Warning message for Harvard classes needed?

Here is a tasty bit of circular reasoning used by a feminist from Harvard’s law school, Diane Rosenfeld. Ms. Rosenfeld “teaches” a course on feminist theory. Rosenfeld went up against civil libertarian Nadine Strossen to “discuss” pornography.

She says that the students really want to discuss pornography but never “have the space to do it” except, apparently, in her alleged course. She claims, “There’s not a good way to talk about it, there’s not a forum in which to really talk back to pornography, to the extent that we consider pornography as speech.” Of course, this is rubbish. There have been endless discussions of pornography, endless conferences, forums and debates. There is no shortage of academic article, hysterical feminist diatribes, preachy sermons and energetic defenses of the material. What could Rosenfeld mean when she says no place exists to discuss the topic? In my experience what such comments tend to mean is that the other forums are not entirely controlled by feminist ideologues.

Right at the start Rosenfeld defined pornography as violence. She said: “Most pornography, as opposed to erotica, has an element of domination in it, or sexual coercion. And it usually, almost always, in studies that I’ve read, portrays women as always consenting to sex and if they didn’t consent initially coercion, or violence, or force is used.”

Her reasoning is that pornography depicts women as either willing to have sex of, if unwilling, that they are coerced into it. Considering that the depictions being discussed were, by definition, sexual then no other option was possible. If you depict sexual activity then that depiction must show either willing or “unwilling” (that is willing participants pretending they are unwilling) individuals. Nothing else is possible.

It worries me that someone is teaching law students with such bad reasoning. How can porn depict women “as always consenting” yet depict them as sometimes not consenting. Apparently “always” doesn’t actually mean “always”. It is equally bizarre that Rosenfeld thinks that her statement has any significant meaning. Since porn must depict either consenting or non-consenting individuals to state this adds nothing to the discussion. If I were to speak of a “towel that is either wet or dry” I have said nothing. I could say: “Ms. Rosenfeld is either in class or she isn’t.” That is verbiage, it conveys a thought of some kind, but it actually says nothing of importance or significance.

Rosenfeld also just lies about things. She said: “In the landscape of women’s legal rights to challenge male sexual violence we’re in really bad shape.” This is blatantly false unless one redefines “sexual violence” to mean something entirely different from what it actually means. But this is precisely what ideologues like Rosenfeld do. Because of this apparent cultural disregard for sexual violence she doesn’t think that complete bans on porn can be accomplished (oh, there is also that little matter of the First Amendment). Instead she says: “What I’m thinking we should do right now is have messages on pornographic websites that say, that are like warnings similar to warnings on cigarette packages… and have some kind of message that says this will perpetuate objectification of women and bad attitudes and might contribute to violence, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I’m working on the message right now.”

Somehow I don’t think a message about perpetuating the objectification of women will impact the desire to see sexual images. But I rest better knowing that Ms. Rosenfeld is ready to Nanny the rest of us with her silly message. I might be willing to swap with her, however. If she puts a warning message on her so-called courses then I won’t oppose her Nannyism. I’m working on the message right now. It should say something like this:

Warning this course is taught by an irrational profession, unable to follow logic or reasoning. It perpetuates a radical, feminist point of view disguised as social science cloaked in the law and surrounded by lies, falsehoods and gender stereotyping of men. It is dangerous to your civil liberties, First Amendment rights, and limited government. Consumption of the ideas in this course will not contribute to real life and are merely a propagandistic tool for the professor.

Rosenfeld says, “pornography eroticizes domination.” Alas, I fear evolution did that first. Humans evolved from species where domination and sexuality were intertwined. To a large degree humans have moved away from that form of sexuality. But pornography depicts domination, though not as persistently as Rosenfeld pretends, because humans already find it erotic. That is, people are not into domination because porn exists. The porn exists because people are already aroused by it. Rosenfeld has the cart before the horse.

She does admit “that message” is in music videos and popular culture as well. As she sees it, this message is pervasive through society. If its “all over”, why this obsession with pornography?

At another point Rosenfeld implies that erotic depictions are not “speech”. Yet she constantly harps about what she says is the “message” of pornography. While dismissing pornography as speech she is deriding the message it conveys. If it conveys a message then it is speech. For it to be “not speech” it must be void of any message. But that would give Rosenfeld nothing to say. At the core her problem is that she does believe it is speech but that it is speech that she wishes wasn’t speech.

A third bizarre statement made by Rosenfeld was that the “issue of pornography comes up in every class I teach”. The way it is worded she is saying that this is such an overriding concern of the students that they can’t wait to discuss the evils of porn. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that all her courses are in feminist ideology and nothing else. She leads a course pushing “Gender Violence, Law and Social Justice” as well as the panicky sounding “Child Exploitation, Pornography and the Internet” (a bugaboo that has been debunked by several major in-depth studies).

I won’t go into more of the discussion. If you are interested give it a listen. I will note that Nadine Strossen was excellent, and that she, unlike Rosenfeld, actually kept within the time limits given.

A film review about seven decades late.

I was going through some old video tapes from the library of a deceased friend. Among them was an unopened copy of George Cukor’s 1939 film, The Women by Clare Booth Luce.

Previously I had seen the last bits of it on television but this was my first chance to watch it from beginning to end. I can’t say how much I really disliked this film. I can’t tell you how true it was to the script of the play written by Luce but if it even vaguely resembles her original work I’m surprised she wasn’t lynched by women.

This had to be the most anti-woman film that I’ve seen. I’m sure there are others that are worse, I just haven’t seen them. I thought Luce’s characterization of her own sex was rather vicious and catty -- much like the women she portrays.

My first inkling of the direction the film would take was the way the characters are portrayed as they are introduced in the opening credits of the film. Each of them is presented first as some sort of barnyard animal which morphs into a woman. The names of the women are “Mrs Stephen Haines” or “Mrs. Howard Fowler” for instance. Their forenames are presented below that.

I don’t have any problems with “Mrs. Mary Haines” reflecting her married surname and her forename but, when the woman's forename disappears and she becomes merely an appendage of her husband, it is rather demeaning. I first assumed this was merely some oddity from the era in which it was filmed. After watching it, I wasn’t so sure.

Almost all the women in the film are cruel, vicious, and deceitful. There are no male characters shown in the entire film, they are only referred to by the women.

The men are apparently all cads as well, so perhaps Luce just despises people and not just women. But it was women that she portrayed so cruelly here.

Basically you have a story revolving around Mary Haines who discovers her husband is cheating on her. The women in the film are all horrible gossips who add their own lies to what they hear. The women never, never, never shut up and much of what they say is insulting to one another. If one leaves the room they get even worse than when she is with them.

Of course, none of the women have anything except their marriages around which to build an identity. They literally are appendages of their husbands here. The only one who has a job is the one stealing husbands and she is the only one who is introduced by her own name.

Mary loses her husband and much of it is the fault of her dear friends and their gossip. She eventually connives and plots and lies to get hm back. The one working woman has succeeded in marrying Stephen after Mary’s friends pushed circumstances so that a divorce was inevitable. But the new Mrs. Haines is unhappy and cheating already. When Mary reveals the dirty laundry in a manner that made it public Stephen calls for him to come to him. We see her rush toward the camera rubbing her hands in glee that she got her man back.

It isn’t that the film was just antiquated but that it was vicious. The plot was mediocre at best and the dialoge often was boring, silly, or stilted. It was rarely amusing though it was supposed to be a comedy. It was a film worthy of dislike on many levels.

What I found interesting is that conservatives seem to love the film. Yet the “family values” in this film was pretty atrocious. Everyone was dishonest, cheating was rampant, marriages were frivolous and the level of ethics was rather low.

But Luce converted to Catholicism and was obsessed with communism. She was an active Republican. Apparently that makes the film all right. Perhaps it is the vicious way that women are treated in the film that appeals to these conservatives. But I can’t see how the moral values of this film can be appealing to them.

But then much of the conservative agenda is purely driven by reactionary thinking. They assume that if the film insults women, that means it is not politically correct, therefore it must be good. I’m no fan of politically correct thinking but the excesses of the PC crowd are no excuse to support bigotry. And many conservatives seem to think that because the Left is pushing for excessive legislation on “hate crimes” that insulting minorities ,or various groups, is therefore a good thing.

As I see it, these conservatives are not capable of thinking for themselves. They are really letting the Left think for them. What the Left hates they love. What the Left loves they hate. They react, they don’t act. They merely do the opposite of the Left. Some on the Left are similar.

One of the virtues of libertarianism, when properly understood, is that the libertarian is as far from the conservate and he is from the socialist. We can’t simply see what the Left and Right do and take the opposite position on many issues. While Left and Right are more alike than they like to admit, there are just too many issues where they are polar opposites. We can’t “react” against both of them. We have to think through the issue and see how it relates to our first principles.

Libertarians are not reactionaries, nor can they be. Of course, I don’t simply mean people who label them self as libertarian since many of them are really conservatives in political drag.

My dislike of The Women is not simply some knee-jerk feminism on my part. For instance, I enjoyed Mona Lisa Smile (2003) with Julia Roberts. Yet many feminists hated it. Roberts was a professor at a woman’s college and was trying to encourage the women to be all they could be. One decides to drop a career opportunity in order to marry and the Roberts character berates her for it. But the woman gives a powerful defense of her right to choose to be a wife and housewife and mother. I thought it was great because it reaffirmed the right of individuals to make their own choices.

But The Women doesn’t do that. It doesn’t affirm the right of women to choose. It implies they have no ability to choose. In one dialogue there is some discussion about how men pursue women for sex and women allow men to catch them. And one character’s reply says it all: “What else do we have to offer them?” Indeed, in this film, they have nothing else to offer them.

In fact, the women had nothing to offer each other. Their support was all feigned while they were doing their level best to hurt each other. It was a film where the overwhelming feeling from the characters was hatred for each other. I don’t want to call the film sexist, I don’t care for the word since it implies “sexism” can only be directed against women. It was anti-woman. But I suspect that had the men been portrayed, we’d see that Luce didn’t like them very much either. So perhaps it is simply antihuman. I just know that I shan’t be watching again.