tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/obscenity-11150/articles
Obscenity – The Conversation
2023-06-08T15:28:30Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/207102
2023-06-08T15:28:30Z
2023-06-08T15:28:30Z
Why a federal judge found Tennessee’s anti-drag law unconstitutional
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530696/original/file-20230607-25-wckg1a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C0%2C5051%2C3395&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A drag show in Nashville, Tenn., during Day One of Nashville Pride 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-view-of-drag-performances-on-the-equality-stage-news-photo/1405156791?adppopup=true">Mickey Bernal/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The drag shows will go on. At least for now.</p>
<p>On June 2, 2023, Judge Thomas Parker, a Trump-appointed federal district court judge in western Tennessee, ruled that Tennessee’s “Adult Entertainment Act” <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.tnwd.98391/gov.uscourts.tnwd.98391.91.0.pdf">violated the First Amendment’s free speech protection</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.capitol.tn.gov/Bills/113/Amend/HA0011.pdf">act had been passed</a> by the Tennessee Legislature and signed into law by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee in March 2023. The law gained <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/02/politics/tennessee-ban-drag-show-performances-governor/index.html">national attention</a> because it appeared designed to limit drag performances through regulation of “male and female impersonators.”</p>
<p>Parker provided several grounds for concluding that the law is unconstitutional. Using <a href="https://clasprofiles.wayne.edu/profile/hf1190">my experience as a First Amendment scholar</a>, below I explain how Judge Parker reached those conclusions and what they mean for Tennessee’s law. </p>
<h2>Speech protections</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/">First Amendment</a> of the U.S. Constitution protects, among other things, free speech. </p>
<p>As Parker noted at the beginning of his opinion, “Freedom of speech is not just about speech. It is also about the right to debate with fellow citizens on self-government, to discover the truth in the marketplace of ideas, to express one’s identity, and to realize self-fulfillment in a free society.” </p>
<p>Freedom of speech protects more than just speech, in the colloquial sense. It also protects many other ways that people express themselves, such as by waving a flag, marching in a parade or dancing. </p>
<p>Drag shows typically consist of various forms of protected speech, like dancing, acting, lip-syncing, telling jokes and wearing elaborate outfits designed to send messages. Thus, any law seeking to limit drag performances raises important questions about whether that law violates the First Amendment.</p>
<p>Not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. Freedom of speech does not include the right to engage in, for example, perjury, defamation or threats of violence. </p>
<p>Freedom of speech also doesn’t protect the narrow category of legally defined obscenity. <a href="https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep413/usrep413015/usrep413015.pdf">According to the Supreme Court</a>, something is legally obscene only if, applying contemporary community standards, a reasonable person would find that the work, when viewed holistically, appeals to prurient interests, contains patently offensive content, and lacks any serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530698/original/file-20230607-29-q5kmka.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A gray-haired man in a dark blazer, white shirt and red tie." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530698/original/file-20230607-29-q5kmka.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530698/original/file-20230607-29-q5kmka.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530698/original/file-20230607-29-q5kmka.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530698/original/file-20230607-29-q5kmka.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530698/original/file-20230607-29-q5kmka.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530698/original/file-20230607-29-q5kmka.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530698/original/file-20230607-29-q5kmka.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed the drag ban legislation that was overturned by a federal judge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/DragBanTennessee/8fcbde14c72e49c9a02f145a10459f6b/photo?Query=Bill%20Lee%20Tennessee%20drag&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=2&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/George Walker IV, File</a></span>
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<p>Thus, as Parker noted, “there is a difference between material that is ‘obscene’ in the vernacular, and material that is ‘obscene’ under the law,” and the law imposes “an exceptionally high standard” for what counts as legally obscene. </p>
<p>The clearest example of sexually explicit material that does not receive First Amendment protection is <a href="https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/citizens-guide-us-federal-law-child-pornography">child pornography</a>. But the precise boundaries of what counts as legal obscenity are vague. Many kinds of sexually explicit material are not deemed legally obscene because it has often been relatively easy for litigants to convince modern courts that the material in question has serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. </p>
<h2>Tennessee’s anti-drag law</h2>
<p>Tennessee’s <a href="https://www.capitol.tn.gov/Bills/113/Amend/HA0011.pdf">Adult Entertainment Act</a> would have made it a crime “to perform adult cabaret entertainment” on “public property” or anywhere it “could be viewed by a person who is not an adult.” </p>
<p>The act defined “adult cabaret entertainment” to include performances by “male or female impersonators” that are deemed “harmful to minors.” The act’s definition of “harmful to minors” came from <a href="https://codes.findlaw.com/tn/title-39-criminal-offenses/tn-code-sect-39-17-901/">existing Tennessee legal code</a>. That code was based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s criteria for legal obscenity.</p>
<p>However, that Tennessee legal code modified the standard of legal obscenity so that it applied specifically “for minors.” So, for example, rather than designating as obscene certain speech that lacked “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value,” full stop, Tennessee’s standard applied to certain speech that lacked “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors.” </p>
<p>On March 31, Parker <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/judge-halts-tennessees-drag-ban-law-rcna77743">temporarily blocked</a> the law from taking effect. His final ruling on June 2 permanently barred enforcement of it in Tennessee’s Shelby County on the grounds that it was an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. The reason his ruling applied only to Shelby County is that the sole defendant at that stage in the case was Shelby County’s district attorney, whose authority to enforce the law is limited to that county. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530699/original/file-20230607-27-to3dri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A person with fist raised, speaking in public outside a columned building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530699/original/file-20230607-27-to3dri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530699/original/file-20230607-27-to3dri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530699/original/file-20230607-27-to3dri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530699/original/file-20230607-27-to3dri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530699/original/file-20230607-27-to3dri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530699/original/file-20230607-27-to3dri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530699/original/file-20230607-27-to3dri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Drag artist Vidalia Anne Gentry at a news conference held by the Human Rights Campaign to draw attention to anti-drag bills in the state Legislature, Feb. 14, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/DragBanTennessee/b8a90a53e4d0486f85acda4375d5d73b/photo?Query=tennessee%20legislature&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=464&currentItemNo=1">John Amis/AP Images for Human Rights Campaign via AP, File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Unconstitutional restriction</h2>
<p>Parker determined that the law targeted more than just legally obscene speech; it also targeted speech protected under the First Amendment.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court has set very high standards for when regulation of protected speech can discriminate based on <a href="https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment1/content-and-viewpoint-based-regulation-of-speech.html">the speech’s content or viewpoint</a>. </p>
<p>Content discrimination restricts speech based on subject matter. Viewpoint discrimination restricts speech based on the position taken. So, for example, a ban on speech about elections would discriminate based on content, while a ban on speech that is negative about a particular political candidate would discriminate based on viewpoint.</p>
<p>Parker concluded that the Tennessee law discriminated based on both the speech’s content and its viewpoint. </p>
<p>He concluded that it discriminated based on content because it specifically targets “adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors” and discriminates based on viewpoint because it specifically targets the speech of “male and female impersonators.”</p>
<p>To make the point that the law discriminated based on viewpoint, Parker used an example of two Elvis impersonators dressed in revealing but nonobscene outfits. If one performer were male and the other female, the law would have made it more likely that the female Elvis impersonator would be subject to prosecution than the male Elvis impersonator. That discriminates against certain expressions of gender identity.</p>
<p>Laws that discriminate based on viewpoint are subject to the highest standard of judicial review, known as strict scrutiny, which requires laws to be “narrowly tailored” and “well defined.” Parker concluded that the law was neither. On this basis, he also concluded that it failed to meet the high standard of review and was unconstitutional. </p>
<p>He noted instead that on any plausible reading of the law, it “criminally sanctions qualifying performers virtually anywhere,” including those performing in “private events at people’s homes or arguably even age-restricted venues.” He also wrote that the law appeared designed for the “impermissible purpose” of “chilling constitutionally-protected speech.”</p>
<h2>Vague and overbroad</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/vagueness_doctrine">vague law can violate a person’s rights</a> because it can be hard to tell if one is breaking the law.</p>
<p>Parker found the “harmful to minors” standard unconstitutionally vague because what is harmful for different minors can change drastically depending on the minor. Consider, for example, the differences between a 5-year-old and a 17-year-old. He also concluded that the law was overbroad because it covered, or could reasonably be interpreted to cover, many types of protected speech.</p>
<h2>Looking ahead</h2>
<p>Parker’s ruling barred enforcement of the law only in Shelby County. However, his reasoning regarding the unconstitutionality of the law would apply equally well to any challenge brought against the law anywhere in Tennessee. Parker’s reasoning may also prove persuasive to judges assessing other anti-drag laws in other states.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207102/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Satta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The law passed by Tennessee legislators that banned many drag performances violated the First Amendment. A legal scholar explains the judge’s decision in the case.
Mark Satta, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Wayne State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/188681
2022-09-19T12:21:56Z
2022-09-19T12:21:56Z
Proposed federal abortion ban evokes 19th-century Comstock Act – a law so unpopular it triggered the centurylong backlash that led to Roe
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484620/original/file-20220914-25-zu0a8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5000%2C3335&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A sign at a July 2022 abortion-rights protest in Santa Monica, California, recalls the country's long history of trying to restrict access to reproductive health care. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/photo-of-lizelle-herrera-is-carried-during-a-protest-march-news-photo/1241944944?adppopup=true"> David McNew/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sen. Lindsey Graham has proposed a <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/09/13/lindsey-graham-national-abortion-restrictions-bill">national U.S. abortion ban</a> barring the procedure after 15 weeks. This push to restrict abortion access across the country follows a rash of new state laws passed by Republicans after the <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization/">Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade</a> in June. </p>
<p>If American history is any guide, these efforts will ultimately neither reduce abortions nor remain settled law. </p>
<p>I am a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=N4nlBvMAAAAJ&hl=en">historian</a> who has studied American culture and law in the wake of the 1873 Comstock Act – the first U.S. effort to restrict access to birth control and abortions. My research finds that previous state and federal efforts to regulate the sexual expression and reproduction of Americans led to unintended consequences – and, in the long term, these laws failed.</p>
<p>Already, I see signs that new anti-abortion laws are triggering a similarly undermining backlash. </p>
<h2>How ‘obscene’</h2>
<p>In 1873, Congress hurriedly passed a law making it <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1038/comstock-act-of-1873">illegal to send</a> “obscenities” through the U.S. mail. The legislation was branded the Comstock Act after its most vigorous proponent: <a href="https://artsci.case.edu/dittrick/online-exhibits/history-of-birth-control/contraception-in-america-1800-1900/anthony-comstocks-influence/">Anthony Comstock</a>, a U.S. postal inspector and evangelical Christian who believed sexual activity was a sin unless it occurred between a married man and woman for the purpose of procreation. </p>
<p>Birth control and substances used to induce abortion were included in the definition of “obscenity,” because Comstock and his supporters believed that life and death were God’s decisions. The law also banned mailing erotic images and literature. In Comstock’s expansive view, this category included <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43609326">images of athletes wearing tights</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478951/original/file-20220812-4591-btzygl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black-and-white drawing showing a rotund man with a mustache dragging a limp woman behind him to a judge's bench in a courtroom" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478951/original/file-20220812-4591-btzygl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478951/original/file-20220812-4591-btzygl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478951/original/file-20220812-4591-btzygl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478951/original/file-20220812-4591-btzygl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478951/original/file-20220812-4591-btzygl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478951/original/file-20220812-4591-btzygl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478951/original/file-20220812-4591-btzygl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1915 comic skewering the Comstock laws.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://dlib.nyu.edu/themasses/books/masses054">The Masses</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>State versions of the original Comstock Law soon swept the United States. By 1900, 42 states had passed <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/1906208">similar legislation</a> outlawing the production, sale, possession or circulation of “obscene” matter in their own jurisdictions. </p>
<p>These statutes ruled until the Supreme Court declared a right to privacy in medical decision-making nearly 100 years later, in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/381/479/">Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)</a>. </p>
<p>This is the same ruling that was cited eight years later to protect the right to have an abortion in the now defunct <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113">Roe v. Wade</a>.</p>
<h2>Impractical enforcement</h2>
<p>Comstock zealously enforced the laws he’d advocated for, both as a detective for the privately funded New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and as an inspector for the U.S. Post Office Department. In attempting to eradicate contraceptives – including condoms and early forms of diaphragms – Comstock organized the arrests of numerous defendants. </p>
<p>However, he had difficulty getting prosecutors, juries and judges to see the seriousness of many of the “crimes” he investigated. In the late 19th century, wealthier Americans already <a href="https://artsci.case.edu/dittrick/online-exhibits/history-of-birth-control/contraception-in-america-1800-1900/19th-century-artifacts/">regularly used birth control</a>. </p>
<p>“Of all the indictments prior to 1878, pending in the Court of General Sessions, not one has been tried the past year,” Comstock wrote in his 1879 annual report for the society.</p>
<p>In one of these cases, <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1878/07/11/80722044.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0">The New York Times reported</a>, Comstock was chastised by a New York City district attorney named Phelps for his “sharp practice” in investigating Dr. Sarah Blakeslee Chase. These included his posing as a client to obtain birth control products and repeatedly harassing the suspect. A grand jury threw out the case, stating that it “did not think it for the public good.” </p>
<p>Even when Comstock obtained a conviction, many defendants were pardoned immediately. </p>
<p>Enforcing new anti-abortion laws is similarly unpopular with many legal professionals today. Shortly after the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Dobbs, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/29/us/abortion-enforcement-prosecutors.html">more than 80 elected prosecutors</a> vowed not to bring indictments in cases involving abortion. </p>
<p>As they recognize, conservative courts in jurisdictions with zealous anti-abortion prosecutors – who <a href="https://www.al.com/news/2022/09/pregnant-women-held-for-months-in-one-alabama-jail-to-protect-fetuses-from-drugs.html">in some states are already enforcing new laws</a> – will soon be filled with a host of extremely sympathetic defendants: relatives who assist <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/14/10-year-old-abortion/">children who are victims of rape</a> in obtaining an illegal abortion, <a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/doctors-fearing-legal-blowback-are-denying-life-saving-abortions">doctors saving the lives of mothers at risk</a>, and those who choose to help <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/23/health/pregnant-woman-cancer-abortion.html">pregnant cancer patients</a> in making the best possible decisions for their health. </p>
<p>Enforcement of America’s new Comstock laws will likely once again make witnesses and defendants more sympathetic in the eyes of judges and jurors – and the public – undermining whatever support remains for these laws. </p>
<p>Beyond prosecutions, the tactics necessary to prevent women from obtaining abortions are even less practical today than they were in the late 19th century. </p>
<p>Enforcing anti-abortion laws may include <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/insterstate-travel-abortion-post-roe/">restricting interstate travel</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/medical-abortions-mifepristone-misoprostol-illegal.html">blocking interstate and international postal services</a> and attempting to <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/07/01/roe-battlefield-online-abortion-information">censor information</a> about sexual health. All of these would require laborious investigations and extensive cooperation from law enforcement agencies and private corporations who will likely have little desire to involve themselves in unpopular prosecutions. </p>
<p>And that’s assuming that any of these methods survive court challenges. </p>
<h2>Uniting disparate factions</h2>
<p>By the time of Anthony Comstock’s death in 1915, backlash to his zealous overreach had provoked <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537781420000304">growing solidarity</a> among activists and attorneys determined to defeat his agenda. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484616/original/file-20220914-6106-v30h3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman sits in a chair being tended to by a nurse, standing" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484616/original/file-20220914-6106-v30h3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484616/original/file-20220914-6106-v30h3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484616/original/file-20220914-6106-v30h3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484616/original/file-20220914-6106-v30h3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484616/original/file-20220914-6106-v30h3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484616/original/file-20220914-6106-v30h3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484616/original/file-20220914-6106-v30h3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Margaret Sanger at America’s first family planning clinic in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/birth-control-activist-margaret-sanger-consults-with-fania-news-photo/588649364?adppopup=true">Bain News Service/PhotoQuest/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women’s rights activists, including Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman and Mary Ware Dennett – formerly focused on competing goals and strategies – joined in common cause to repeal the Comstock laws. Their efforts led to the creation of new and powerful national civil liberties organizations, including Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union. Both used lobbying and lawsuits to contribute to the death of the original Comstock laws.</p>
<p>These groups are <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/aclu-planned-parenthood-file-lawsuit-against-ohio-over-abortion-rights/ar-AA11pwZM">still fighting</a> new abortion restrictions today. And once again, post-Dobbs, disparate individuals and groups are raising their voices in common cause. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/22/doctors-abortion-state-capitals-00052946">Obstetricians</a> from around the country have begun lobbying politicians and forming their own pro-choice political action committees for the first time. TikTok influencers like <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@0liviajulianna?lang=en&itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template">Olivia Julianna</a> are rallying young citizens to vote for pro-choice politicians. And <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/28/23186432/abortion-roe-scotus-howard-stern-my-favorite-murder-podcast">diverse podcasters</a>, from one-time provocateur Howard Stern to the hosts of the true crime show “My Favorite Murder,” are sharing resources with their listeners and expressing support for abortion rights. </p>
<h2>Ballot box backlash</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/25/upshot/female-voters-dobbs.html">Newly registered</a> and energized voters are turning out to support candidates and ballot initiatives that reflect the nation’s <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/07/06/majority-of-public-disapproves-of-supreme-courts-decision-to-overturn-roe-v-wade/">majority support for abortion rights</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/02/us/elections/results-kansas-abortion-amendment.html">Kansas roundly rejected an anti-abortion referendum in August 2022</a>. And more states will soon vote on state constitutional protections for abortion, <a href="https://www.wxpr.org/politics-government/2022-09-12/michigan-dems-hope-for-boost-from-abortion-ballot-initiative">including Michigan</a>.</p>
<p>The Comstock laws were not repealed quickly. And it’s now clear that American women’s right to reproductive health care remained tenuous after their demise. </p>
<p>Viewing the past as prologue, however, suggests that, once again, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/13/about-six-in-ten-americans-say-abortion-should-be-legal-in-all-or-most-cases-2/">unpopular</a> anti-abortion laws will cause unintended consequences that, in the long run, will render them both ineffective and ultimately futile.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188681/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Werbel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
US history suggests that Republican efforts to restrict reproductive rights will be difficult to enforce and widely reviled, undermining their effectiveness – and ultimately causing their demise.
Amy Werbel, Professor of the History of Art, Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/149197
2020-11-02T16:09:54Z
2020-11-02T16:09:54Z
The Chatterley Trial 60 years on: a court case that secured free expression in 1960s Britain
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366952/original/file-20201102-15-f5hnn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C1022%2C732&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Judge's copy: the copy of the novel belonging to the judge in the case was acquired by Bristol University in 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">By courtesy of the University of Bristol Library Special Collections DM2936, photograph by Jamie Carstairs.</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The paperback copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover pictured above is of great cultural significance. Leafing through the pages one discovers hidden gems: pencil markings, underlinings, marginal annotations. Accompanying the book are sheets of headed stationery from the Old Bailey, containing handwritten notes relating to the novel along with a clumsily hand-stitched fabric bag – apparently made not to protect the book but rather the person carrying it by obscuring its title.</p>
<p>It’s the “judge’s copy” of the book, used by Mr Justice Lawrence Byrne who presided over the 1960 Lady Chatterley trial in which DH Lawrence’s famous novel was at the centre of a test of Britain’s new censorship law. </p>
<p>The University of Bristol’s acquisition of the so-called “judge’s copy” in 2019 was an important moment and, having assisted in making the case for its new home to be in the <a href="https://www.bristol.ac.uk/law/news/2019/lady-chatterleys-lover-aquired.html">university’s special collections</a>, examining it for the first time was thrilling. Now, on the <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/october/d-h-lawrence-lady-chatterleys-lover-trial.html">60th anniversary</a> of the trial it is timely to consider this intriguing volume. But first a reminder of the case with which it was connected.</p>
<p>In August 1960, by pre-arrangement, the police were handed copies of the unexpurgated Lady Chatterley by its publisher. Following this, Penguin Books Limited was charged with publishing an obscene article under the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/7-8/66/contents/enacted">Obscene Publications Act 1959</a>. </p>
<p>The 1959 act aimed both to strengthen the law concerning pornography and to protect literature. It created the publishing offence (the handing over constituted publication) and provided that material was “obscene” if its effect, taken as a whole, was such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who were likely to read, see or hear it. </p>
<p>But a public good defence meant a conviction would not result if it were proved that publication was justified “in the interests of science, literature, art or learning, or of other objects of general concern”. The Lady Chatterley trial was a test of the act; in particular, would the defence protect creative works?</p>
<p>In the courtroom, while the defence did not accept the book was obscene, their focus was on its literary merit. A line up of 35 witnesses (women and men) were called on behalf of publisher Penguin to speak in favour of the book, including authors, academics, clergy, a 21-year-old English graduate and a headmaster. The prosecution played a minor role, calling only one witness and sometimes putting no questions to those who appeared for the defence. In the end, after three hours of deliberation, the jury of three women and nine men returned a unanimous verdict. Penguin was acquitted.</p>
<h2>Judge’s copy</h2>
<p>Which brings us back to Lady Chatterley and, in particular, the book in the fabric bag. Copies of the unexpurgated novel were circulating before 1960, meaning some of those involved in the case had long been familiar with it – the first defence witness had read it in about 1940. The police had acquired a marked-up proof copy of the Penguin book before the publisher’s handover.</p>
<p>The lawyers had taken great pains to study the 1960 text in preparing for the trial. Defence files show that Penguin’s solicitors undertook an analysis not entirely dissimilar to that on show in the “judge’s copy” with its accompanying notes. As prosecutor <a href="https://spartacus-educational.com/Mervyn_Griffith-Jones.htm">Mervyn Griffith-Jones</a> demonstrated in his opening to the jury, where he observed that the words “fuck” or “fucking” occurred at least 30 times within the novel’s pages, so too had the Crown.</p>
<p>The jury were given copies in court, just before the trial began. At the end of the first day, the judge adjourned the case, directing them to read the book but forbidding them from taking it home. After a gap of several days the proceedings resumed and the trial continued for a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1960/11/19/the-lady-at-the-old-bailey">further five days</a>.</p>
<p>Reports tell how copies of the novel were handed round the court during the trial, to the jury, witnesses and to the judge, with the players occasionally leafing through the pages in search of a particular passage. The judge, however, was given a copy of the book at the same time as the jury first received it, on day one of the trial, before proceedings got underway. </p>
<h2>Lady Byrne</h2>
<p>It seems that at some point Byrne shared the novel with his wife, as we are told that most of the markings in the book and all of the separate notes are in <a href="https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/items_export_deferral/Expert%27s%20statement_Chatterley.pdf">Lady Dorothy Byrne’s hand</a>, with a few annotations apparently made by her husband. Accounts suggest she worked on the text before the trial (or perhaps during the jury’s reading days), with her husband adding notes during proceedings as she sat next to him. Lady Byrne is <a href="https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/items_export_deferral/Expert%27s%20statement_Chatterley.pdf">also credited with making the bag</a>.</p>
<p>This all suggests that the couple worked together, with Lady Byrne taking the leading role. Moreover, they did so despite Griffith-Jones’s <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/10/newsid_2965000/2965194.stm">question to the jury</a> on day one of the trial: “Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?” </p>
<p>How then did the “judge’s copy” journey to Bristol? The Byrne family auctioned it in 1993. It came up for sale again in 2018, selling to a private individual in the US. In an attempt to keep it in the UK, the book was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/13/judges-copy-of-lady-chatterleys-lover-temporarily-barred-from-leaving-uk">placed under temporary export deferral</a> and expressions of interest were sought. At Bristol we put together a case to acquire the book and fundraising efforts began, with contributions coming from organisations and individuals.</p>
<p>As a result, the “judge’s copy”, notes and bag now reside alongside the Penguin Archive and <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/september/lady-chatterley-.html">trial papers of Michael Rubinstein</a>, Penguin’s solicitor. Given <a href="https://specialcollections.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2020/10/30/sixty-years-since-lady-c-the-lady-chatterleys-lover-trial-and-the-penguin-book-archive/">its history</a>, however, I wonder if we might begin to reconsider how we refer to this Lady Chatterley. Because of her work, the judge’s wife seems to deserve credit; it is not only the “judge’s copy” it is also very much “Lady Byrne’s copy”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149197/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lois Bibbings is a member of both Bristol Radical History Group and Bristol's Remembering the Real World War 1.</span></em></p>
The obscenity trial was a landmark decision that provided a “public good” defence for serious literature.
Lois Bibbings, Professor of Law, Gender and History , University of Bristol
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/107850
2019-01-11T11:45:58Z
2019-01-11T11:45:58Z
The forgotten legacy of gay photographer George Platt Lynes
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250989/original/file-20181217-185261-1lbgb1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A self-portrait of George Platt Lynes from 1952. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gelatin silver print, 7-5/8 × 9 in. From the Collections of the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. © Estate of George Platt Lynes.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>From the late 1920s until his death in 1955, George Platt Lynes was one of the world’s most successful commercial and fine art photographers. </p>
<p>His work was included in one of the first exhibitions to showcase photography at the Museum of Modern Art in 1932, and he showed at the extremely popular Julien Levy Gallery in New York City. His photographs for Vogue and Bazaar, his shots of dancers at the School of American Ballet and his portraits of some of the most important creative figures of his era were lauded for their innovative use of lighting, props and posing. </p>
<p>But in his view, his most important works were his nude photographs of men. Yet during Lynes’ life, few even knew of their existence. </p>
<p>Because of prevailing attitudes toward homosexuality, which included <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/we-colonials-sodomy-laws-america/">criminalization</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-american-charlie-hebdo-36528">strict obscenity laws</a>, Lynes – himself a gay man – had to keep this incredibly influential and important body of work hidden away. </p>
<p>These nuanced photographs of the male form ended up sparking a friendship between Lynes and <a href="https://kinseyinstitute.org/about/history/alfred-kinsey.php">Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey</a>, the founder of the Institute for Sex Research, later renamed the Kinsey Institute, at Indiana University. Upon his death, Lynes gifted over 2,300 negatives and 600 photographs to the Institute for Sex Research. </p>
<p>The dynamic between Lynes’ commercial and fine art photographs, along with the relationship between Lynes and Kinsey, is the subject of a new exhibition I recently co-curated at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields titled “<a href="https://discovernewfields.org/calendar/sensualsexualsocial-photography-george-platt-lynes">Sensual/Sexual/Social: The Photography of George Platt Lynes</a>.” </p>
<p>On view through Feb. 24, 2019, the exhibition features many pieces that have never been displayed before. They fill a gap in art history and serve as a window into a time in American culture when gay men like Lynes faced obstacles to unfettered self-expression. </p>
<h2>Groundbreaking photography</h2>
<p>George Platt Lynes was born in New Jersey in 1907 and attended the Berkshire School in Massachusetts, graduating in 1925.</p>
<p>As a young adult, Lynes had a passing interest in photography, but his dream was to be a writer: he published a literary journal called The As Stable Publications and opened up a bookstore in New Jersey. Neither endeavor proved fruitful, so when he happened to inherit a studio’s worth of photographic equipment from a friend, he decided to focus on photography as a career.</p>
<p>One of Lynes’ friends from his Berkshire School days was Lincoln Kirstein, who had recently co-founded the School of American Ballet with choreographer <a href="https://www.nycballet.com/Explore/Our-History/George-Balanchine.aspx">George Balanchine</a>. Lynes and Kirstein became reacquainted and Lynes became the primary photographer for the school, later to be called the New York City Ballet, for 20 years.</p>
<p>Beginning with his ballet photography, Lynes would follow an impulse to upend established norms.</p>
<p>Whereas most photographers would take photos of dancers during their performances, Lynes would take photos of the dancers off-stage, often bringing them to his studio. He wanted to encourage the viewer to focus on the interplay of light, shadows and the body. These images are considered to be some of the finest ballet photographs ever taken.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253308/original/file-20190110-43529-1k0v308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253308/original/file-20190110-43529-1k0v308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253308/original/file-20190110-43529-1k0v308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253308/original/file-20190110-43529-1k0v308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253308/original/file-20190110-43529-1k0v308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253308/original/file-20190110-43529-1k0v308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253308/original/file-20190110-43529-1k0v308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253308/original/file-20190110-43529-1k0v308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Platt Lynes’ 1951 photograph of ballet performer Jean Babilee in ‘L'Amour et son Amour.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gelatin silver print, 10-1/2 × 12-1/2 in. From the Collections of the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. © Estate of George Platt Lynes.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“I consider that George Lynes synthesized better than anyone else the atmosphere of some of my ballets,” <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1478387">Balanchine wrote</a> after Lynes passed away. “[His] pictures will contain, as far as I am concerned, all that will be remembered of my repertory in a hundred years.” </p>
<p>Lynes’ fashion photographs were no less groundbreaking. He started photographing for fashion magazines in 1933 to supplement his income. But through his innovative use of props and lighting, he soon found himself one of the most sought-after photographers in the industry. </p>
<p>Inspired by <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/hd_surr.htm">Surrealists</a>, Lynes would juxtapose seemingly disparate ideas and objects to create something new. He posed models in odd, sometimes humorous settings. <a href="https://bofferdingnewyork.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/img_1555.jpg">In one image</a>, included in the exhibition at Newfields, Lynes has placed a basket full of hay and birds atop the head of a model who wears a glittering, beautifully tailored dress, and displays her perfectly manicured nails. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253309/original/file-20190110-43541-1idieoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253309/original/file-20190110-43541-1idieoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253309/original/file-20190110-43541-1idieoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253309/original/file-20190110-43541-1idieoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253309/original/file-20190110-43541-1idieoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253309/original/file-20190110-43541-1idieoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253309/original/file-20190110-43541-1idieoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253309/original/file-20190110-43541-1idieoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A George Platt Lynes’ photograph that appeared in a 1948 issue of Vogue.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gelatin silver print, 10-1/4 × 12-3/4 in. From the Collections of the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. © Estate of George Platt Lynes.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lynes often shot fashion spreads in his apartment in Manhattan, which was lavishly decorated and provided a more personalized atmosphere than photographs shot in a studio. Lynes was also a master darkroom manipulator, working with his negatives and prints to achieve the look he wanted. </p>
<p>Portraiture was another of Lynes’ specialties. Lynes had an active social life, and was known for throwing lavish parties that were attended by the stars of the avant-garde. </p>
<p>He was able to capture in his photographs some of the most influential creative people of his time, including writer <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/tennessee-williams">Tennessee Williams</a>, artist <a href="https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/marc-chagall">Marc Chagall</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Igor-Stravinsky">composer Igor Stravinsky</a>. He did so with great attention to detail, using props and creating individualized sets for his subjects.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253310/original/file-20190110-43510-1g98lld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253310/original/file-20190110-43510-1g98lld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253310/original/file-20190110-43510-1g98lld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253310/original/file-20190110-43510-1g98lld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253310/original/file-20190110-43510-1g98lld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253310/original/file-20190110-43510-1g98lld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253310/original/file-20190110-43510-1g98lld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253310/original/file-20190110-43510-1g98lld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Platt Lynes’ 1944 portrait of writer Tennessee Williams.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gelatin silver print, 7-3/8 × 9 in. From the Collections of the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. © Estate of George Platt Lynes.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Lynes’ true passion</h2>
<p>Yet all along, Lynes had been taking photographs of the male nude.</p>
<p>The naked male form has long been represented in fine art, mostly appearing in religious, athletic or classical contexts. Lynes’ interest in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/18/arts/design/the-body-beautiful-the-classical-ideal-in-ancient-greek-art.html">Greek classical representation of the male body</a> – especially his focus on musculature – grounded his male nude photos in an accepted aesthetic tradition. But Lynes’ photographs also present the male form as beautiful and desirable, adding a completely new element of homoeroticism.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253311/original/file-20190110-43510-5ulo9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253311/original/file-20190110-43510-5ulo9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253311/original/file-20190110-43510-5ulo9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253311/original/file-20190110-43510-5ulo9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253311/original/file-20190110-43510-5ulo9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253311/original/file-20190110-43510-5ulo9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253311/original/file-20190110-43510-5ulo9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253311/original/file-20190110-43510-5ulo9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A male nude taken by George Platt Lynes in 1930.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gelatin silver print, 6-1/4 × 4-1/2 in. From the Collections of the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. © Estate of George Platt Lynes.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lynes’ models included his friends, lovers and studio assistants. Some were professional paid models, including a young <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yul-Brynner">Yul Brynner</a>, who posed for photographers and drawing classes in New York to make ends meet.</p>
<p>Lynes took considerable risk in photographing the male nude and his models also faced a number of potential repercussions.</p>
<p>After World War II, <a href="https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/history.aspx">there was an increase in policing and crackdowns on LGBTQ communities</a>. If he publicly exhibited these works, he might compromise his ability to get commercial work and could face criminal penalties.</p>
<p>But he also identified this body of work as his favorite. “I’ve done my best work when I’ve worked only for pleasure, when I’ve not been paid, when I have a completely free hand, when I’ve had a model who has excited me in one way or another,” he wrote to his partner, Monroe Wheeler, in 1948.</p>
<h2>A friendship forms</h2>
<p>In the late 1940s, Dr. Alfred Kinsey had just published “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=pfMKrY3VvigC&printsec=frontcover&dq=sexual+behavior+in+the+human+male&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjgs7S2q-PfAhUE0FkKHc_JB3sQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=sexual%20behavior%20in%20the%20human%20male&f=false">Sexual Behavior in the Human Male</a>” and was busy building his collection of material culture related to human sexuality.</p>
<p>Kinsey first learned of Lynes’ work through writer Glenway Westcott. Westcott, Monroe Wheeler and Lynes had been in a ménage à trois relationship for many years, and Westcott thought that Lynes’ images of male nudes might be of interest to Kinsey. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253314/original/file-20190110-43544-1n5cjsx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253314/original/file-20190110-43544-1n5cjsx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253314/original/file-20190110-43544-1n5cjsx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=710&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253314/original/file-20190110-43544-1n5cjsx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=710&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253314/original/file-20190110-43544-1n5cjsx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=710&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253314/original/file-20190110-43544-1n5cjsx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253314/original/file-20190110-43544-1n5cjsx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253314/original/file-20190110-43544-1n5cjsx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A George Platt Lynes photograph of anonymous models from 1952.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gelatin silver print, 8 × 10 in. From the Collections of the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. © Estate of George Platt Lynes.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kinsey began corresponding with Lynes about acquiring his photos, and over the years the two men developed a friendship. Lynes was grateful for Kinsey’s work to normalize the diversity of human sexuality. He was thrilled to play a small part: “The big interest of the moment is Kinsey – in all our lives,” he wrote to his mother in 1949. “I had a three hour interview with him last Sunday … discussing artists, the erotic in art, and suchlike. … It’s an extraordinary job he is doing.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1038/comstock-act-of-1873">The Comstock Act</a>, which criminalized the sending of “obscene” materials through the United States Postal Service, was still in effect. So sometimes Kinsey would travel to New York, where Lynes was living, to transport the materials by hand. Other times, they would use private, expensive shipping companies to ship the materials. </p>
<p>When Lynes was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1955, he thought about his legacy and destroyed some of the negatives and prints from his commercial work. He wanted the work that he would be best known for to be the work that was also the most meaningful to him, which were his male nudes. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253312/original/file-20190110-43535-5duula.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253312/original/file-20190110-43535-5duula.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253312/original/file-20190110-43535-5duula.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253312/original/file-20190110-43535-5duula.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253312/original/file-20190110-43535-5duula.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253312/original/file-20190110-43535-5duula.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253312/original/file-20190110-43535-5duula.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253312/original/file-20190110-43535-5duula.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1945 George Platt Lynes photograph of an anonymous model.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gelatin silver print, 7-1/2 × 9 in. From the Collections of the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. © Estate of George Platt Lynes.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kinsey offered the Institute for Sex Research as a possible repository for his work. Lynes was adamant about keeping his models’ identities confidential so they wouldn’t suffer any repercussions for posing nude, and Kinsey agreed. Today, the Kinsey Institute holds the largest collection of Lynes’ work outside of the Lynes estate.</p>
<p>Lynes had a unique command of formal aspects of photography – especially lighting – that made him an innovative technical artist. His choice of subject matter was pivotal to his aesthetic, which remains evocative and timeless. Presenting all of his subjects with dignity, grace and compassion is one of the most enduring aspects of his legacy. </p>
<p>Subsequent generations of photographers acknowledge how important Lynes is to the history of photography. But because of the times in which he lived – and the way he hid the work that he was the most proud of – his name became less familiar to the general public. </p>
<p>Through the preservation of his work by the Kinsey Institute, and the exhibition at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, Lynes’ photographs will be seen and understood as the important and influential body of work that it is.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107850/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>"Sensual/Sexual/Social: The Photography of George Platt Lynes" is organized by the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields and the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. The exhibition was curated by Rebecca Fasman, Manager of Traveling Exhibitions at the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University, Robin Lawrence, Manager of Curatorial Affairs, and Anne Young, Manager of Rights and Reproductions at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields.</span></em></p>
Lynes was a highly sought-after commercial and fashion photographer in the 1930s and 1940s. But he had to keep his most important body of work hidden away.
Rebecca Fasman, Manager of Traveling Exhibitions at the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/87704
2017-11-20T14:45:09Z
2017-11-20T14:45:09Z
How huge gamble by Lady Chatterley lawyers changed obscenity law forever
<p>Jeremy Hutchinson, who has died at 102, was one of England’s finest criminal barristers. He was counsel of choice for some of the most high-profile cases of his era. He defended the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/nov/13/lord-hutchinson-of-lullington-obituary">likes of</a> Christine Keeler and Great Train robber <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/10Cjx03LCcgjhskBQ9cC9tR/charlie-wilson">Charles Wilson</a> and also obscenity cases against novels like Fanny Hill and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. </p>
<p>Later known as Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, his role defending Penguin Books after it published the unexpurgated version of the DH Lawrence classic is particularly memorable. It remains the landmark case in British obscenity law. </p>
<p>But look at the details and something extraordinary emerges: Penguin’s decision to publish 200,000 copies on the advice of Hutchinson and joint lead counsel Gerald Gardiner was a massive gamble. It set up a case that were it not for the incompetence of the prosecution could easily have gone the other way. </p>
<h2>Obscenity and England</h2>
<p>Lady Chatterley’s Lover had only ever been legally published in abridged versions in the UK, starting in 1932. Though by 1960 the unexpurgated edition was sold in Europe and America and could be obtained under the counter in London if you knew where to go, Penguin co-founder Allen Lane <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/penguin-special-the-life-and-times-of-allen-lane/author/lewis-jeremy/">wanted to</a> publish a cheap paperback of the full thing. </p>
<p>The idea was to put it out at 3s 6d, the same price as ten cigarettes, to make it affordable for the “young and the hoi-polloi”. The excuse was the 30th anniversary of Lawrence’s death from tuberculosis at the age of 45. </p>
<p>When Penguin consulted Hutchinson and Gardiner, the lawyers retreated to reflect. A trial under the new <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/7-8/66/contents">Obscene Publications Act</a> seemed inevitable. The act’s first paragraph stated that material will be deemed obscene if it contains elements that tend as a whole “to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely … to read, see or hear” it. </p>
<p>The act included a new defence in cases where the offending segments were “for the public good on the ground that [they are] in the interests of science, literature, art or learning”. In consultation with several literary experts, Hutchinson and Gardiner felt most of the racy scenes and bad language – including (30) “fucks” and (14) “cunts” – could fall under this defence. Lawrence, after all, was one of the most highly regarded writers of his era. </p>
<p>Hutchinson <a href="https://www.hodder.co.uk/books/detail.page?isbn=9781444799736">was concerned</a> about page 258, however, where anal sex crops up – albeit obliquely. It has Oliver Mellors, the lover in the book’s title, trying to divorce his wife Bertha Coutts and being accused by her “of all unspeakable things”. Clifford Chatterley writes a letter to his own wife saying that Coutts has aired details about her marriage to Mellors which are “usually buried down in the deepest grave of matrimonial silence”. </p>
<p>But, he comments: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Humanity has always had a strange avidity for unusual sexual postures, and if a man likes to use his wife, as Benvenuto Cellini says, ‘in the Italian way’, well that is a matter of taste. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lady Chatterley has pause for thought:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Connie remembered the last night she had spent with [Mellors], and shivered. He had known all that sensuality, even with a Bertha Coutts! It was really rather disgusting. It would be well to be rid of him, clear of him altogether. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her friend Duncan Forbes then makes light of it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If he’s made love to his wife all ends on, hasn’t he a right to? She ought to be proud of it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While homosexual anal sex between consenting men was legalised <a href="https://theconversation.com/buggery-bribery-and-a-committee-the-story-of-how-gay-sex-was-decriminalised-in-britain-79597">50 years ago</a> in the UK, the heterosexual equivalent <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/44/contents">became legal</a> only at the millennium in England and Wales and was highly illegal in 1960. (The 2001 film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0243155/">Bridget Jones’ Diary</a> celebrated legalisation with a pretty explicit scene between Renée Zellweger and Hugh Grant.)</p>
<p>Illegal acts could still potentially use the public good defence, but Hutchinson feared it made the case much harder to win. Gardiner and the experts at the meeting dismissed his fears. In these more innocent times, they were betting that the prosecution wouldn’t grasp the point and omit it from their case. Hutchinson agreed to go ahead and advised Penguin accordingly. </p>
<h2>Your witness</h2>
<p>The defence called 35 professors of literature, authors, journalists, editors, critics, publishers and child education experts, and four Anglican churchmen. Each declared the book had sufficient literary merit to deserve publication for the public good. (Those less convinced of Lawrence’s genius begged off – Enid Blyton declared she had never read the book and “my husband said no at once”.)</p>
<p>Lead prosecutor Mervyn Griffith-Jones cross-examined only 14 of the 35. He lost most of those rounds, and sometimes his temper in the process. It was only in his closing speech he said to the jury: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Would you look at page 258. It is a passage which I have not – and I do not think anybody has – referred to during the course of cross-examination, or indeed at any time during this trial. It … describes what is called the ‘night of sensual passion’.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He read out the whole passage remarking: “Not very easy, sometimes, not very easy, you know, to know what in fact he is driving at in that passage.”</p>
<p>It’s not clear how many jurors understood the passage; some were said to be <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/the-trial-of-lady-chatterley-regina-v-penguin-books-limited/author/rolph-c-h/">visibly shocked</a>. Certainly Griffith-Jones had missed the significance entirely, having referenced it only to underline the book’s general depravity. Mr Justice Byrne summed up with no reference to anal sex either. The issues were, he said, promiscuity and adultery described in words that were “normally obscene”. </p>
<p>The jury returned in three hours and found Penguin not guilty. Neither the clergy nor any of the other experts had been examined on anal sex and it is not clear whether they realised they were implicitly defending it or not. A watershed in British obscenity law had been achieved without any discussion about the illegal sex acts central to the novel. </p>
<p>In the wake of this case, publishing in Britain became considerably more liberal. Had Hutchinson not agreed to advise Penguin to take that extraordinary gamble, things could have panned out very differently.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87704/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sue Rabbitt Roff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The late QC Jeremy Hutchinson only got away with it because the prosecution weren’t quicker on the uptake.
Sue Rabbitt Roff, Part time tutor in Medical Education, University of Dundee
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/70374
2016-12-21T23:28:06Z
2016-12-21T23:28:06Z
‘The 120 Days of Sodom’ – counterculture classic or porn war pariah?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151305/original/image-20161221-4100-rshfq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The original scroll on which the Marquis de Sade wrote the draft of 'The 120 Days of Sodom.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/France-Sade-Script/b052f881322a46fcb40956b212a63df8/10/0">Christophe Ena/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past year, politicians on the right have railed against the supposed tyranny of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/30/political-correctness-how-the-right-invented-phantom-enemy-donald-trump">political correctness</a>. </p>
<p>Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that arguably the most <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-translated-the-marquis-de-sades-most-obscene-work-heres-how-67743">obscene</a> and offensive work of fiction ever written – a work that claims to “say everything” – is now being sold in America as a mainstream classic for the first time. My translation of the Marquis de Sade’s “<a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/540916/the-120-days-of-sodom-by-the-marquis-de-sade-translated-with-an-introduction-by-will-mcmorran-and-thomas-wynn/">The 120 Days of Sodom</a>” with Thomas Wynn is the first in 60 years.</p>
<p>Sade has had a long and colorful history in the United States, and his controversial works were at the center of midcentury debates about censorship. Later, they became a flashpoint in the “porn wars” of the 1970s and 1980s. Now American readers will get to decide whether Sade’s most extreme novel has truly become a literary classic. </p>
<h2>A 120-day orgy</h2>
<p>In 1785, the Marquis de Sade wrote “The 120 Days of Sodom” in his cell in the Bastille in 37 days. At this point in his life, he had spent eight years in prison. He had also been burned in effigy, survived attempted murder and lived for months on the run as an outlaw after a series of scandals with prostitutes. “The 120 Days” was his first – albeit incomplete – attempt at a novel.</p>
<p>The story goes something like this: Four debauched aristocrats shut themselves away in an isolated castle with a retinue ranging from teenage boys and girls to old crones. Over the course of four months, experienced prostitutes recount 600 “passions” or perversions. It’s a case of “monkey hear, monkey do” as the four men, surrounded by their prisoners, act out each of the “passions.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151303/original/image-20161221-4090-ut6h08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151303/original/image-20161221-4090-ut6h08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151303/original/image-20161221-4090-ut6h08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151303/original/image-20161221-4090-ut6h08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151303/original/image-20161221-4090-ut6h08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151303/original/image-20161221-4090-ut6h08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151303/original/image-20161221-4090-ut6h08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1912 portrait of the Marquis de Sade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Sade-Biberstein.jpg">National Library of France/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For all his notoriety, the man whose name <a href="http://abhakhetarpal.in/blog/origin-of-english-word-sadism">inspired the word “sadism”</a> has always been an author more talked about than read – at least, in French. </p>
<p>In English, however, it’s quite a different story. Earlier this year, for example, I discovered that several of his short stories, and the opening chapters of one of his novels, were translated and published anonymously in popular Victorian periodicals such as “The London Pioneer” and “The Bon Ton Gazette” – a case of Sade being read by tens of thousands of readers without being talked about at all. In the 20th century, too, Sade was read in far greater numbers in English than he ever managed in French, thanks largely to the efforts of successive generations of American translators and publishers.</p>
<p>The reception of Sade in the English-speaking world is really a tale of two cities, Paris and New York. </p>
<h2>Sade goes global</h2>
<p>Austryn Wainhouse, a young doctoral student on leave from the University of Iowa, spent the 1950s in Paris translating most of Sade’s major works into English for the Paris-based <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympia_Press">Olympia Press</a> (which also published Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” in 1955). While Sade’s French publisher, Jean-Jacques Pauvert, was prosecuted in 1956 after putting his name to an edition of Sade’s major works, Olympia was publishing the same works in far greater numbers with relative impunity. As far as the French government was concerned, obscenity was fine, as long as it wasn’t in French. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, in New York, Grove Press tested the American market in 1953 with a volume that combined an essay by Simone de Beauvoir with a (very) careful selection of passages from Sade. Any words or phrases that might be deemed objectionable were left in French. As far as the Grove Press lawyer was concerned, obscenity was fine, as long as it wasn’t in English.</p>
<p>While Olympia’s Sade editions were evading customs officials and traveling the world, Barney Rosset, the owner of Grove Press, decided to challenge the very obscenity laws that were preventing their entry into the United States. </p>
<p>Over the course of a few years, he published three novels – “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (1959), Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” (1961) and William Burroughs’ “Naked Lunch” (1962) – that triggered a flurry of court battles and ultimately ended censorship of the printed word in America. As Charles Rembar, one of the Grove Press lawyers, <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/415677">would later say</a>, the publisher’s long legal campaign ultimately heralded “the end of obscenity.”</p>
<p>Rosset’s battles against the censors transformed the cultural landscape. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Counterculture-Colophon-Evergreen-Incorporation-Avant-Garde/dp/0804784167/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482225543&sr=8-1&keywords=loren+glass">According to cultural historian Loren Glass</a>, a generation of Americans now had access to a “common culture of revolutionary reading” – an eclectic mix of European modernist and avant-garde writing as well as previously exiled American works by authors such as Miller and Burroughs. Catering to booming enrollment in American universities, Grove Press paperbacks became the symbol – and the syllabus – of 1960s counterculture. </p>
<p>The way was now paved for Sade. Wainhouse’s Olympia Press translations were revised with Grove editor Richard Seaver and published in three volumes from 1965 to 1968. Though Rosset and Seaver were expecting a battle, to their apparent disappointment it never materialized. </p>
<p>“It would be convenient, I agree, for there to be a little scandal, that is a little censorship,” Seaver admitted wistfully in a letter to Wainhouse in 1965.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, sales were spectacular: Grove’s paperback edition of the first volume sold 240,000 copies in the space of a year. </p>
<h2>The ‘porn wars’ explode</h2>
<p>But trouble – for Grove Press and for Sade – would eventually come from an unexpected source. </p>
<p>On April 13, 1970, former Grove employee Robin Morgan occupied the press’ offices with eight other protesters. Aside from demanding union recognition, <a href="https://books.google.fr/books?id=-Zk7K4nchqsC&pg=PR26&lpg=PR26&dq=off+the+basic+theme+of+humiliating,+degrading+and+dehumanizing+women+through+sado-masochistic+literature&source=bl&ots=davsbFwXTV&sig=L_RqOle7_xzvTf2AkJolJ4VQy3w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi9vcC_lIbRAhUmAsAKHSFnA6oQ6AEIHzAB#v=onepage&q=off%20the%20basic%20theme%20of%20humiliating%2C%20degrading%20and%20dehumanizing%20women%20through%20sado-masochistic%20literature&f=false">Morgan railed against</a> the fortune Rosset had made “off the basic theme of humiliating, degrading and dehumanizing women through sado-masochistic literature.” </p>
<p>This was the first sign of the prominent role Sade would play in the “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-sex-markets/">porn wars</a>” of the 1970s and 1980s. Morgan, whose pronouncement “Pornography is the theory, and rape the practice” became the slogan of anti-pornography campaigners, wasn’t alone in seeing Sade as an emblematic figure of contemporary misogyny. Radical feminist Andrea Dworkin devoted a chapter of her “Pornography: Men Possessing Women” (1981) to Sade, <a href="http://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Andrea-DWORKIN-Pornography-Men-Possessing-Women-1981.pdf">whom she labeled</a> “the world’s most foremost pornographer.” Dworkin railed against the translators of “Sade’s thousands of pages of butchery” and was outraged that his work should now be “in accessible mass-market editions in the United States.”</p>
<p>Not everyone agreed with this assessment of Sade. The English writer Angela Carter acknowledged Sade’s misogyny <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/276751.The_Sadeian_Woman">but claimed</a> he “put pornography in the service of women” by representing women as “beings of power.” In America, when “bad girl” feminists such as Ellen Willis, Gayle Rubin and Pat Califia defended pornography, they were derided as “Sade’s new Juliettes” by Morgan. </p>
<h2>Sade in the classroom?</h2>
<p>The controversies over Sade were as much about literature as they were pornography. Many started to question Sade’s place in the canon – and on university campuses. </p>
<p>Writing in 1990, cultural critic Camille Paglia <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sexual-Personae-Decadence-Nefertiti-Dickinson/dp/0679735798/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482276234&sr=8-1&keywords=camille+paglia">hailed Sade</a> as “a great writer and philosopher whose absence from university curricula illustrates the timidity and hypocrisy of the liberal humanities.” A few years later, however, literary critic Roger Shattuck <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Forbidden-Knowledge-Pornography-Roger-Shattuck/dp/0156005514/ref=la_B000AQ4N6Q_1_6_twi_pap_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1482276108&sr=1-6">noted with horror</a> that “Sade is now being taught in a number of colleges and universities.” For humanists like Shattuck, Sade simply does not belong in the classroom alongside Dickens and Tolstoy.</p>
<p>Though he stops just short of answering the question of French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir – <a href="http://contemporarythinkers.org/simone-de-beauvoir/book/must-we-burn-sade/">“Must we burn Sade?”</a> – in the affirmative, the thought of Sade’s fiction becoming Literature is, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Forbidden-Knowledge-Pornography-Roger-Shattuck/dp/0156005514/ref=la_B000AQ4N6Q_1_6_twi_pap_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1482276108&sr=1-6">to Shattuck</a>, beyond the pale:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Shall we receive among our literary classics the works of an author who desecrates and inverts every principle of human justice and decency developed over four hundred years of civilized life?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I have been very fortunate to be able to teach Sade freely at my institution. Sade, however, remains unteachable on several university campuses in the United Kingdom and the United States. And he’s rarely taught in France. </p>
<p>If ever there was a time for placing misogyny and sexism under the microscope, however, surely it’s now. In my experience, there is nothing quite like Sade for converting undecided students to feminism. </p>
<p>Reading a novel like “The 120 Days of Sodom” is not – and should not be – easy. Most readers are likely to find it deeply upsetting. But this is a work that needs to taken seriously: For all its imagined horrors, there are few that have not been perpetrated in recent history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70374/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Will McMorran does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Arguably the most obscene and offensive work of fiction ever written is going to be sold in America as a mainstream classic for the first time.
Will McMorran, Senior Lecturer in French & Comparative Literature, Queen Mary University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/37722
2015-02-18T06:18:26Z
2015-02-18T06:18:26Z
Celebrities posing naked with dead fish – a campaign so crazy it might just work
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72274/original/image-20150217-19499-3m2ra4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Go on, dive in.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lagui/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“That’s obscene,” I thought when I saw the photo of Helena Bonham Carter, nude, clasping a <a href="http://www.fishlove.co.uk/collections/john-swannell/helena-bonham-carter-big-eye-tuna#.VON0KlOsUYc">tuna</a> between her legs and gazing lovingly into its face. She declared the fish was her “Valentine”. My Western, 21st century eyes weren’t in the least offended by the actor’s nudity. It was the corpse that bothered me, the way it was being sexualised, displayed, humiliated. It was then that I realised I was identifying with the tuna rather than the human.</p>
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<p>The picture of Helena Bonham Carter and her Valentine is one in a series that’s part of a <a href="http://www.fishlove.co.uk/">campaign</a> aiming to raise awareness and funds to prevent the overfishing and possible extinction of many sea creatures, so that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>People will be able to eat fish for generations to come, and … people who depend on fishing for their livelihoods can continue to do this into the future. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s far from an animal-rights or vegan message, but is perhaps a good second-best given that for most people veganism and even vegetarianism are still unthinkable. This campaign’s power comes from a serious tension: it asks us to recognise fish as beautiful, as having experiences and lives worth living, but at the same time it promotes them as food. Bonham-Carter’s Valentine will also be her supper.</p>
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<p>The photos are beautifully confronting. Sean Pertwee’s <a href="http://www.fishlove.co.uk/collections/rankin/sean-pertwee-monkfish#.VONzClOsUYc">monkfish</a> hangs like a penis so large he can barely hold it up; Jade Parfitt has <a href="http://www.fishlove.co.uk/collections/rankin/jade-parfitt-starfish#.VONzIVOsUYc">starfish</a> for nipples. The smoky blue skin of the <a href="http://www.fishlove.co.uk/collections/rankin/richard-e-grant-hake#.VONzL1OsUYc">hake</a> that Richard E Grant cradles matches his eyes — they could be father and child — while Steven McRae is doing a <em>pas de deux</em> with his <a href="http://www.fishlove.co.uk/collections/rankin/steven-mcrae-ling#.VON0CVOsUYc">ling</a>.
Tom Aikens holds a <a href="http://www.fishlove.co.uk/collections/rankin/tom-aikens-wolf-fish">wolf fish</a> close and tight, Jerry Hall and Lizzy Jagger brandish terracotta-coloured <a href="http://www.fishlove.co.uk/collections/rankin/jerry-hall-lizzy-jagger-scorpion-fish#.VONzcFOsUYc">scorpionfish</a> like prized handbags and Lily Loveless “wears” an <a href="http://www.fishlove.co.uk/collections/rankin/lily-loveless-octopus#.VONzfVOsUYc">octopus</a> of the most delicate pearlescent grey. It is only Jean-Marc Barr, eyes closed as if in mourning as he embraces a <a href="http://www.fishlove.co.uk/collections/denis-rouvre/jean-marc-barr-mako-shark#.VONz1VOsUYc">Mako Shark</a> the same size as him, who seems to portray sorrow about the dead creature.</p>
<p>There is a long history of humans posing with dead animals to demonstrate power, sexual prowess, and glamour: the trophy shots of the felled rhino with the hunter’s boot on its neck, the nude woman lounging on the bearskin rug. These pictures are about exoticism and possession, about owning creatures different to us and taming the wild. </p>
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<p>Many people now find them appalling, interesting for historical reasons but not to be imitated in today’s enlightened world. We condemn the likes of <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/melissa-bachman-sparks-outrage-after-2798136">Melissa Bachman</a> for shooting Big Game in Africa, we don’t buy fur, we no longer use whale oil to make soap and paint. Why? </p>
<p>A cynic would say it is because we have cheaper alternatives and that hunting is out of reach for most people, so easy to target as abhorrent while we ignore what happens inside the black boxes of abattoirs. But it’s also because, over the past 50 years, we have come to identify with certain creatures through a range of awareness-raising campaigns. We have learned that whales sing, that rhinos are beautiful, that bears are better in the woods than on our floors. Identification, even perhaps anthropomorphism, and resulting empathic feelings have led to many creatures no longer being used by humans in the ways they once were. </p>
<p>But fish are a hard sell. Besides insects and microscopic creatures, what could be more different from humans than fish? In a sense, they inhabit a different world. They look, feel and smell weird. It’s harder to think of them as having feelings than, say, cows or pigs (which is perhaps why so many who call themselves vegetarians happily keep on eating fish). </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"565511115111948289"}"></div></p>
<p>And this is why this campaign is so interesting. It’s inviting us to be intimate with fish, to put our skins next to their scales, to hold them, to look them in the eye, to think a little about what the brilliant sociologist <a href="http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-November-2011/probyn.html">Elspeth Probyn calls</a> “human-fish-water entanglements” </p>
<p>The photo of C Arestis and E Watson entwined with a <a href="http://www.fishlove.co.uk/collections/alan-gelati/christina-arestis-edward-watson-conger-eel#.VON011OsUYc">Conger Eel</a> shows this entanglement, demonstrating with one picture how we are plaited with animals, how they are part of us, intricately connected with our cultural and social histories, whether we continue to ingest them or not.</p>
<p>My horror at the corpse gave way to admiration for an intelligent and realistic campaign that encapsulates one of the most important questions we face when it comes to living ethically: how to deal with the tangled and complex relations we continue to have with non-humans. A campaign like this could be a first step to recognising sea-creatures the way that many people now recognise gorillas — not as meat but as kin.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37722/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Meredith Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
“That’s obscene,” I thought when I saw the photo of Helena Bonham Carter, nude, clasping a tuna between her legs and gazing lovingly into its face. She declared the fish was her “Valentine”. My Western…
Meredith Jones, Reader in Gender and Media Studies, Brunel University London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/28263
2014-06-24T05:29:36Z
2014-06-24T05:29:36Z
Is Archer magazine really ‘inappropriate for sale’?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/51991/original/8hzmv98g-1403582637.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C605%2C2480%2C1956&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is this magazine cover too racy – or did other factors make newsagents decide not to stock Archer?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archer Magazine</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When a Google search can summon any image you like online, it seems anachronistic to hear of a print publication supposedly encountering distribution problems on the basis of its content. Yet that’s just what’s happened to <a href="http://archermagazine.com.au">Archer</a>, a glossy magazine launched last year that describes itself as “the Australian journal of sexual diversity”.</p>
<p>Archer’s editor and publisher, Amy Middleton, last week <a href="http://archermagazine.com.au/2014/06/archer-magazine-pulled-from-newsagent-shelves/">told the magazine’s readers</a> that she’d received a call from her distributor, <a href="http://publicationsolutions.com.au">Integrated Publication Solutions</a> (IPS), reporting that some newsagents “deemed Archer inappropriate for sale”. </p>
<p>The first issue, in November last year, included a bold meditation on desire and the erotic beauty of youth by author Christos Tsoilkas. It would have been a coup for the first edition of any magazine but there have been surprisingly few comments on the essay despite its celebrated author and the sensitivity of its subject matter.</p>
<p>Tsiolkas’ essay may get more attention now that the second edition of Archer has allegedly been removed from some newsagency shelves. </p>
<p>According to Middleton, retailers “advised that future issues should be ‘bagged’ (wrapped in plastic), rather than open to viewing by the public”. In a Melbourne suburban newsagent, a friend of Middleton’s found Archer had been “hidden in a drawer, restricted from view due to its content”. </p>
<p>On the cover of the second edition of Archer is an intimate image of two young men from a photo essay that explores themes of youthful innocence and sharehouse living. An advertisement inside includes a frontal nude image of transgender performer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Angel">Buck Angel</a>.</p>
<h2>Is Archer being censored?</h2>
<p>It’s unclear whether Archer was removed from shelves or whether some retailers refused to put the magazine out in the first place. </p>
<p>Censorship is the active suppression of materials that are considered offensive. Product selection is different. Retailers constantly make decisions about what they will stock from a catalogue of options. They make these selections based on what they believe customers will buy. No news agency, for example, could stock all 478 of IPS products. </p>
<p>With Archer, it may be that retailers declined to display a title they hadn’t requested in the first place. A thread on the <a href="http://www.newsagencyblog.com.au/?s=archer">Australian Newsagency Blog</a> suggests this wouldn’t be an unusual occurrence. That is, the distributor appears to deliver unsolicited magazines to its clients all the time as a means of promoting new titles. </p>
<p>A newsagent, Steve, commented on this thread that he hadn’t received Archer, but even if the distributor “pushed it” on him, he wouldn’t likely display it: “not because I object to it but because I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to sell it”. </p>
<p>This may be a case of market prerogatives rather than censorship.</p>
<h2>Obscene and ‘off scene’</h2>
<p>Archer’s distribution problems draw our attention more closely to the vagaries of the market model and its informal processes of regulating visibility. </p>
<p>Unlike other publications that directly target a gay or lesbian demographic, for example, Archer reaches out more broadly to the concept of sexual diversity. It is a niche publication whose market niche is in fact very hard to pin down.</p>
<p>The first edition includes an essay on sexual labels, the queerness of heterosexuality and a memoir of gender transition. The second includes works on homosexuality and Aboriginal culture, sex workers’ rights, asexuality, polyamory and sex addiction.</p>
<p>Archer’s outlook could be described as “queer” inasmuch as that term describes a diverse spectrum of sexualities and sexual practices, <em>including</em> heterosexuality. As Middleton writes in her first editorial: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>sexual diversity does not represent a niche or a minority – it represents the moments during which we’ve all questioned our identities, the times we’ve suspected we might be different.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Retailers refusing to stock Archer may not be practising censorship, but rather a more informal process of selection and taste classification. The very inability of retailers to imagine a market for a magazine of sexual diversity like this may be indicative of how <em>un</em>-represented its vision of sexuality actually is.</p>
<h2>Is Archer obscene?</h2>
<p>“Obscenity” is an ever shifting category that refers to what society deems objectionable. There is rarely a consensus on what is considered obscene. </p>
<p>While no official body has declared the content of Archer obscene – and it’s extremely unlikely that they will – we can speculate on what retailers might have found objectionable. </p>
<p>One commentator on the news agency blog wrote that Archer’s cover “does not do [the magazine] any favours. I also showed it to some of our gay customers and they ran a mile just on the front cover alone.” Images of young people in any proximity to any discussion of sexuality can become a source of anxiety. </p>
<p>Images of naked transgender bodies may be another, especially in light of Australian guidelines surrounding <a href="http://www.mamamia.com.au/news/why-australian-law-demands-all-vaginas-be-digitally-altered-nsfw/#yZWWF8Mt1vUGgO5k.97">digital labiaplasty</a>.</p>
<p>In the age of digital content and distribution, newsagents may be on their way to becoming a boutique industry. Yet the newsagency space remains a potent battleground in the public imagination. </p>
<p>For some they’re a moral marketplace of questionable images around which children and the elderly wander defencelessly. For others, they’re a phobic backwater in which everyday moral entrepreneurs threaten the representation of sexual diversity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28263/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dion Kagan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
When a Google search can summon any image you like online, it seems anachronistic to hear of a print publication supposedly encountering distribution problems on the basis of its content. Yet that’s just…
Dion Kagan, Lecturer in Gender Studies, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.