Why More Naked Photos, You Ask? Why Not?

I love this essay. It's old, but it never gets old. Since some of you fuckers are too damn lazy to click on a link, I will copy and paste the shit below. You're welcome, lazy assholes. The NY Times will probably come after my ass for copyright infringement, but whatever. It saved you a click.

Incidentally, I agree with nearly everything Mr. Irving has ever said. These are still stupid times.

Pornography and the New Puritans
Date: March 29, 1992, Sunday, Late Edition - Final Byline
By John Irving

THESE are censorial times. I refer to the pornography victims' compensation bill, now under consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee -- that same bunch of wise men who dispatched such clearheaded, objective jurisprudence in the Clarence Thomas hearings. I can't wait to see what they're going to do with this maladroit proposal. The bill would encourage victims of sexual crimes to bring civil suits against publishers and distributors of material that is "obscene or constitutes child pornography" -- if they can prove that the material was "a substantial cause of the offense," and if the publisher or distributor should have "foreseen" that such material created an "unreasonable risk of such a crime." If this bill passes, it will be the first piece of legislation to give credence to the unproven theory that sexually explicit material actually causes sexual crimes.

At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, I'm still pretty sure that rape and child molestation predate erotic books and pornographic magazines and X-rated videocassettes. I also remember the report of the two-year, $2 million President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (1970), which concluded there was "no reliable evidence . . . that exposure to explicit sexual material plays a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal sexual behavior." In 1986, not satisfied with that conclusion, the Meese commission on pornography and the Surgeon General's conference on pornography also failed to establish such a link. Now, here they go again.

This time it's Republican Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Charles Grassley of Iowa and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina; I can't help wondering if they read much. Their charmless bill is a grave mistake for several reasons; for starters, it's morally reprehensible to shift the responsibility for any sexual crime onto a third party -- namely, away from the actual perpetrator.

And then, of course, there's the matter of the bill running counter to the spirit of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution; this bill is a piece of back-door censorship, plain and simple. Moreover, since the laws on obscenity differ from state to state, and no elucidation of the meaning of obscenity is presented in the bill, how are the publishers or distributors to know in advance if their material is actionable or not? It is my understanding, therefore, that the true intent of the bill is to make the actual creators of this material think very conservatively -- that is, when their imaginations turn to sex and violence.

I RECALL that I received a lot of unfriendly mail in connection with a somewhat explicit scene in my novel "The World According to Garp," wherein a selfish young man loses part of his anatomy while enjoying oral sex in a car. (I suppose I've always had a fear of rear-end collisions.) But thinking back about that particular hate mail, I don't recall a single letter from a young woman saying that she intended to rush out and do this to someone; and in the 14 years since that novel's publication, in more than 35 foreign languages, no one who actually has done this to someone has written to thank me for giving her the idea. Boy, am I lucky!

In a brilliant article on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, Teller, of those marvelous magicians Penn & Teller, had this to say about the pornography victims' compensation bill: "The advocates of this bill seem to think that if we stop showing rape in movies people will stop committing it in real life. Anthropologists call this 'magical thinking.' It's the same impulse that makes people stick pins in voodoo dolls, hoping to cripple an enemy. It feels logical, but it does not work." (For those of you who've seen these two magicians and are wondering which is Penn and which is Teller, Teller is the one who never talks. He writes very well, however.)

"It's a death knell for creativity, too," Teller writes. "Start punishing make-believe, and those gifted with imagination will stop sharing it." He adds, "We will enter an intellectual era even more insipid than the one we live in."

Now there's a scary idea! I remember when the film version of Gunter Grass's novel "The Tin Drum" was banned in Canada. I always assumed it was the eel scene that offended the censors, but I don't know. In those days, a little naked sex -- in the conventional position -- was permissible, but unpleasant suggestiveness with eels was clearly going too far. But now, in the light of this proposed pornography victims' compensation bill, is there any evidence to suggest that there have been fewer hellish incidents of women being force-fed eels in Canada than in those countries where the film was available? Somehow, I doubt it. I know that they're out there -- those guys who want to force-feed eels to women -- but I suspect they're going to do what they're going to do, unaided by books or films. The point is: let's do something about them , instead of trying to control what they read or see.

It dismays me how some of my feminist friends are hot to ban pornography. I'm sorry that they have such short memories. It wasn't very long ago when a book as innocent and valuable as "Our Bodies, Ourselves" was being banned by school boards and public libraries across the country. The idea of this good book was that women should have access to detailed information about their bodies and their health, yet the so-called feminist ideology behind the book was thought to be subversive; indeed, it was (at that time) deplored. But many writers and writers' organizations (like PEN) wrote letters to those school boards and those public libraries. I can't speak to the overall effectiveness of these letters in regard to reinstating the book, but I'm aware that some of the letters worked; I wrote several of those letters. Now here are some of my old friends, telling me that attitudes toward rape and child molestation can be changed only if we remove the offensive ideas . Once again, it's ideology that's being banned. And although the movement to ban pornography is especially self-righteous, it looks like blacklisting to me.

Fascism has enjoyed many name changes, but it usually amounts to banning something you dislike and can't control. Take abortion, for example. I think groups should have to apply for names; if the Right to Life people had asked me, I'd have told them to find a more fitting label for themselves. It's morally inconsistent to manifest such concern for the poor fetus in a society that shows absolutely no pity for the poor child after it's born.

I'm also not so sure that these so-called Right to Lifers are as fired up about those fetuses as they say. I suspect what really makes them sore is the idea of women having sex and somehow not having to pay for it -- pay in the sense of suffering all the way through an unwanted pregnancy. I believe this is part of the loathing for promiscuity that has always fueled those Americans who feel that a life of common decency is slipping from their controlling grasp. This notion is reflected in the unrealistic hope of those wishful thinkers who tell us that sexual abstinence is an alternative to wearing a condom. But I say how about carrying a condom, just in case you're moved to not abstain?

No one is coercing women into having abortions, but the Right to Lifers want to coerce women into having babies; that's why the pro-choice people are well named. It's unfortunate, however, that a few of my pro-choice friends think that the pornography victims' compensation bill is a good idea. I guess that they're really not entirely pro-choice. They want the choice to reproduce or not, but they don't want too broad a choice of things to read and see; they know what they want to read and see, and they expect other people to be content with what they want. This sounds like a Right to Life idea to me.

Most feminist groups, despite their vital advocacy of full enforcement of laws against violence to women and children, seem opposed to Senate Bill 1521. As of this writing, both the National Organization for Women in New York State and in California have written to the Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to the bill, although the Los Angeles chapter of NOW states that it has "no position." I admit it is perverse of me even to imagine what Tammy Bruce thinks about the pornography victims' compensation bill; I hope Ms. Bruce is not such a loose cannon as she appears, but she has me worried. Ms. Bruce is president of L.A. NOW, and she has lately distinguished herself with two counts of knee-jerk overreaction. Most recently, she found the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to be guilty of an "obvious exhibition of sexism" in not nominating Barbra Streisand for an Oscar for best director. Well, maybe. Ms. Streisand's other talents have not been entirely overlooked; I meekly submit that the academy might have found "The Prince of Tides" lacking in directorial merit -- it wouldn't be the first I've heard of such criticism. (Ms. Bruce says the L.A. chapter received "unrelenting calls" from NOW members who were riled up at the perceived sexism.)

Most readers will remember Tammy Bruce for jumping all over that nasty novel by Bret Easton Ellis. To refresh our memories: Simon & Schuster decided at the 11th hour not to publish "American Psycho" after concluding that its grisly content was in "questionable taste." Now please don't get excited and think I'm going to call that censorship; that was merely a breach of contract. And besides, Simon & Schuster has a right to its own opinion of what questionable taste is. People magazine tells us that Judith Regan, a vice president and senior editor at Simon & Schuster, recently had a book idea, which she pitched to Madonna. "My idea was for her to write a book of her sexual fantasies, her thoughts, the meanderings of her erotic mind," Ms. Regan said. The pity is, Madonna hasn't delivered. And according to Mitchell Fink, author of the Insider column for People, "Warner Books confirmed it is talking about a book -- no word on what kind -- with Madonna." I don't know Madonna, but maybe she thought the Simon & Schuster book idea was in questionable taste. Simon & Schuster, clearly, subscribes to more than one opinion of what questionable taste is .

But only two days after Mr. Ellis's book was dropped by Simon & Schuster, Sonny Mehta, president of Alfred A. Knopf and Vintage Books, bought "American Psycho," which was published in March 1991. Prior to the novel's publication, Ms. Bruce called for a boycott of all Knopf and Vintage titles -- except for books by feminist authors, naturally -- until "American Psycho" was withdrawn from publication (it wasn't), or until the end of 1991. To the charge of censorship, Ms. Bruce declared that she was not engaged in it; she sure fooled me.

But Ms. Bruce wasn't alone in declaring what wasn't censorship, nor was she alone in her passion; she not only condemned Mr. Ellis's novel -- she condemned its availability. And not only the book itself but its availability were severely taken to task in the very pages in which I now write. In December 1990 -- three months before "American Psycho" was published, and at the urging of The Book Review -- Roger Rosenblatt settled Mr. Ellis's moral hash in a piece of writing prissy enough to please Jesse Helms. According to Mr. Rosenblatt, Jesse Helms has never engaged in censorship, either. For those of us who remain improperly educated in regard to what censorship actually is , Mr. Rosenblatt offers a blanket definition. "Censorship is when a government burns your manuscript, smashes your presses and throws you in jail," he says.

WELL, as much as I may identify with Mr. Rosenblatt's literary taste, I'm of the opinion that there are a few forms of censorship more subtle than that, and Mr. Rosenblatt has engaged in one of them. If you slam a book when it's published, that's called book reviewing, but if you write about a book three months in advance of its publication and your conclusion is "don't buy it," your intentions are more censorial than critical.

And it is censorship when the writer of such perceived trash is not held as accountable as the book's publisher; the pressure that was brought to bear on Mr. Mehta was totally censorial. The Book Review is at its most righteous in abusing Mr. Mehta, who is described as "clearly as hungry for a killing as Patrick Bateman." (For those of you who don't know Mr. Ellis's book, Patrick Bateman is the main character and a serial killer.) Even as reliable a fellow as the editorial director of Publishers Weekly, John F. Baker, described "American Psycho" as a book that "does transcend the boundaries of what is acceptable in mainstream publishing."

It's the very idea of making or keeping publishing "acceptable" that gives me the shivers, because that's the same idea that lurks behind the pornography victims' compensation bill -- making the publisher (not the perpetrator of the crime or the writer of the pornography) responsible for what's "acceptable." If you want to bash Bret Easton Ellis for what he's written, go ahead and bash him. But when you presume to tell Sonny Mehta, or any other publisher, what he can or can't -- or should or shouldn't -- publish , that's when you've stepped into dangerous territory. In fact, that's when you're knee-deep in blacklisting, and you ought to know better -- all of you.

Mr. Rosenblatt himself actually says, "No one argues that a publishing house hasn't the right to print what it wants. We fight for that right. But not everything is a right. At some point, someone in authority somewhere has to look at Mr. Ellis's rat and call the exterminator." Now this is interesting, and perhaps worse than telling Sonny Mehta what he should or shouldn't publish -- because that's exactly what Mr. Rosenblatt is doing while he's saying that he isn't.

Do we remember that tangent of the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, that finally defunct business about ideological exclusion? That was when we kept someone from coming into our country because we perceived that the person had ideas that were in conflict with the "acceptable" ideas of our country. Under this act of exclusion, writers as distinguished as Graham Greene and Gabriel Garcia Marquez were kept out of the United States. Well, when we attack what a publisher has the right to publish, we are simply applying the old ideological exclusion act at home. Of all people, those of us in the idea business should know better than that.

As for the pornography victims' compensation bill, the vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee will be close. As of this writing, seven senators have publicly indicated their support of the bill; they need only one more vote to pass the bill out of committee. Friends at PEN tell me that the committee has received a lot of letters from women saying that support of the bill would in some way "make up for" the committee's mishandling of the Clarence Thomas hearings. Some women are putting the decision to support Justice Thomas alongside the decision to find William Kennedy Smith innocent of rape; these women think that a really strong antipornography bill will make up for what they perceive to be the miscarriage of justice in both cases.

The logic of this thinking is more than a little staggering. What would these women think if lots of men were to write the committee and say that because Mike Tyson has been found guilty of rape, what we need is more pornography to make up for what's happened to Iron Mike? This would make a lot of sense, wouldn't it?

I conclude that these are not only censorial times; these are stupid times. However, there is some hope that opposition to Senate Bill 1521 is mounting. The committee met on March 12 but the members didn't vote on the bill. Discussion was brief, yet encouraging. Colorado Senator Hank Brown told his colleagues that there are serious problems with the legislation; he should be congratulated for his courageous decision to oppose the other Republicans on the committee, but he should also be encouraged not to accept any compromise proposal. Ohio Senator Howard Metzenbaum suggested that imposing third-party liability on producers and distributors of books, magazines, movies and recordings raises the question of whether the bill shouldn't be amended to cover the firearms and liquor industries as well.

It remains to be seen if the committee members will resist the temptation to fix the troubled bill. I hope they will understand that the bill cannot be fixed because it is based on an erroneous premise -- namely, that publishers or distributors should be held liable for the acts of criminals. But what is important for us to recognize, even if this lame bill is amended out of existence or flat-out defeated, is that new antipornography legislation will be proposed.

Do we remember Nancy Reagan's advice to would-be drug users? ("Just say no.") As applied to drug use, Mrs. Reagan's advice is feeble in the extreme. But writers and other members of the literary community should just say no to censorship in any and every form. Of course, it will always be the most grotesque example of child pornography that will be waved in front of our eyes by the Good Taste Police. If we're opposed to censorship, they will say, are we in favor of filth like this?

No; we are not in favor of child pornography if we say no to censorship. If we disapprove of reinstating public hangings, that doesn't mean that we want all the murderers to be set free. No writer or publisher or reader should accept censorship in any form; fundamental to our freedom of expression is that each of us has a right to decide what is obscene and what isn't.

But lest you think I'm being paranoid about the iniquities and viciousness of our times, I'd like you to read a description of Puritan times. It was written in 1837 -- more than 150 years ago -- and it describes a scene in a Puritan community in Massachusetts that you must imagine taking place more than 350 years ago. This is from a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne called "Endicott and the Red Cross," which itself was written more than 10 years before Hawthorne wrote "The Scarlet Letter." This little story contains the germ of the idea for that famous novel about a woman condemned by Puritan justice to wear the letter A on her breast. But Hawthorne, obviously, had been thinking about the iniquities and viciousness of early New England morality for many years.

Please remember, as you read what Nathaniel Hawthorne thought of the Puritans, that the Puritans are not dead and gone. We have many new Puritans in our country today; they are as dangerous to freedom of expression as the old Puritans ever were. An especially sad thing is, a few of these new Puritans are formerly liberal-thinking feminists.

"In close vicinity to the sacred edifice [ the meeting-house ] appeared that important engine of Puritanic authority, the whipping-post -- with the soil around it well trodden by the feet of evil doers, who had there been disciplined. At one corner of the meeting-house was the pillory, and at the other the stocks; . . . the head of an Episcopalian and suspected Catholic was grotesquely incased in the former machine; while a fellow-criminal, who had boisterously quaffed a health to the king, was confined by the legs in the latter. Side by side, on the meeting-house steps, stood a male and a female figure. The man was a tall, lean, haggard personification of fanaticism, bearing on his breast this label, -- A WANTON GOSPELLER, -- which betokened that he had dared to give interpretations of Holy Writ unsanctioned by the infallible judgment of the civil and religious rulers. His aspect showed no lack of zeal . . . even at the stake. The woman wore a cleft stick on her tongue, in appropriate retribution for having wagged that unruly member against the elders of the church; and her countenance and gestures gave much cause to apprehend that, the moment the stick should be removed, a repetition of the offence would demand new ingenuity in chastising it.

"The above-mentioned individuals had been sentenced to undergo their various modes of ignominy, for the space of one hour at noonday. But among the crowd were several whose punishment would be life-long; some, whose ears had been cropped, like those of puppy dogs; others, whose cheeks had been branded with the initials of their misdemeanors; one, with his nostrils slit and seared; and another, with a halter about his neck, which he was forbidden ever to take off, or to conceal beneath his garments. Methinks he must have been grievously tempted to affix the other end of the rope to some convenient beam or bough. There was likewise a young woman, with no mean share of beauty, whose doom it was to wear the letter A on the breast of her gown, in the eyes of all the world and her own children. And even her own children knew what that initial signified. Sporting with her infamy, the lost and desperate creature had embroidered the fatal token in scarlet cloth, with golden thread and the nicest art of needlework; so that the capital A might have been thought to mean Admirable, or anything rather than Adulteress.
"Let not the reader argue, from any of these evidences of iniquity, that the times of the Puritans were more vicious than our own."

In my old-fashioned opinion, Mr. Hawthorne sure got that right.