Also see my article at Wired News today on obscenity and COPA: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52504,00.html --- Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 11:43:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Annalee Newitz <brainsploitationat_private> Subject: cyber-liberties feminists fight obscenity laws To: declanat_private Hi Declan. I think the politechnicals will enjoy this article I've just published about the many connections between feminism and cyber-liberties in current debates over online censorship and obscenity. It's a longish think piece in which I describe the tech-savvy feminists who are leading the fight to protect our First Amendment rights, especially when it comes to sexual free speech on the net. Obscene feminists Why women are leading the battle against censorship. By Annalee Newitz DIAN HANSON IS sorting through dozens of porn magazines. In one pile are Jaybird nudist publications from the late 1960s, featuring what she calls "crotch liberation" fantasies of happy, unshaven hippie kids. Filed in a different category are the British magazines, which "are so tidy and sensible they have names like Practical Photography." Hanson, a career pornographer who has run popular adult magazines like Leg Show and Juggs, is working on several pictorial histories of men's magazines for art publisher Taschen. She's been on the editorial staff of various porn mags since 1976, and although she's joined the art world now, she says proudly, "I still consider myself a pornographer." Although Hanson estimates that close to 10 percent of adult magazines are run by women, public perception lags behind the facts. Most people assume women avoid pornography. Playboy's CEO may be Christie Hefner, and the wildly popular adult Web site Danni's Hard Drive may be woman-owned, but the conventional wisdom is that naked pictures exist only in man's domain. Women are supposed to be deeply disturbed by porn that's why companies marketing "adulteryware" on the Internet aim their e-mail ads at women, who will supposedly want to catch their male companions in the "naughty" act of downloading a little tits and ass. . . . Yet the truth is, women are generally in the vanguard when it comes to fighting sexual censorship. The civil rights lawyers, activists, sex workers, media pundits, and professors who fight for your right to have dirty pictures are by and large female. Many call themselves feminists. And the people fighting to stamp out pornography today are most decidedly male. Attorney General John Ashcroft; his sympathizers in Congress, such as Mark Foley and Orrin Hatch; and powerful male-dominated lobbying groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association are on the warpath to eliminate "obscene materials" on the Internet. They're doing it using an argument conservative pundit George Gilder would undoubtedly deem feminine in the extreme: these antiporn boys say they want to protect the children. . . . http://www.sfbg.com/36/32/news_womenvscensorship.html ===== Annalee Newitz tech * pop * sex 415.487.2559 - cell: 415.378.4498 www.techsploitation.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sign this pro-therapeutic cloning petition: http://www.franklinsociety.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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