Pornography †Government Censorship Will Never Promote Equality :: Argumentative Persuasive Argument Essays

Pornography Government Censorship Will Never Promote equationCatharine Mackinnon seeks to be the Galileo of sexual inequality the philosopher free of preconceptions who reveals a new structure, incorporating all known facts, radically different from anything previously understood. The structure Galileo overthrew was the Earth-centered universe. The structure Mackinnon must overthrow, in order to make the law do what she thinks it must, is the First Amendment- centered universe (though Mackinnon would probably say it was the pimp-centered universe pimp is a favorite term of hers).If you contrive a hammer, everything looks like a nail Mackinnon is a lawyer, so the law looks like the best way, or the only way, to solve the problem of pornography. If you divorce Mackinnons conclusions from her prescriptions, you would build a valuable feminist scholar, calling attention to contexts and subtexts in our society previously ignored. But, as an attorney and law professor, Mackinnon must, t o accomplish her goals, place herself squarely in confrontation with free speech. This is doubly sad, because the idea she presents us with is so valuable. Mackinnons central idea is that pornography is the oppression of women it is not simply talk about or advocacy of oppression. Thus, she argues, contrary to most Constitutional scholars, that pornography is not speech, but action. In Mackinnons opinion, pornography acts against women twice, when it is made, and when it is viewed. First, women are degraded, raped and (in her belief) even killed in the making of adult pictures and films. Then, the pictures and films further participate in the degradation, rape and murder of women by the users of pornography. To cite just one example from Mackinnons Only Words, Linda Marchiano, then known as Linda Lovelace, was defeat and threatened at gunpoint by her husband during the filming of Deep Throat. The movie then caused men to force women to try acts which Marchiano had only been able t o act under hypnosis. According to Mackinnon, numerous women were hospitalized directly as a result of the film some were raped by strangers, others were coerced or raped by boyfriends. (Mackinnon and her colleague, Andrea Dworkin, do not really distinguish between rape and psychological coercion in fact, to Dworkin, all heterosexual sex seems tantamount to rape.) While Mackinnons world view, so summarized, may sound extreme, a thought experiment is all that is really necessary to see the validity of her ideas.