I’m tempted to say “you can’t legislate norms”, but I think a lot of the world I’ve lived in for the last 54 years *was* legislated (or at least interpreted by the judiciary) in ways that created those norms. ACLU vs Skokie isn’t just case law, it’s a story we now old-school liberals tell ourselves and others about how to treat opinions we abhor.
Scott Greenfield’s “I despise Khalil. Free him.” probably doesn’t pack the same punch if the ACLU and others didn’t fight for 50 years to get us to that point. That the ACLU itself wavered after Charlottesville, even without any different case law, became a signal to the larger culture.
Just a note on the MacKinnon-Dworkin porn critique, as I had at one point immersed myself in radical feminist scholarship (and polemics). MacKinnon in particular, because she was (1) a Lukács inflected post-Marxist and (2) a law professor at U of M. Her book 'Toward a Feminist Theory of the State' is still worth a read, especially for post-liberals, left, right, and center. Don't let the title throw you; it was a critique of liberal law, first and foremost. There's gold in them there hills.
Her experience, like Dworkin's, among leftist men, was less than stellar. What she found, which corresponds to much of what you say here, was that for all their talk of equal rights, the majority were still world-class [sexual] objectifiers of women (it is in this anti-objectification stance that the rad-fem critique can find correspondence with thoughtful Christians, btw, for whom the objectification of any human being for whatever purpose is counted sinful).
People need to understand the true provenance of the claim "the personal is the political," understood wrongly these days. MacKinnon's critique of liberal law--as someone schooled in Marxism--noticed how, in economic matters, the public-private dichotomy (a modern invention) shielded certain malignant economic practices from "the sight of the law," by "the private sphere." Likewise, things like marital rape and domestic abuse were shielded from the sight of the law by "castle doctrine," a legal instantiation of the public-private dichotomy--a core principle in liberal law. Her theoretical solution, or at least interpretive framework, for combining, say, an unethical business practice and marital rape, was to direct her critique directly at this core dichotomy and expose liberal law in practice as "formal/legal equality" that concealed and reproduced unjust forms of power that were prior to the intervention of the law . . . or invisible to the law. Elon Musk and a homeless person, for example, might be equal in the eyes of the law. (One might recall Anatole France's quip that "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
Likewise, the unjust exercise of power by men over women (which, as a former Marxist, she theorized, inaccurately by somewhat usefully, as class domination, by one of two "sex-classes") was most effectively prevalent in the home . . . the man's castle, populated by his subalterns . . . iow the private sphere. Ergo, "the personal is the political." This quote, of course, has been transformed into all manner of insipid bullshit, but there it was.
I'm sure she would, and could (she's still kicking somewhere at age 80 or thereabouts), use this critique to overlay the whole free speech debate as well. She and Dworkin (and many others) went at the porn issue, based on the often horrible misogyny of actual porn and the exploitative relations of its production (seldom noted in these debates, as if this stuff just whiffed itself into existence from the ether), not as a criminal law issue, but a civil rights issue, remedial in theory by taking pornographers to court for harms caused.
In other words, and I went around the block on a recon to get here, this wasn't "a backlash from within liberalism to the post-’60s liberalization of American culture," but a pre-postliberal (left) critique. The current rad-fem critique of gender ideology (TERF means trans-exclusive radical feminists) can be understood here, as well, not mappable, if you will, on the liberal-conservative curve, but as a rejection of the (pop) poststructuralist erasure of feminism's primary political subject--the sex-class of (natal) women.
Very interesting, thanks! Honestly someone should write a book on the anti-porn alliance of the 80s in terms of how it anticipated the post liberal themes of the present…
Obviously, there are some departures, ie, the progress-narrative shared by Marxists, liberals, *and conservatives* (and most feminists, with perhaps Merchant, Shiva, & Mies eg as exceptional), but a lot of different footprints appear across the same ground.
We must protect political speech so the people have access to opinions and facts necessary to be informed citizens/voters. political speech has the redeeming social value of providing information to the people and letting people express themselves.
The main problem with porn is that unlike political speech it has ZERO REDEEMING OR POSITIVE QUALITIES. Making porn illegal is probably fruitless, but the rationale for doing it is no different than rationale for making crack cocaine illegal. I don’t think we should make it illegal. But a large gang of Luigi types doing their thing would certainly fill me with glee.
The problem with this perspective is that you have to define “porn” which proved highly vexing to 20th c US jurisprudence, leading to the current anything goes approach. Beyond that most of us think there are types of speech that aren’t directly “political” but that deserve protection, notably art. The dispensation you advocate here is basically the one in which “Ulysses” could be banned as pornographic.
It’s not hard to make a list of what is aesthetically/culturally/intellectually redeeming about Ulysses or Lady Chatterly’s Lover or Howl or even some execrable gangsta rap. pornography on the other hand, has only one purpose — material for sexual arousal. There are no redeeming values aside from that. Wouldn’t that be a basis for limiting its use to, say, fertility clinics?
The problem is then you have to define what is and isn’t porn. This doesn’t seem like a difficult equation to us now, but it was the subject of a lot of lawsuits in the 20th c. and part of why we have the current dispensation is that judges having to make that decision on edge cases wasn’t an optimal situation. But when those cases were decided no one anticipated anything remotely like a situation where anyone of any age could access unambiguously pornographic content 24/7 for free. So it may be that the new media reality will force a reconsideration in the courts.
Excellent piece. Reading the phrase “sinister glow of a screen” made me realize there was such a thing at one point, yet I can’t remember the last time it seemed that screens could still be sinister. Which is ironic given that screens today are, by all accounts, more destructive than ever. Is there a moment when the screen becomes so ubiquitous and/or positive-coded that we no longer can view it as menacing? Or perhaps I’m out in left field on this?
Just a note on the MacKinnon-Dworkin porn critique, as I had at one point immersed myself in radical feminist scholarship (and polemics). MacKinnon in particular, because she was (1) a Lukács inflected post-Marxist and (2) a law professor at U of M. Her book 'Toward a Feminist Theory of the State' is still worth a read, especially for post-liberals, left, right, and center. Don't let the title throw you; it was a critique of *liberal* law, first and foremost. There's gold in them there hills.
Her experience, like Dworkin's, among leftist men, was less than stellar. What she found, which corresponds to much of what you say here, was that for all their talk of equal rights, the majority were still world-class [sexual] objectifiers of women (it is in this anti-objectification stance that the rad-fem critique can find correspondence with thoughtful Christians, btw, for whom the objectification of any human being for whatever purpose is counted sinful).
People need to understand the true provenance of the claim "the personal is the political," understood wrongly these days. MacKinnon's critique of liberal law--as someone schooled in Marxism--noticed how, in economic matters, the public-private dichotomy (a modern invention) shielded certain malignant economic practices from "the sight of the law," by "the private sphere." Likewise, things like marital rape and domestic abuse were shielded from the sight of the law by "castle doctrine," a legal instantiation of the public-private dichotomy--a core principle in liberal law. Her theoretical solution, or at least interpretive framework, for combining, say, an unethical business practice and marital rape, was to direct her critique directly at this core dichotomy and expose liberal law in practice as "formal/legal equality" that concealed and reproduced unjust forms of power that were prior to the intervention of the law . . . or invisible to the law. Elon Musk and a homeless person, for example, might be equal in the eyes of the law. (One might recall Anatole France's quip that "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
Likewise, the unjust exercise of power by men over women (which, as a former Marxist, she theorized, inaccurately by somewhat usefully, as class domination, by one of two "sex-classes") was most effectively prevalent in the home . . . the man's castle, populated by his subalterns . . . iow the private sphere. Ergo, "the personal is the political." This quote, of course, has been transformed into all manner of insipid bullshit, but there it was.
I'm sure she would, and could (she's still kicking somewhere at age 80 or thereabouts), use this critique to overlay the whole free speech debate as well. She and Dworkin (and many others) went at the porn issue, based on the often horrible misogyny of actual porn and the exploitative relations of its production (seldom noted in these debates, as if this stuff just whiffed itself into existence from the ether), not as a criminal law issue, but a civil rights issue, remedial in theory by taking pornographers to court for harms caused.
In other words, and I went around the block on a recon to get here, this wasn't "a backlash from within liberalism to the post-’60s liberalization of American culture," but a pre-postliberal (left) critique. The current rad-fem critique of gender ideology (TERF means trans-exclusive radical feminists) can be understood here, as well, not mappable, if you will, on the liberal-conservative curve, but as a rejection of the (pop) poststructuralist erasure of feminism's primary political subject--the sex-class of (natal) women.
I’m tempted to say “you can’t legislate norms”, but I think a lot of the world I’ve lived in for the last 54 years *was* legislated (or at least interpreted by the judiciary) in ways that created those norms. ACLU vs Skokie isn’t just case law, it’s a story we now old-school liberals tell ourselves and others about how to treat opinions we abhor.
Scott Greenfield’s “I despise Khalil. Free him.” probably doesn’t pack the same punch if the ACLU and others didn’t fight for 50 years to get us to that point. That the ACLU itself wavered after Charlottesville, even without any different case law, became a signal to the larger culture.
Good points.
Just a note on the MacKinnon-Dworkin porn critique, as I had at one point immersed myself in radical feminist scholarship (and polemics). MacKinnon in particular, because she was (1) a Lukács inflected post-Marxist and (2) a law professor at U of M. Her book 'Toward a Feminist Theory of the State' is still worth a read, especially for post-liberals, left, right, and center. Don't let the title throw you; it was a critique of liberal law, first and foremost. There's gold in them there hills.
Her experience, like Dworkin's, among leftist men, was less than stellar. What she found, which corresponds to much of what you say here, was that for all their talk of equal rights, the majority were still world-class [sexual] objectifiers of women (it is in this anti-objectification stance that the rad-fem critique can find correspondence with thoughtful Christians, btw, for whom the objectification of any human being for whatever purpose is counted sinful).
People need to understand the true provenance of the claim "the personal is the political," understood wrongly these days. MacKinnon's critique of liberal law--as someone schooled in Marxism--noticed how, in economic matters, the public-private dichotomy (a modern invention) shielded certain malignant economic practices from "the sight of the law," by "the private sphere." Likewise, things like marital rape and domestic abuse were shielded from the sight of the law by "castle doctrine," a legal instantiation of the public-private dichotomy--a core principle in liberal law. Her theoretical solution, or at least interpretive framework, for combining, say, an unethical business practice and marital rape, was to direct her critique directly at this core dichotomy and expose liberal law in practice as "formal/legal equality" that concealed and reproduced unjust forms of power that were prior to the intervention of the law . . . or invisible to the law. Elon Musk and a homeless person, for example, might be equal in the eyes of the law. (One might recall Anatole France's quip that "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
Likewise, the unjust exercise of power by men over women (which, as a former Marxist, she theorized, inaccurately by somewhat usefully, as class domination, by one of two "sex-classes") was most effectively prevalent in the home . . . the man's castle, populated by his subalterns . . . iow the private sphere. Ergo, "the personal is the political." This quote, of course, has been transformed into all manner of insipid bullshit, but there it was.
I'm sure she would, and could (she's still kicking somewhere at age 80 or thereabouts), use this critique to overlay the whole free speech debate as well. She and Dworkin (and many others) went at the porn issue, based on the often horrible misogyny of actual porn and the exploitative relations of its production (seldom noted in these debates, as if this stuff just whiffed itself into existence from the ether), not as a criminal law issue, but a civil rights issue, remedial in theory by taking pornographers to court for harms caused.
In other words, and I went around the block on a recon to get here, this wasn't "a backlash from within liberalism to the post-’60s liberalization of American culture," but a pre-postliberal (left) critique. The current rad-fem critique of gender ideology (TERF means trans-exclusive radical feminists) can be understood here, as well, not mappable, if you will, on the liberal-conservative curve, but as a rejection of the (pop) poststructuralist erasure of feminism's primary political subject--the sex-class of (natal) women.
Very interesting, thanks! Honestly someone should write a book on the anti-porn alliance of the 80s in terms of how it anticipated the post liberal themes of the present…
Obviously, there are some departures, ie, the progress-narrative shared by Marxists, liberals, *and conservatives* (and most feminists, with perhaps Merchant, Shiva, & Mies eg as exceptional), but a lot of different footprints appear across the same ground.
And here is DBH's critique of a particular brand of "Christian" postliberalism.
https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/of-the-large-and-the-small-part-the-e85
We must protect political speech so the people have access to opinions and facts necessary to be informed citizens/voters. political speech has the redeeming social value of providing information to the people and letting people express themselves.
The main problem with porn is that unlike political speech it has ZERO REDEEMING OR POSITIVE QUALITIES. Making porn illegal is probably fruitless, but the rationale for doing it is no different than rationale for making crack cocaine illegal. I don’t think we should make it illegal. But a large gang of Luigi types doing their thing would certainly fill me with glee.
The problem with this perspective is that you have to define “porn” which proved highly vexing to 20th c US jurisprudence, leading to the current anything goes approach. Beyond that most of us think there are types of speech that aren’t directly “political” but that deserve protection, notably art. The dispensation you advocate here is basically the one in which “Ulysses” could be banned as pornographic.
It’s not hard to make a list of what is aesthetically/culturally/intellectually redeeming about Ulysses or Lady Chatterly’s Lover or Howl or even some execrable gangsta rap. pornography on the other hand, has only one purpose — material for sexual arousal. There are no redeeming values aside from that. Wouldn’t that be a basis for limiting its use to, say, fertility clinics?
I have heard Matt Walsh argue that porn isn't really 'speech' which sorta makes sense to me.
The problem is then you have to define what is and isn’t porn. This doesn’t seem like a difficult equation to us now, but it was the subject of a lot of lawsuits in the 20th c. and part of why we have the current dispensation is that judges having to make that decision on edge cases wasn’t an optimal situation. But when those cases were decided no one anticipated anything remotely like a situation where anyone of any age could access unambiguously pornographic content 24/7 for free. So it may be that the new media reality will force a reconsideration in the courts.
Excellent piece. Reading the phrase “sinister glow of a screen” made me realize there was such a thing at one point, yet I can’t remember the last time it seemed that screens could still be sinister. Which is ironic given that screens today are, by all accounts, more destructive than ever. Is there a moment when the screen becomes so ubiquitous and/or positive-coded that we no longer can view it as menacing? Or perhaps I’m out in left field on this?
Just a note on the MacKinnon-Dworkin porn critique, as I had at one point immersed myself in radical feminist scholarship (and polemics). MacKinnon in particular, because she was (1) a Lukács inflected post-Marxist and (2) a law professor at U of M. Her book 'Toward a Feminist Theory of the State' is still worth a read, especially for post-liberals, left, right, and center. Don't let the title throw you; it was a critique of *liberal* law, first and foremost. There's gold in them there hills.
Her experience, like Dworkin's, among leftist men, was less than stellar. What she found, which corresponds to much of what you say here, was that for all their talk of equal rights, the majority were still world-class [sexual] objectifiers of women (it is in this anti-objectification stance that the rad-fem critique can find correspondence with thoughtful Christians, btw, for whom the objectification of any human being for whatever purpose is counted sinful).
People need to understand the true provenance of the claim "the personal is the political," understood wrongly these days. MacKinnon's critique of liberal law--as someone schooled in Marxism--noticed how, in economic matters, the public-private dichotomy (a modern invention) shielded certain malignant economic practices from "the sight of the law," by "the private sphere." Likewise, things like marital rape and domestic abuse were shielded from the sight of the law by "castle doctrine," a legal instantiation of the public-private dichotomy--a core principle in liberal law. Her theoretical solution, or at least interpretive framework, for combining, say, an unethical business practice and marital rape, was to direct her critique directly at this core dichotomy and expose liberal law in practice as "formal/legal equality" that concealed and reproduced unjust forms of power that were prior to the intervention of the law . . . or invisible to the law. Elon Musk and a homeless person, for example, might be equal in the eyes of the law. (One might recall Anatole France's quip that "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
Likewise, the unjust exercise of power by men over women (which, as a former Marxist, she theorized, inaccurately by somewhat usefully, as class domination, by one of two "sex-classes") was most effectively prevalent in the home . . . the man's castle, populated by his subalterns . . . iow the private sphere. Ergo, "the personal is the political." This quote, of course, has been transformed into all manner of insipid bullshit, but there it was.
I'm sure she would, and could (she's still kicking somewhere at age 80 or thereabouts), use this critique to overlay the whole free speech debate as well. She and Dworkin (and many others) went at the porn issue, based on the often horrible misogyny of actual porn and the exploitative relations of its production (seldom noted in these debates, as if this stuff just whiffed itself into existence from the ether), not as a criminal law issue, but a civil rights issue, remedial in theory by taking pornographers to court for harms caused.
In other words, and I went around the block on a recon to get here, this wasn't "a backlash from within liberalism to the post-’60s liberalization of American culture," but a pre-postliberal (left) critique. The current rad-fem critique of gender ideology (TERF means trans-exclusive radical feminists) can be understood here, as well, not mappable, if you will, on the liberal-conservative curve, but as a rejection of the (pop) poststructuralist erasure of feminism's primary political subject--the sex-class of (natal) women.