|
||||||
|
||||||
Free Speech Famous Speech by Erica Jong
|
|
|
|
|
Free Speech Famous Speech by Erica Jong
ACLU
Biennial Conference New York City - June 22, 1995
You know, I want to speak to
you today about the creative imagination and censorship and why censorship
is such a dire threat to creative people. But first I want to define some
terms. I think that one of the reasons that we are embroiled in this
tremendous argument about censorship and where we are vis-a-vis
censorship, the so-called Communications Decency Act that is being floated
in the Congress of the United States, is because we live in a time when we
have a very diverse population.
And interesting enough, calls for censorship always increase when the
population is extremely diverse and different standards prevail. This is
almost a given: When you have an elitist or traditional society in which
everybody agrees about who gets access to stuff, you don't have calls for
censorship. They only occur in a society in which there are many different
groups struggling for a place and trying to figure out whose word goes.
So it's very interesting. It's almost a product of the diversity of our
society that we have these new calls for censorship. And I think, although
it seems very depressing some days to open the paper and see so many of
the things that we've fought for going down the drain, it's in a way a
symbol of how much we have reached people, that there should be a worry
about pornography on the internet, too free an expression of ideas and so
on. So maybe there is a little bit of hope here.
Forty years ago Margaret Mead, who wrote beautifully about so many things
that were not in her anthropological purview, supposedly said that
censorship would always increase in a pluralistic democracy as each group
warred with the other, trying to figure out who had the right to be on top
and who had the right to say what other people could speak about.
I think we live in a time where the freedom to publish sexually oriented
material is increasingly coming under attack. Large publishing
conglomerates increasingly control all means of communication and the
forces of cultural reaction are becoming extremely well organized. The
brief cultural glasnost that we enjoyed in the sixties is already
beginning to seem quaint. And when you think about this century and you
think that it's the century that started with The Wasteland, with Prufrock,
with Ulysses, and with great fights to liberate literature, which came to
fruition just about 1962 when the Supreme Court liberated Tropic of
Cancer.
And then, in the sixties, a time that we all remember, probably well,
there was a moment when literature all over the world was changed by the
release of Tropic of Cancer. Suddenly authors didn't have to shut the
bedroom door when they wrote about sexuality. Suddenly, the tremendous
force and passion of sexuality inspired the whole culture and created a
kind of exuberance that went to other areas as well.
But that period of time was extremely narrow. I would say 20 years, 25
years. And then there was a tremendous desire for censorship again. And we
come to the end of the century, and we seem to be back in 1895. It seems
that we have made a complete circle.
And now the calls for censorship are coming not just from the right, but
also from the left. They are coming distressingly from feminists, members
of my own movement, who believe, some of them, like Andrea Dworkin and
Catharine MacKinnon, that there is no danger in their joining forces with
the forces of reaction. For example, Andrea Dworkin and Kitty McKinnon
joined the Meese Commission in 1986, which was very strange.
So there are feminists who are saying: We don't care about the First
Amendment; the First Amendment is sentimental; the First Amendment is
foolish; the First Amendment is romantic and Rousseauish. We don't need
that, a higher good is protecting women and protecting women against rape
and protecting women against being denigrated in print, in pictures, on
the internet and so on.
Well, let's look at that and what that has really accomplished in the last
few years. Basically what it has accomplished, is it has given guys like
Dole, like Gramm, a new vocabulary. And it's given people like Pat
Robertson a new vocabulary. Instead of having to say now they are for
censorship, because they want to keep all women barefoot and pregnant in
Christ, they can now say: We are protecting women against denigration and
abuse. And the reason that we want the Communications Decency Act is in
order to protect women.
In other words, they have taken the vocabulary that Dworkin and McKinnon
have given them and they've used it to drape their old barefoot and
pregnant ideas. So they've become very much harder to counter. All those
same old farts, the alter kockers in the Congress who sat there when Anita
Hill was being pilloried and tormented, and who didn't understand
anything, who didn't get it, they are getting up and saying: We are
protecting women against denigration and abuse.
So basically, what Dworkin and McKinnon have done for the evangelical
right, is that they've given them a new dialect that they can use to cloak
their very, very ancient ideas. And that's even more terrifying, I think,
than anything else that they've done and they seem not to understand that
they've done this.
I'm not so interested in talking to you about why it's important to have
free sexual expression in society, because I think probably many of us
here agree with that. But I want to talk about why people are so
interested in censoring expression when there are so many other problems
in our society that need addressing.
I think that people become hysterical about expression when they feel out
of control: They cannot stop rape. Children are raised in a way that they
are not parented, they are not educated, they are not given values, there
are too many of them, they are too poor, they are too ill, they are too
hungry. Instead of addressing these problems in society, problems that
come from overpopulation, problems that come from the breakdown of the
family, problems that come from the severe inequity of financial access
between races, between rich and poor, instead of addressing these
questions, which are the real questions, it's easier to address expression
and censorship. It's easier to get up and rave about how our society is
being corrupted by pornographic images on the internet. Much easier to
talk about that than it is to talk about the fact that there is inequality
economically and that because there is inequality economically, we have
people who are not socialized to be part of our society, and we don't know
what to do about that problem, so let's talk about censorship and
expression.
It is absolutely a red herring. It is total bullshit. It is like arresting
prostitutes instead of Johns.
Do you remember last year there was a mayor, I believe it was in Miami,
who decided that she was going to have the names of the Johns who
frequented prostitutes read on television and printed in the newspaper?
And I thought, what a sensible idea. Rather than arresting these women
whose financial lack of access has put them in this profession, which is
the only way they can make money, instead, expose the guys who are using
the prostitutes. Don't criminalize these poor women.
It never lasted very long. It spread to a couple of other cities, but
basically it didn't last very long. And we have a perfectly analogous
situation, for example, in the whole debate about pornography. If criminal
acts are perpetrated when pornography is made, if a child is injured, if a
woman is drugged and raped during the making of a pornographic film, why
not arrest these guys for rape or for child molestation. We have plenty of
laws on the books that protect against rape and child molestation.
But, no, that would mean that we were going to come down on organized
crime, which basically profits from pornography, and that's too hard.
Perhaps it's too hard because organized crime basically contributes to the
PAC funds of the people in the Congress. Who knows why? Maybe it's too
hard to do that. Better to jump on expression and say that free expression
is causing these problems.
So look at the underside of the problem. Look at this great debate that
we've been having about censorship, free expression, the internet. It's
not really about that. It's not really about whether it's good or bad to
have Tropic of Cancer out there so people can read it.
It is not really about any of the things that it claims to be about.
What it is really about is that people do not know how to stop the Mafia
from selling pornography in which children are abused, or they don't want
to do it because they profit in some way from it.
And so instead of going to the root of the problem, instead of exposing
the Johns, basically it's much much easier to beat up on a bunch of fuzzy
minded liberals who want to make little distinctions about what is right
and what is wrong, i.e. us.
And we play right into their tendency to smokescreen the real problems,
because as members of the left we're more interested in fighting each
other than in fighting our real enemies. We love to fight each other. We
love to make subtle distinctions and argue with each other.
And I think that we better really look at what's going on in our culture
and we better look at who profits from pornography. And we better look at
the laws that we already have and which ones are enforced and which ones
aren't. And we better stop letting them make it an issue of censorship
versus free speech, because really it's not about that. It's about
economics at the bottom. It's about the fact that women and children are
the lowest priority in this society. It's about the fact that women and
children's rights are cut first. It's about the fact that our teenage
daughters can't walk on the streets without danger of being raped. It's
about a total social breakdown and it has absolutely nothing to do with
expression, that is a smokescreen.
And suddenly, after having these endless conversations on TV with all
kinds of people from Phyllis Schafley to Claire Short -- the shadow
minister of labor, in England, who is calling for censorship of
pornography because it's a wonderful way for her to get elected -- it
suddenly occurred to me that this is not the issue at all. And I would ask
you, as my colleagues, to please address the basic issue.
Rather than arguing with the people who would censor, about whether or not
this is censorship. I would look at the root causes. I would look at the
root causes of why people participate in pornography. I would look at the
inequalities, the economic inequalities that underlie the system and I
would address those and not be jollied into this whole argument about
censorship. Because the truth is that anybody's political agenda,
if it is not your own, is obscene.
And basically censorship, once it gets on the books, is always used in
that way, to politically harass the dissenter. The reason I remain a First
Amendment fundamentalist, is because I understand as a feminist, as a Jew,
as a woman, as a woman who has been battered for expressing herself freely
in all her books, I understand the First Amendment protects the minority,
protects the dissenter, protects the woman, protects the witch.
Basically, I understand that unless you have a government of laws, rather
than a government of people, you cannot protect dissent. And I understand,
as a woman who probably would have been burned in the marketplace for
witchcraft only about 200 years ago, that I need the First Amendment more
than anybody does. And that even if I am repelled by child pornography or
Bob Guccione's productions, that I have to protect those things, because
essentially it's in my self-interest to do so.
So those are the terms of the debate, the way I would define it now, and I
would really invite your questions.
A short quote or
citation from part of the Free Speech famous speech provides an
illustration of, or allusion to, the famous events of the day during
the historical era of Erica Jong. Use the free Free Speech famous speech with
passages and text taken as direct citations from this famous speech
using the language used by Erica Jong in their own language within
the content of the speech. This well-known speech by Erica Jong,
famed for its powers of verbal and oral communication, makes
excellent use of the words, text and language. Use of native tongue
of Erica Jong within this famous speech makes it powerful and relevant to
historic occasions. A persuasive, motivational and inspirational
speech by Erica Jong. The celebrated Erica Jong had excellent powers of oration
which are highlighted forever in History by the Free Speech famous speech.
Free Speech Famous Speech by Erica Jong
|
|
