ANTI-PORN IS THE
THEORY, REPRESSION IS THE PRACTICE
Introduction
In October 1986, Julienne Dickey of the Campaign for
Press and Broadcasting Freedom (CPBF) wrote to the King’s Cross
Women’s Centre, where the English Collective of Prostitutes is based,
asking if the Centre would write an article for the book Feminism and
Censorship – The Current Debate "regarding opposition
to censorship of pornography, related to the position of women working
in the sex industry." The ECP agreed, and we submitted our first
draft in April 1987. In June 1987 we received another letter saying that
our article was "well argued, and makes many important points.
However I think it is weakened by a number of unsubstantiated and rather
sweeping statements." It went through a list of examples and asked
"If they can be substantiated, then fine – otherwise modify them
by being more specific about which women, where and when.”
After submitting a re-drafted article we received another list of
“untenable and unjustifiable assertions" and were told that
"If you choose not to make some of these changes, the article will
of course still be included." Rather than ignore the editor's
objections, we decided to use them to make the article more precise and
more obviously accurate. In response to our third re-draft, in December
1987 we received a letter rejecting the article because it attacks
"feminism in and some feminists in particular". A prostitute women's organisation was accused of
attacking feminism, but the anti-porn lobby is never accused of
anti-feminism for attacking prostitute women. This hidden double standard is one more
example of how censorship, this time within the women's movement and by
an organisation which is supposed to be against censorship, is being
used to silence less powerful sisters. We have always said that
censorship is not only dangerous in the hands of governments but in the
hands of any sector of people which has power over other sectors. Why were we censored? There
was no porn in the article. We assume it was because we articulated
assumptions of the anti-porn lobby which it has been camouflaging maybe
even to itself, and which even the supposed middle ground that CPBF
represents doesn't want others to hear. In any case, CPBF must justify
their actions. The article is almost exactly the same as what they
censored with arguments neither added
nor subtracted. The article is followed by an update on some events taken place since it was written - and censored. 17
November 1989 ANTI-PORN
IS THE THEORY, REPRESSION IS THE PRACTICE The
campaign against pornography has been one of the most visible faces of
feminism for more than a decade now. Few have wanted to know whether the
'clean up' they were promoting strengthened women's hand or the State's.
Thus they have attracted supporters and allies among politicians from
the New Right, which governs (among others) the US and the UK, from the
old moralizing Left, and even from the trendy Left. Although this
anti-porn lobby is not homogeneous, it is rare for any part of it to
dissociate itself from the most powerful pro-censorship law-and-order
identity. Pornography is a need in a society where the sexes are
segregated and repressed; where we are forced to sell our sexuality -
along with all our other possibilities - in exchange for money to
survive on. This is not only true of women in the sex industry who put a
price tag on what they are trading, but of all women who are forced to
trade on their appearance and sex appeal to get or keep a man or a job
or any other social or financial asset. Men may also trade on their
sexuality, in show business, in politics, or privately, in exchange for
the many and varied advantages and services women can offer. Censoring pornography changes none of this - except
perhaps for the worse. We wrote: To attack pornography is not going to stop the
devaluation of women. Nor are child abuse, rape and other violence
against women and children the result of mysterious attitudes of unknown
origin [sparked off by video nasties] which can be cured by [censorship
or] sex education. These attitudes reflect and are part of the economic
and social relations between the sexes. [Those of us who are mothers] know that boys form
'male' attitudes much earlier than adolescence. They see that their
mothers and other women and girls have less social power than their
fathers and other men. And since everyone else takes women's services
for granted, they learn at an early age to expect every woman they meet
to look after them, feed them, comfort them, and respond to their every
need and desire. There isn't a long distance to travel from boys
expecting physical and emotional services to men expecting sexual
services. (Letter to The Guardian, 9 Feb 87) With rare exceptions, feminists have concentrated on
attacking attitudes, not power relations. In this way they avoid a
confrontation with the economic, political and physical violence against
women perpetrated by the State. The first international quantification
of that violence emerged in 1980 when the United Nations said that women
do 2/3 of the world's work for 10% of the income - the ILO says 5% - and
1% of the assets. This basic violence - our exploitation - from which
all other violence by both institutions and individuals flows, is
usually studiously ignored by the anti-porn/pro-censorship lobby.
Feminists who concentrate on condemning sexist images of women in the
name of condemning women's exploitation, and the politicians who back
them, watch while our economic and social power is pushed down the
political agenda to make room for their priorities. Not money, not
housing, not even non-sexist, non-racist, non-violent policing, but an
end to 'dirty pictures' becomes the key to our welfare. The generally
accepted view of Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW), Porn is
Violence Against Women (PIVAW) and every other anti-porn group is that
pornography is the "central and binding issue for
feminism".(1) Not unconnected, divisions within the movement of race,
class, nationality, income, age, disability and occupation have been
purposefully censored by these advocates of censorship. And therefore,
the struggles and priorities of Black and other working class women who
are at the bottom of the economic and social hierarchy get watered down
or misplaced on their way to most feminists' agenda. A rape survey
conducted in Leeds chose streets which "had a mixed population of
white single and married people" because ". . . it was
important to focus on the problem of the dominant cultural group in
order to avoid our results being used in a racist way."(2) To avoid
racism by excluding Black women is a strategy that a politician like
Enrich Powell might wholeheartedly support. Some feminists tell us what men have always told us: to
set aside the divisions between us and submit to their priorities.
"We must reunite throughout the nation [sic] on this one basic
issue [pornography] . . . Disagreements on other issues can be dealt
with when fewer of us are being murdered, beaten, tortured and
raped."(3) Like any other movement for
change, the women's movement has to choose whether or not to focus on
breaking down these divisions by challenging "all the economic
power relations in the working class from the bottom up, beginning with
those of us who have the least power . . . Black women who are the
poorest of the poor . . ."(4) To ignore women why are Black,
immigrant, Third World, prostitute, single mothers, housewives, lesbian,
who have disabilities, or who are any combination of these, is to build
on the most powerful sectors - white career women in metropolitan
countries, The women's movement must also choose whether or not to make
the connection between its own demands and struggle and the demands and
struggle of other exploited sectors of society, or whether to reject any
common ground and make only a 'special' - isolated, separatist – case. The women's movement has had to face such choices many
times in its history. The US suffrage movement at the end of the 19th
century had to decide whether it would aim to win at the expense of
Black and immigrant women and men, or at the State's. Many suffragists reacted to the new immigration either by pointing out that white, Anglo-Saxon, native-born women outnumbered men and women of other groups, so that woman suffrage would increase the proportion of fit voters; or by advocating an educational qualification for the vote, which would disenfranchise both men and women of unfit sections of the population. (Aileen S, Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement 1890-1920, Columbia, note 36, p30). The
'unfit', 'undesirable' voters included 'the poor, ignorant and immoral
elements in society': Black, prostitute, 'frontier riff-raff' and other
working class women. This is not surprising since Few suffragists were radicals; the
vast majority of them simply wanted the right to participate more fully
in the affairs of a government, the basic structure of which they
accepted. (Ibid, p. 41) This describes many feminists
today. One clear example is the way in which the
anti-porn/pro-censorship lobby has consistently discussed and proposed
legislation without discussing the ways such legislation is likely to be
enforced. Those of us at the bottom who go on the game, shoplift, commit
SS 'fraud' or other crimes of poverty, in order to support ourselves and
our children, can't afford the luxury of viewing legislation as an
abstraction rather than a power shaping our lives. For us the political
is personal. It is we, and our sons, brothers, husbands and friends, who
are at the receiving end of police brutality, illegality and racism. We
don't have the right colour, accent, passport, background, connections
and/or careers to protect us from the police. Some feminists have
refused to deal with the fact that increasing the power of the State to
decide what is 'acceptable sex and sexuality', can only lead to more
State violence against women, starting with those of us who are labelled
'ignorant' or 'immoral' because we are poor and working class. Such bypassing of the implications
of legislation is just what happened with kerb crawling. In response to
the anti-porn/pro-censorship lobby, and some residents in red-light
areas (often concerned with property values), politicians from all
political parties anxious to be seen to 'do something for women', helped
the Thatcher government to give the police additional powers to arrest
any man they choose for kerb crawling. An article we wrote in Spare Rib
appealing to feminist groups got very little response. A couple of Rape
Crisis Centres joined the Campaign Against Kerb Crawling Legislation we
had initiated. And Everywoman, the magazine for 'real' women,
chose to give a whole page to Janet Fookes, the Tory MP who put forward
the Bill, rather than to prostitute women who were opposing it. A
right-wing Tory who glorified the police was considered to speak for
women, not us. The most immediate result has been
that prostitute women are forced further underground by police raids on
red-light areas and that nonprostitute women and men are also harassed
by police. I have
frequently been followed and on two occasions stopped by men in vehicles
while walking to and from home. These incidents have taken place since
the passing of the kerb crawlers Bill and my harassers have been the
police... Kerb crawlers can easily be deterred by telling them in a loud
vioce where to go. Uniformed nuisances cannot. The police presence in
Bayswater is becoming much more of an irritant to respectable young
female residents than men in search of sex ever were. (Jean Ridley,
Letters, The Standard, London, 25 Feb 86) This is not the first time that
prostitute and other women in the sex industrv have been under attack
from feminists. When the ECP started in 1975, most of Women's Liberation
was hostile to prostitute women - the London Women's Liberation Workshop
even refused to meet with a prostitute - on the grounds that exchanging
sex for money was uniquely degrading, They said it encouraged rape by
leading men to believe that all women are available (conveniently
forgetting that men already got that idea from their pervasive
experience of women's financial dependence on men and our service work for them). Susan
Brownmiller is one of the best known exponents of this dominant feminist
position: "The case against pornography and the case against the
toleration of prostitution are central to the fight against rape, and if
it angers a large part of the liberal population to be so informed, then
I would question their concern for the rights of women." (5) Either
her concern for the rights of women was selective and didn't extend to
prostitutes, or she didn't consider prostitutes to be women. The sex industry is not the only
industry which is male-dominated and which degrades women, but it is an
industry based on sex which tends to pluck many repressive strings in
many psyches. Secondly, in this industry the workers are illegal and can
least defend publicly our rights both to our jobs and against our
employers. In November 1982 the English Collective of Prostitutes were
driven to occupy the Church of the Holy Cross for 12 days
to demand an end to police illegality and racism against prostitute
women in King's Cross, London. The Occupation was a turning point in the
struggle for equal rights for prostitute women - it put prostitute women
on the political agenda. Since then the attack against the ECP has taken
another familiar form - that of pimping: the sex industry has become a
career option within the feminist Establishment. A few months after the
Occupation, Rights of Women, a group of feminist lawyers, got money from
the Greater London Council to "monitor the policing of
prostitution" in red-light areas, many of which were also Black
areas, without any reference to Black organisations or the prostitutes'
organisation whose struggle had paved the way for these jobs. We
protested: "They treat us like 'whores' - one doesn't consult a
'whore' but decides what kind of help you will give 'them'. "
Camden Women's Unit and Women's Committee, which together supported ROW,
summed up their contempt for prostitute women: "In the sex industry
a woman's worth consists in being a woman and nothing else. No personal
(human) qualities are needed - purely to be a woman, an object."
(26 Oct 1983.) These women, whose refined sensibilities are offended by
vulgar pornography, can nevertheless without a blush speak of other
women as though they are less than human. Feminist public figures have yet to
acknowledge prostitute women's contribution to the women's movement. Prostitutes are in a long tradition
of resourceful women who have tried to turn sexual exploitation to their
own advantage… used their bodies to bargain daughters, sons, husbands,
out of concentration camps and border towns; to feed or arm their kin or
their movement; and to attain the financial independence necessary to
escape from intolerable relationships or situations, (Selma James, The
First Sanctuary – An Account of the Occupation of the Holy Cross
Church by the English Collective of Prostitutes.)
Nor have
prostitute women been the only ones under attack. Some feminists, among
whom are spokeswomen for the anti-porn lobby, have also accused Greenham
women's work of 24-hour-a-day resistance to nuclear madness of being a
'diversion' from the real enemy: "Do some women prefer to put their
energies into attacking the symptom they can see [ ‘an anonymous,
overwhelming militaristic threat'] rather than the fundamental cause,
which is perhaps too dangerous to confront, i.e, the man next
door."(6) Margaret Thatcher couldn't have found a better way to
defend the military-industrial complex, especially since "the man
next door" is often working class and often also Black, immigrant,
gay, on the dole, an activist… in police words, a potential threat to
law and order. Thus separatism winds up as a defense of the State and
its powers over us all. Even many feminists who join
political parties remain selectively separatist - like their male
colleagues, they keep 'women's issues', and therefore women, separate
from the more important 'political issues'. Whenever necessary they can
disconnect rape, abortion, child custody, lesbianism, pornography and
prostitution from the social, political and economic issues of racism,
policing, unemployment, welfare benefits, health care, military spending
and State repression. Like the government-backed kerb crawling and video
nasties laws, feminist MP Clare S'hort's Indecent Displays Bill which
aimed to ban "sexually provocative pictures of women" had
nothing to say about women's poverty, unemployment or the Bill's
implications for police powers. Margaret Thatcher and Mary
Whitehouse, Reagan, Bush and the Moral Majority, have been able to use
puritanism among feminists as an additional justification for increased
State repression and control. Nor do feminists necessarily cringe at the
connection. Listen again to Sheila Jeffries, a leader in the crusade
against pornography: The women in the NVLA [National
Viewers and Listeners Association, Mary Whitehouse's organisation] who
object to porn very likely have the same gut reaction to porn as do
feminists. We all see the degradation of women, (City Limits,
March 4-10 1983) Feminists' perception and that of
Mary Whitehouse and her followers are, she says, fundamentally the same,
though she leaves the exact nature of the perception appropriately
vague, and then invites readers to fill in their own fantasy: "We
all see the degradation of women." Then Jeffries describes where the
two differ. “They choose to retreat into the
false securities of monogamous, reproductive heterosexuality. We see the
only solution as an end to compulsory heterosexuality, and the sexual
colonisation of women's bodies by men in the marriage bed, in porn and
all its forms." (Ibid) So for Sheila Jeffreys and her
sisters, Mary Whitehouse, friend of Tory ministers, the police and the
most reactionary wing of the church, etc., is not on the offensive with
and for her friends. Rather she is making an honest mistake: retreating,
even choosing to retreat, into heterosexuality. And this, says
Jeffries is the difference between feminism and the NVLA, between
women's interests and the extreme right. Thin partitions do their bounds
divide it seems. What is at stake is not only
heterosexuality but State power over every aspect of sexual expression,
over information, over freedom of movement, over the economy and the
military, over life and death, Jeffreys's portrait of the enemy covers
for it. The State knows such feminists can
be relied on to protect its power generally, and their separatism has
often made them powerful friends (though, like members of the National
Front, they are not themselves necessarily powerful). Thus feminists who
call for or support the institutionalisation of State censorship have
often been listened to and promoted by those above them as if they spoke
for women, and have been rewarded with careers in academia or politics.
And this is treated as a victory for women. No one seems to ask what
such career women do for or against other women. We
are expected to be grateful that some women have
joined men in doing what they have always done: building their careers
off our struggle. The Race Relations Act (1978) has
been cited 'as a precedent and a model' for the promotion of censorship.
In an attempt to disguise the racism which lies behind the promotion of
police - since Black people will suffer first from such powers - the
anti-porn/pro-censorship lobby have sometimes hidden behind the
credibility of anti-racism, a credibility which has been won by Black
people braving persecution and by other hard work. Resolution #17 on
pornography put to the National Council for Civil Liberties at their
1987 Annual General Meeting by Catherine Itzen [then member of the
Women's Rights Committee, now member of the Executive Committee and of
the Campaign Against Pornography and Censorship] uses this credibility
as a cover: That in the Race Relations Act the
NCCL now has a precedent for restraints on freedom of expression which
can be oppressive and harmful to a particular group (a racial group, or
in the case of pornography, of women), and model for the definition of
the offence and its enforcement. But, here again, since the
legislation is taken out of the context of its enforcement, there is no
mention that this Act which was supposed to combat racism, when used at
all, is most often used against Black people. In July 1983, we wrote to the GLC
Review of Cinema Policy which was considering censorship, asking:
"Is there any evidence to support the theory that tighter
censorship would increase women's safety? Countries where explicit sex
scenes are banned from the screen do not seem to have a higher safety
record for women." We never received an answer. As a Third World woman who grew up
under a military dictatorship, I have first-hand experience of
censorship, of a society where walls had no posters of naked women and
where explicit sex was censored out of films. The attitudes of men who
raped, battered and murdered women and children in Argentina, therefore,
were not shaped by video nasties or porn magazines. They were shaped by
economic and political relations which forced women into the servitude
of dependence, poverty and overwork. And, as we said in our letter to
the Guardian above, these shape metropolitan attitudes also.
There was, if anything, more male violence against women in repressed
Argentina than in 'permissive' London, not less; among other reasons,
because if there is sexual - or any other - repression, women pay the
highest price. Nor can censoring pornography be
disconnected from other censorship. it is not an accident that the
Argentinian military junta which caused the disappearance and murder of
tens of thousands of people and prevented it from being reported in the
media, was obsessed with repressing pornography also. Their 'Principles
and Procedures to Be Followed by Mass Communications Media' included: Work towards the eradication of
stimulants based on sexualism and violence. Take firm and consistent
action against vice in all its manifestations. Eliminate all obscene
words and images that are vulgar, shocking or have double meanings.
(John Simpson and Jana Bennett, The Disappeared - The chilling story
of Argentina's 'Dirty war', Sphere, p. 216.) Who benefitted from this censorship
programme, which strongly resembles what the anti-porn/pro-censorship
lobby are demanding? It was too
dangerous to be on the streets; you could be stopped by a police patrol
and be arrested, perhaps to disappear for good, simply for being young
or for having an appearance which displeased them. Women were particular
targets, and an unknown number were picked up to be tortured and raped.
And anyway it was often not worth going out; the cinemas… were mostly
closed down, and the films themselves banned. (Ibid, p. 211) Argentina is not unique. The same
is happening all over Latin America, in South Africa and elsewhere.
In Britain the Police and the Public Order Acts are to deal with
protest both by individuals and groups against Thatcher's economic_ and
social policies and the 'Victorian values' they promote - values much
like the 'fundamental values' of the Argentinian military: 'order,
labour, hierarchy' and 'the defence of the family institution.' (Ibid,
p. 216) Increasing the power of the State
to control sexual expression is crucial to and inseparable from more
generalised economic and political repression. By trying to determine
which relationships and which forms of contact to allow and which to
condemn and even to criminalise, the State tries to claw back our
victories, particularly those won by the movement for welfare and the
women's and gay movements, which have concentrated on establishing our
right to do what we want with our own bodies, and our right to economic,
legal and social independence from the family. The anti-porn lobby has
consistently said that pornography is the theory, rape is the practice.
On the contrary: anti-porn is the theory; economic and political
repression - and that can only mean universal rape - is the practice. Our bodies cannot belong to us if
Margaret Thatcher, or any minister, local authority, institution, or
even individual has the power to decide what we are allowed to do and
see, and what kind of sex is 'acceptable'. When a gang of six people
wearing balaclavas and wielding crowbars attacked the Market Tavern pub
which caters to lesbian S&M, claiming it was "racist, anti-semitic
and woman-hating", the publican asked "Who are the fascists,
I'm beginning to wonder?"(7) Good question. Footnotes (1) New
Democrat, April 1983 (2)
Well-Founded Fear by Jalna Hanmer and Sheila Saunders, Hutchinson,
1984, pp.14-15 (3) "Playboy Isn't
Playing" by Judith Bat-Ada, Take Back the Night, Morrow Quill, 1980 (4)
Black Women and the
Peace Movement by Wilmette Brown, Falling Wall Press, 1984 (5) Against Our Will by Susan Brownmiller, Penguin
Books, 1976 (6) "Is Greenham
Feminist" by Linda Bellos, Carolle Berry, Joyce Cunningham,
Margaret Jackson, Sheila Jeffreys and Carol Jones, Breaching the Peace, Onlywomen Press, 1983, pp.20-21 (7) Capital Gay, March 1987 ************** UPDATE November 1989 In response to those who, like us,
have consistently exposed the anti-porn lobby by putting questions they
did not want to consider, and in order to regain credibility on the
Left, the recently formed Campaign Against Pornography and Censorship
(CPC) has had to incorporate some of the arguments they were unable to
defeat. For example. We said that "the
first quantification of the economic, political and physical violence
against women emerged in 1980 when the United Nations said that women do
2/3 of the world's work for 5% of the income and 1% of the assets. This
is the basic violence - our exploitation - from which all other violence
by both institutions and individuals flow.
In February 1988 Labour MP Mildred Gordon put forward an Early
Day Motion, which was signed by 101 MPs, pressing the government to
implement the 1985 UN decision as amended by the Wages for Housework
Campaign, to count women's unrenumerated work in the home, in the fields
and in the community, in every country's GNP. In their June 1988 Policy
Statement CPC admits that "… women are discriminated against…
by the fact that women's work as wives, mothers and carers is unvalued
and unrewarded… their work as wives, mothers and carers should be
valued, rewarded and supported." We agree. Another example is the name.
Campaign Against Pornography and Censorship suggests that anti-porn
feminists have come up with ways of opposing porn without promoting
censorship. They have not. The CPC have agreed that there is
more to violence against women than pornography, but they insist on
singling out pornography: “…pornography
is the most extreme portrayal of women as less than human and less than
equal… pornography sexualises inequality… We are totally against
censorship in every form. Censorship is about the limitation of freedom:
eliminating pornography is about promoting the freedom of women…
pornography silences women and censors the freedom of women." (CPC
Policy Statement, June 1988) There is now general agreement on
the findings of Women Against Rape that the majority of rape and sexual
assault goes on within the family. This is not because husbands and
fathers are more likely to read or watch porn, but because women's
economic dependence on men prevents them and their children from leaving
violent situations.(1) In the
past two years the government has cut Child Benefit and many other
welfare benefits and has introduced Workfare (which particularly affects
young people and single mothers), the Poll tax, Section 28 (which labels
lesbian households as 'pretended families'), tighter immigration
controls (which make it harder for immigrant women to leave violent
husbands because of threat of deportation)… All these policies are a
clear signal from the State that it will back men against women. yet the
feminist media has hardly protested, and instead has coined the phrase
"Welfare Feminism" to describe those of us who fight urgently
to protect and increase benefits to women. We have been censored for
insisting on putting women's poverty and overwork at the top of the
political agenda. The uncensored spokeswomen of feminism have a lot to
answer for. Their obsession with 'dirty pictures' has hidden the full
impact of the government's attack on working class women's pockets -
less economic independence and therefore more rape and other violence
against women and children. Our article refers to MP Clare
Short's Bill against Page 3 girls. We would like to add a question. We
have not heard Clare Short or any of her anti-porn colleagues connect
Page 3 with the sexist and racist lies on every page of the Sun. Are
they not connected? Which is most dangerous, pervasive, frightening? Is
degradation less visible or less damaging when women's breasts are
covered? CPC wants to promote "sexually
explicit material premised on equality". (2) What is it? Where is
it? In other spheres such 'equality' material has often meant a cover-up
of women's reality. Books and films that portray man-pushing-pram and
woman-engineer as the norm are often a put-down of working class women
in unwaged or low waged 'women's jobs': housewives, nurses, factory
workers, cleaners, secretaries, teachers, etc.,
who don't have the time or the opportunity to train men for
housework or to take up well-paid careers and get other women (and men)
to do it for them. To replace sexist images of women with images which
gloss over women's lives, can keep most women's workload invisible and
therefore harder to refuse. It may even glory the double day of working
class women. All images of women are important and all must be seriously
discussed. What is wrong with most images is that women's struggle to
refuse all forms of violence and degradation is rarely presented: not
only that women are portrayed doing the jobs that we do, whether with
our clothes on or off, but that we are portrayed as consenting, even
happy slaves. Anti-porn lobbyists don't seem to notice this lying image
if the models are dressed. We are constantly deprived of
information about ourselves and our movement. Women making trouble and
making history in bed, at home, in the community, in the waged workplace
and on the streets, are mostly censored. Those are the 'positive images'
we need, not propaganda about a fictional equality. Our work must not be hidden; it must be counted. CPC's statement that
"pornography sexualises inequality" is startling. Are they
seriously suggesting that pornography introduces sexuality into
inequality? That without pornography inequality would be desexualised?
What about marriage, sexual repression, heterosexism, rape and sexual
assault…? We wonder whether women in positions of power are hostile to
pornography because it reminds them of what they are trying so hard to
forget - that they cannot entirely escape from being identified with the
less powerful sex. Anti-porn feminists are so
determined to impose their views and taste on everyone that they ignore
the fact that many women read and watch porn, and many more who may not
like porn don't want it banned. In a 1985 Gallup poll more women than
men felt that pornography should be available to those who want it; and
in a recent Channel 4 'Signals' programme on sex and television, women
said they would like more sex on TV., not less(3) A woman who wrote to
protest against CPC spoke for many when she said: As a feminist I don' like
pornography, but I dislike this campaign even more… The CPC clearly
wants its sex to be mutual, loving and soft-focus. This lukewarm act to
be carried out in 'real' relationships between 'real' men and women.
That's fine - but I don't want my sexuality policed in this way.
(Suzanne Moore, City Limits, 27 April-4 May 1989) The Guildford Four have undeniably
exposed how deep and wide the corruption of the police and the judiciary
are. Their release is a tremendous victory not only for themselves and
the Irish liberation struggle but for the many Black and other working
class women and men convicted on police lies. Are these racist, sexist,
violent and criminal police, judges and politicians to be given more
powers to decide about our sex lives, what we read, what we see and what
we do? CPC takes no position on homosexual
porn, Catherine Itzen says that "…it is a very important issue
and must be addressed properly. At the moment, we do not have the
resources, knowledge, understanding or experience with which to do
so,"(4) Some of the feminists who advocate censorship opposed
Section 28 before it became law, but they don't seem to make any
connection between these two forms of censorship. This is another
indication of their unwillingness to look at how any legislation against
pornography is likely to be used. Clause 28 is integral to the
government's double-edged economic strategy: removing access to wages
through unemployment on the one hand, and on the other, lowering the
social wage through cuts in welfare benefits, health care, housing,
social services, the NHS, etc. To succeed, this strategy must be
accompanied by an attack on our rights to self-determination and to
information/education about ourselves and each other - in other words,
an attack on our power to organize with all kinds of people against
exploitation and repression. Monetarism - government by market forces,
needs moralism - government by police forces, in the bedroom, the
classroom, and on the street, (Out of the Clause into the Workhouse - A
lesbian women's view of what
Clause 28 intends, pretends and promotes, and what we intend to promote
against it by Wages Due Lesbians, Centrepiece 7, King's Cross Women's Centre) On 19 July
1989, MP Dawn Primarolo introduced a Presentation Bill, the Location of Pornography Bill drawn up by
members of the CPBF. The Bill proposes licensing, and separate locations
for the sale of porn. The NCCL (now Liberty) has also agreed to
'consider' possible forms of legislation. CPC and NCCL member Catherine
Itzin agrees that legislation would force the sex industry underground:
"There is no question that when things are prohibited, they go
underground. " (5) She expresses no concern for what this would
mean, especially for women in the sex industry. Since 1975 we have been campaigning
for the abolition of the prostitution laws, and against legalisation,
which would institutionalise women on the game. Zoning legislation
against pornography is the first step towards State-run red-light areas
and a further erosion of prostitute women's human, civil and legal
rights. The prostitution laws which criminalise women for making a
living are responsible for prostitute women's extreme vulnerability.
Serial murderers like the Yorkshire Ripper are a common recurrence. Over
a hundred women, mainly Black prostitute women, have been murdered on
the US West Coast in recent years. At least one woman was murdered and
another woman was left for dead, in King's Cross recently, possibly by
the same man. Like anti-porn feminists who are not concerned with
prostitute women's needs, the police have their own priorities: removing
'the problem' by arresting prostitute women and kerbcrawlers. Police
clean-ups take away prostitute women's only limited protection - a
support network of friends and the presence of other members of the
community. The CPC say: "We believe [the
pornography] industry exploits the poorest and most vulnerable women,
whose opportunities to earn a living are
limited by sexism and sex discrimination", and, we add, by the CPC;
"…it takes advantage of the existing cycle of abuse and sexual
abuse (eg a majority of prostitutes have been found to be the victims of
childhood sexual abuse, in which pornography played a part)." And
therefore? What is their evidence? Have they established that the
majority of housewives, nurses, secretaries, teachers, nannies, even
grocers' daughters were not sexually abused as children? Do they not
know how widespread the rape of children is or are they making a
special, unconnected case about prostitute women? Special cases lead to
special laws and special enforcement - prostitute women know all about
that. Finally, an update on kerb crawling legislation. As we
predicted in 1984, the law is being used to arrest prostitute women
first, making it harder for women to earn a living, In addition, the
Bristol police have devised "a profile of the typical kerb
crawler" and they propose writing to employers giving the name of
the employee stopped, the time and date. In the same way as women are
labelled as 'common prostitutes' by two police cautions before they
appear in court, men are now being labelled as kerb crawlers before they
are charged or convicted. This erosion of civil rights now extends to
men, while the police pose as defenders of feminism; "Kerb crawlers
were thinking that any woman on the streets was likely to be a
prostitute, which was most insulting
to the women of St Paul's,"(6) Which women? Not for the
increasing number of single mothers struggling on Income support, or the
young women running away from violent families and/or trying to build an
independent life, refused Income Support because they are under 16 or
because they turned down Employment Training for slave wages - many
people in such situations are going on the game, and nowadays everybody
knows it. All women must be in charge of our own bodies and
money, not the police or the local authority. If feminism means
apartheid for women in the sex industry and support for the police who
arrest working class women, we will continue to spell that out - not to
protect the sex industry, but as members of the same movement of
millions of women who are refusing poverty and unwaged work, including
by going on the game or working as nude/porn models and actresses. Nina
Lopez-Jones Point of reference for the English Collective of Prostitutes and coordinator of Legal
Action for Women, a grassroots legal service for all women based at
the King's Cross Women's Centre, London. (1) This was followed in April 1989 by a 10-Minute Rule
Bill Counting Women's Unremunerated Work (2) Ask Any Woman - A London inquiry into rape and
sexual assault, Ruth E. Hall, Falling Wall Press (3) City Limits, 27 May 1989 (4) Observer, 23 April 1989 (5) Spare Rib, May 1989 (6) Ibid (7) Independent, 13 November 1989
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