to Emile Zola! Still, as she was only 13 when she read it I imagine she was far too busy reading the juicy bits than noting the author's name FAC are to be congratulated on this one. 144 pages, £7.95 'Searchlight' for Beginners* by Larry O'Hara, Phoenix Press. Aimed mainly at those who are unfamiliar with the magazine, or who read it and are unaware of - or unconvinced by - the serious and, if true, disturbing allegations about this ostensibly anti- fascist periodical Searchlight in its current form was taken over by editor Gerry Gable when the formed editor, the ex-CPGB member Maurice Ludmer, died in 1981 Prior to that it had appeared only as an irregular news-sheet since 1965 by Labour MPs Joan Lestor and Reg Freeson, among others. Not only is Gable a former CPGB member, but he is also known to supply inhrmation to the authorities. The first information on this surfaced in the 1970s when he was working for LWT and informed on one of his colleagues to Special Branch. It is now thought that he also has contacts in MI5, Mossad and French intelligence, and passes on names and addresses, meeting points and so on, of anti-fascists who contact Searchlight or do not agree with his Stalinist views (sound familiar?). This pamphlet concentrates on the main players and events, such as the spreading of disinformation in the left, green and anarchist movements, and the attempt to use a self-confessed M15 agent to infiltrate Green Anarchist with offers of weapons. Essential reading, £2.00 Titles distributed by Freedom Press Distributors (marked*) are post free inland (add 15% for overseas orders) For other titles please add 10% towards postage and packing inland. 20% overseas Cheques in sterling payable to FREEDOM PRESS please. Cheques in US dollars payable to Chips Booksearch. The bookshop Christmas Party this year is on Saturday 21st December from 12 noon until about 6pm. Do pop in if you're in the area, with a bottle if you can . 84b, Whitechapel High St., London, UK FREEDOM PRESS http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/Freedom -------------------------------------------------- --/\-- A-Infos A-Infos / / \ \ A-Infos A-Infos ---|--/----\--|--- A-Infos A-Infos \/ \/ /\______/\ http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/ainfos.html To Subscribe to a-infos Send a message to majordomo-AT-lglobal.com With the message in the body: subscribe a-infos To Unsubscribe send: unsubscribe a-infos --------------------------------------------------
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