speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

Dichotomising Continua, Denying Ambiguity
Look at any photo or film of people making love; really making
love. The images may be diverse, but there is usually a sensuality
and touch and warmth, an acceptance of bodies and nerve
endings. There is always a spontaneous sense of people who are
there because they want to be, out of shared pleasure. Now look
at any depiction of sex in which there is clear force, or an unequal
power that spells coercion. It may be very blatant, with weapons
of torture or bondage, wounds and bruises, some clear humiliation,
or an adult's sexual power being used over a child. It may be
much more subtle: a physical attitude of conquerer and victim,
the use of race or class to imply the same thing, perhaps a very
unequal nudity, with one person exposed and vulnerable while
the other is clothed. In either case, there is no sense of equal
choice or equal power. 13
How would she categorise Bernini's sculpture of "Apollo and
Daphne," or Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew," or Manet's
"Dejeuner sur I'herbe"? Her definition would condemn any art,
literature, dance or drama realistically portraying our pervasive
sexualised inequality. Catherine MacKinnon would prohibit expression
depicting the sexually explicit subordination of women. Like
most such proposals, however, this disregards both author intent and
audience response. Would it not proscribe works in which the
creator deliberately evokes moral condemnation, such as Bizet's
"Carmen," Tolstoi's "Anna Karenina," Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles,"
or Bergman's "The Virgin Spring"? The British Advertising
Standards Authority makes equally arbitrary judgments in purporting
to distinguish the erotic from the sexually explicit. It censured
Goodmans Industries for posters promoting car audio systems by
posing amorous couples in the front seats of cars with the caption
"Britain's second favourite in-car entertainment." But when the
public complained about a Sun newspaper poster showing a woman
on a beach looking at a man in swimming trunks and saying "Is that a
Sun tucked up your shorts, or are you just pleased to see me?" the
Authority dismissed this as "representative of the editorial content of
The Sun."
Mari Matsuda would punish a speaker who directs a persecutorial,
hateful and degrading message of racial inferiority against a
historically oppressed group. 15 But she then carves out loopholes
that virtually give away the game. The exception for scientific
arguments would condone the racism of H.J. Eysenck, A.R. Jensen,
Richard Herrnstein, and William B. Shockley. 16 Her tolerance of
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