PORN AND CENSORSHIP Take positive action!

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I FOUND the points Colin Foster made about pornography (November 26) extremely depressing. He genuinely seems not to know why pornography makes women (not just organised feminists) so angry. He seems to imply that because he cannot make a distinction between "hard' porn and "mere' sexist literature, then we can do nothing about them.

The only 'positive' proposals he makes are those of no censorship and the mobilisation of women to fight against their oppression -which does not, apparently, include taking action against pornography.

Surely we should fight sexism in the same way he advocates we fight racism. We should not tolerate the most extreme forms of pornography, and should by positive action fight to impose our own censorship on porn shops, films, striptease shows, etc. In this regard we would do well to follow the example set by COLIN Foster (November 26) is surely wrong in criticising Les Hearn's views on sexism.

Les's analogy with racism is a strong one. Whereas 'the left' is rightly outraged by any sign of racism it has not been equally outraged by pornography.

Too often it has succumbed to the libertarian argument - allow complete freedom and get it out of the system.

What is pornography?

asks Colin Foster. It is the exploitation for profit of women as sexual objects. It reinforces the oppression of women, at the same time it desensitises and distorts men's feelings and emotions.

We would be angry if we saw everywhere about us, cartoons, calendars, films which clearly depicted racial hatred and oppression - we should be equally angry about in fact we should be more angry, since sexism enters our daily personal life in a more powerful and insidious way.

Pornography plays an erating force, and therefore it would be ridiculous to rely on state laws to sweep it away. At the same time, as it is ultra-left to scorn reforms within capitalism, I can see no objectWomen Against Violence Against Women groups.

It would also be a mistake for us to discount our never being able to force the state to implement the type of censorship we should all want. The working class have through their militancy won several reforms within capitalism. It would be a gross error if we discounted these achievements as merely being examples of bourgeois More subtle, yet no less degrading and exploitative representations of women in the media need to be challenged by such measures as a larger recruitment of women as journalists, training of media workers in anti-sexist reporting, and perhaps most importantly, labour movement pressure on trade unionists and employers who degrade women via the media.

I would like to point out that such action is necessary not just for the benefit of women. Pornography also degrades and dehumanises men. Which is something they often forget and tend instead to become defensive - fecling themselves to be under attack?

Only when we begin to actively fight against these most extreme forms of sexism will we ever begin to understand the connections between pornography and the way in which all sexuality is degraded by the sex roles we are taught to adopt.

A fight is therefore necessary now (not after the revolution) so that we can eventually start treating each other as human beings.

As things are at the moment, men are like emotional cripples - they gain their strength (read machoness) at the expense of trampling on women and feeding off us for emotional support.

Far too many men view sex like a colonial conquest. Hence many men's attitude towards the rape of women they know - anger at the rapist for defiling their property. also • sanct A marrie: convicted 'property' wife.

Thi attitud nec by the m12 1 canno be for raping his namely, his When men have learnt to love and care for each other, instead of competing to prove their hardness, then and only then will 1 accept that they have any right in trying to define a new form of 'erotica' which is personbased and not warped by sexism, power, and possessiveness.

Changes could perhaps be made if men actually listened to what women say about their oppression and stopped trying to define our feelings Ior us.

In the meantime it would be as well if men left women to fight their own battles. We do not need the sort of 'help' that Colin Foster appears to be proposing -nothing!

ZILLA SMITH, Coventry.

I WAS saddened, but. hardly surprised, by your report of the termination of Women's Voice groups (SO 63). The way in which this has been done will add to the already appalling reputation of the SWP in the women's movement.

Members of the groups were given no specific voice, but simply told that ''The future of Women's Voice groups will be decided at the SWP conference in November" (WV, October 1981).

Many have long seen the SWP as the dictatorship of one man. This incident gives further credence to this view for, as recently as a year ago, the SWP stated that the only Centrai Committee member opposed in _ principle to WV groups was Tony Cliff.

Once again the fawning acolytes have come swiftly into line. But what price women's emancipation, if this is the way decisions are taken now?

All along Yet there must be many women in and around the SWP, who will not simply accept Cliff's belated realisation that his old comrades Ted Grant and Gerry Healy have been right all along, and that in the end women are simply workers who need no specific organisation to fight their specific oppression. Membership of each male guru's particular brand of revolutio party is sufficient.

Women who are not pr pared to squander ti potential gains of the la 15 years and who st believe that 'It is n enough for us to build women's caucus within tl revolutionary party or women's caucus with each rank and file mov ment - we have to build women's movement whi stretches out into laye of women that neither these organisational forn yet reaches... the buildir of WV is urgent" (Jor Smith, Internation socialism 100) should se iously look at Women Fightback... and the rest Tony Cliff's politics.

CAROL HOBBS,

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important role in reinforc- ing sexism - it is not a lib-

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