Massachusetts legislators heard testimony about peoples’ encounters with porn at a hearing on March 16, 1992. This account appears in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.381-382). Testimony of L. B. Once this videotape was on, he would make me submit to various sexual acts on the hardwood floors directly in front of […]
Month: April 2007
United Kingdom: A Glaring Counter-Example to the Theory that Internet Porn is Cathartic
[Updated on 4/15/07 and 6/17/07] Law professor Anthony D’Amato, and more recently Todd Kendall (PDF) of Clemson University, have attempted to correlate increased Internet penetration with decreasing rates of rape. Since the Internet is a major vector for porn, they suggest that more porn in the home means fewer people will rape. In short, they […]
Testimony in Massachusetts: My Experiences with Men, Porn and Domestic Abuse (explicit)
Massachusetts legislators heard testimony about peoples’ encounters with porn at a hearing on March 16, 1992. This account appears in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.372-378). Blanket statements that porn shops are about “romance” or that porn “enhances couples sex lives” are hard to credit in light of stories like the one […]
Testimony in Massachusetts: “He took things straight out of the movies and used them on me”
Massachusetts legislators heard testimony about peoples’ encounters with porn at a hearing on March 16, 1992. This account appears in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.370-371). Testimony of Pat Haas My name is Pat Haas. I live in Brookline. I experienced from 1987 to 1989 in a two-year relationship with my batterer–from […]
Firestorm Rages Over Issue of Civility in the Blogosphere
Escalating hostility has led prominent bloggers to consider voluntary codes of civility. When unrestrained vitriol and personal attacks poison debates, how free is speech? The New York Times considers the issues in “A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs”: Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by […]
The Imus Affair: Criticizing Speech is Not Censorship
Besides being wedded to the fallacy that porn is exclusively about consenting adults, many of our opponents try to equate citizen activism and criticism of another’s speech with state censorship that violates the First Amendment. Nadine Strossen is one of the more prominent employers of this approach. One commenter claims that asking businesses to avoid […]
Testimony in Los Angeles: Pornographers Place Recruitment Ads for “Models” in Newspapers
Our opponents chant ‘consenting adults’ like a magic formula to ward off all criticism, yet time and again we see pornographers making a mockery of the idea of informed consent, let alone informed consent from people unpressured by money troubles. Members of the Los Angeles County Commission for Women heard this testimony about peoples’ encounters […]
Salon: Porn Isolates its Users, Erodes Civility and Love
Cary Tennis is Salon’s advice columnist. The key harm of porn, he argues, is that it saps users of their motivation to build human connections. Cary’s critique is also relevant to “sex work” in general. Even if it’s entirely consensual, it’s still problematic to have your sexual needs met by ‘vendors’ instead of a true […]
Election Season Approaches for Northampton City Council
Candidates for Northampton City Council may now pick up the necessary forms from the Clerk at City Hall, 210 Main Street. The key dates and deadlines are: July 24, 2007Last day to submit nomination papers to the Registrar of Voters. You will need at least 50 voters from your ward to sign a petition to […]
Writer’s Digest…What Erotica Is
Many of our opponents suggest that because the boundary between porn and erotica cannot be perfectly defined, that it’s hopeless to try. Many pornographers would like to fudge the issue to make their products seem more acceptable. Nevertheless, useful distinctions can be made. Writer’s Digest explores the issues in “On The Edge: The Power of […]