Passions Over Pornography

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Is pornography essentially an outlet for sexual fantasy, rightly protected by the First Amendment's free speech provisions? Or is it an instruction manual for violent men that shatters women's civil rights by contributing to their harassment, humiliation and subordination? Those questions are at the heart of an often acrimonious debate that has divided feminists and civil libertarians across the U.S.

The argument is currently raging on three fronts:

-- In Massachusetts, feminist groups can be found on both sides of the debate over a proposed bill that would allow individuals who can prove that they were assaulted as a result of pornography -- defined as a form of sexual discrimination -- to recover damages in civil court from publishers and purveyors of the material.

-- In Florida, Jacksonville Shipyards is appealing the January 1991 ruling by a federal judge that a welder named Lois Robinson was harassed by male co- workers who put up graphically sexual posters and calendars, some showing women being abused. Among the offensive materials was a poster with a frontal view of a nude woman and the imprinted words USDA CHOICE. One surprising supporter of the appeal: the American Civil Liberties Union, which also opposes the Massachusetts bill.

-- In Washington, the Senate Judiciary Committee is considering S 1521, introduced last year by Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, which would allow victims of sex crimes to sue the producers, distributors and sellers of obscene material and child pornography if the victims can prove that the material was a "substantial cause" of the injury. Some have informally dubbed McConnell's proposal "the Bundy bill," after serial killer Ted Bundy, who claimed just before his execution that pornography had fueled his violent fantasies.

The co-authors of the Massachusetts bill are the odd couple of American feminism. Michigan law professor Catharine MacKinnon is sleek and stylishly dressed-for-success. Writer Andrea Dworkin (Pornography: Men Possessing Women and Intercourse), with her tousled hair and overalls-and-T-shirt decor, looks like a radical from the '60s.

The two activists have been campaigning in tandem against pornography since the early '80s; city ordinances they devised for Minneapolis, Indianapolis and Bellingham, Wash., all similar to the Massachusetts bill, were rejected by courts or local officials. Their basic argument is that Supreme Court rulings on obscenity, meaning prurient material that offends community standards, provide no impediment to the increasing violence directed against women. Much of that violence, they argue, has been inspired by pornography, which their bill defines as "the graphic, sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures or words."