Catharine Dworkin - Pornography and Civil Rights - A New Day for Women's Equality

the Constitution so that the states had the power to protect

slavery' Segregation could hardly have mat ered a hill of beans

to them. Second, those in power. said that integration would take

from them a precious civil liberty protected by the First Amendment: the right to freedom of association. Forced to integrate schools, parks, hotels, restaurants, toilets, and other public accommodations, whites lost the power to exclude Blacks. This they experienced as having lost the “right” to associate with

whom they wanted, that is to say, exclusively with each other.

Wrongful power is often protected by law because law is the

ordering of power. Law organizes power. In a society where

women and Blacks have been legal chattel, the law is not premised on a sensitivity to their human worth. Law protects

“rights”—but mostly it protects the “rights” of those who have

The Nature of Change

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power. The United States is a particularly self-congratulatory

nation. We say that we invented democracy and that our Constitution represents the highest principles of civilized governing. Yet our Constitution was designed to protect slavery and to keep women chattel. The “rights” guaranteed to white men

were grants of freedom that established a civil and social dominance over Blacks and women. Change has not occurred because white men developed a passion for equality. (Had they, that passion would not have been constitutional. ) Change has

not occurred because those with power felt that they had too

much and wanted to give some up. Change has come from sustained, often bit er rebellion against power disguised as

“rights. ” Highfalutin legal principles have masked and protected privilege, dominance, and exploitation.

Change is not easy, fast, or inevitable. The powerless are responsible for creating change. They have to, because those who have power wil not. Why should they? This is not fair, but it is

true. Power takes dominance for granted; dominance is like

gravity, not felt as a force at al , simply accepted as the way things

are, each thing being in its proper place. Dominance is dignified—sincerely, not cynical y—as a “right” or a series of “rights. ”

If someone has power over you and you take that power away

from him, he wil say you are taking away his rights. Society wil

have given him a legitimate way—often a legal way—to claim that

dominance is a right of his and that submission is a duty of yours.

Principles:

1. Equality requires the redistribution of power.

2. Those who are social y dominant experience dominance as

a right.

3. Take away wrongful power and you wil be accused of

taking away rights. Often, this wil be true because the law,

under the guise of protecting rights, protects power.

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Pornography and Civil Rights

Authority and Resistance

Even though the framers gave the states the right (power)

to protect slavery, and even though forced integration did diminish the scope, breadth, substance, and importance of the First Amendment right to freedom of association (for whites,

of course), a time came when these tenets of constitutional law

had to be reinterpreted. The authority of law could be maintained only if law sanctioned the equality that had been anathema to it.

The courts never said they had been wrong; and to this day

it is a dicey business to impugn the more perfect Constitution

of the framers. But law had to bend or break. The authority

of the law always appears to be absolute but in fact it is never

absolute or immutable. Resistance can force it to change its

ground.

The authority of the law had been used to impose inequality.

This inequality gave whites authority. The resistance to

inequality had to confront, resist, and repudiate both the

authority of the law and the authority of whites. To maintain

itself, law changed. The authority of whites was pret y much

destroyed. It had to be, because white authority carried the

contagion of white supremacy beyond where law could go.

Male authority over women permeates every social institution and most intimate exchanges and practices. The state is one agent of male authority. The rapist is another. The

husband is another. The pimp is another. The priest is

another. The publisher is another. And so on. Resistance to

male authority requires far more than resistance to the state

or to the authority of the state. For women, the authority of

the man extends into intimacy and privacy, inside the body in

sex and in reproduction. In worshiping a male God, in conforming to social codes of dress and demeanor, even in using language, women defer to the authority of men.

The means of resistance to this ubiquitous and invasive

authority have never been adequate. Sometimes they hardly

Authority and Resistance

19

seem serious. Even when women resist inequality and the

authority of the state that imposes inequality, women continue

to capitulate to the authority of men, an authority premised

on women’s inequality. In a fight for freedom, such a capitulation is suicidal. Accepting male authority means accepting important elements of one’s own social and sexual inferiority.

Deference to male authority means deference to second-class

status.

The authority of the law must be—and can be—forced to

change its ground: to sanction equality. The authority of men

has to be pret y much destroyed. It is probably impossible to

repudiate women’s inequality while accepting male authority.

So far, hostility to the authority of men appears to be a serious no-no, even though each act or at itude of deference further entrenches male dominance. It is likely that women’s

inequality—the habits and pat erns of discrimination, prejudice, and debasement that injure women—can survive any political resistance so long as the authority of men remains, as

it is now, both sacrosanct and intact.

Principles:

1. The authority of law, which has sanctioned inequality, can

be forced to sanction equality if resistance is intense enough

and if the stakes are high enough, for example, the viability of the law itself.

2. The authority of those who dominate must also be resisted

and destroyed.

3. Deference to male authority means deference to second-

class status.

4. Resisting the authority of men is necessary.

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Pornography and Civil Rights