Page 180 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 13 February 1991
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When we look at rape we think of victims of crime. As we well know, in Canberra, as in other States of Australia, there are associations concerned with the victims of crime. In Canberra we have the Victims of Crime Assistance League - VOCAL. They are vocal in speaking out for those people who, through no fault of their own, have become the victims of crime. And many people in Australia and Canberra will become the victims of pornography, of X-rated videos, unless we do something about it.
In Queensland, a social worker presented information to the crime authority showing that there is terrible rape, murder and other sexual abuse going on in Aboriginal communities. She gave the reason for that appalling situation in Aboriginal communities as being the availability of X-rated videos. We have the responsibility to correct that wrong. We in Canberra have the responsibility to protect people in Canberra, and in Australia as a whole, from the violent effects of X-rated videos.
The Encyclopaedia of Feminism by Lisa Tuttle talks about pornography, and I will read what is said:
The modern debate on pornography grew out of concern with RAPE and other obvious instances of male VIOLENCE against women. Robin MORGAN coined the phrase "Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape" in 1974, and Susan BROWNMILLER made the same link, calling pornography "anti-female propaganda" in her important book about rape, AGAINST OUR WILL (1975). Among the first active antipornography groups were WOMEN AGAINST VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN (from 1976) and the London Revolutionary Feminist Group (1977).
Some women oppose official censorship but believe in taking direct action. Angry Women in England, and the Preying Mantis Women's Brigade in California have vandalized and burned down pornographic bookshops. Other individuals and groups have expressed their objections by picketing, public demonstrations, and spray-painting over offensive advertising, as well as organising on a local level to stop the sale of pornographic books, films and videotapes.
In 1985 Andrea DWORKIN and Catharine MacKinnon drafted a model antipornography law which departed from the usual tradition of relying on public standards to decide what was offensive, and instead confronted pornography as a violation of women's civil rights.
The first section contains a statement of policy which describes pornography as sex discrimination: "Pornography is a systematic practice of exploitation and subordination based on sex that differentially harms women. The harm of
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