Lesbian pornography: bringing the revolution home

by Denise Keiller

The great battle over pornography and what to do about it continues to rage in America. The lines pro and con are fairly clearly defined, and there are few defections from one camp to the other. For the most part, however, the battle has concerned only men's ("straight" and gay) pornography, there being no such thing as women's pornography until the advent of Playgirl, Viva, and the nowdefunct Foxy Lady, which hardly qualify as pornography at all.

And, of course, Viva and Playgirl are directed at straight women, despite the large numbers of gay men who buy them. Pornography, like the economic and social scale, puts lesbians at the bottom of the heap. (It's interesting to note that the quantity of newsstand pornography produced in this country roughly reflects the hierarchy of economic clout wielded by these four groups: straight men have a dozen or so major sexually-oriented magazines; gay men about a halfdozen; straight women have two; and lesbians none.) The absence of true lesbian pronography may say more about the economic powerlessness of lesbians than it says about our wants.

Some lesbians, of course, do buy Playboy. But for the most part, these women find it difficult to identify with the magazine's photographic bias, which is clearly geared to male fantasies about women and not toward lesbian fantasies about women.

The only other pornography associated (although incorrectly) with lesbians is the small group of movies, magazines, and paper-backs with usually sensationalized. "lesbian" themes. Chelsea House's. recent lush photo-book, Sappho, The Art of Loving Women, is in this category as surely as "Leather Lesbians, "Lezzie Lady" and a halfdozen other similar titles.

Although dubbed "lesbian pornography" in most adult book-stores, few (if any) lesbians purchase this material and most find it offensive, unrelated to lesbian sexuality and not in the least erotic. Most lesbians feel the women portrayed are straight models and that the material is designed to appeal to the fantasies of straight men who, for various reasons, find lesbianism sexually arousing.

The women in this material are characteristically voluptuous, often clad in black mesh stockings and spike-heeled leather boots and brandishing a whip. Not infrequently they perform" their sexual scenarios for a male who eventually joins in.

Bookstore managers confirm the male-orientation of this ersatz lesbian pornography. One adult

bookstore owner said "There are two types of these guys: one wants to 'straighten out' some lesbian; the other wants to be beaten up by them." Not surprisingly, both attitudes infuriate most lesbians.

The old-guard, traditional attitude toward pornography among. most lesbians was not unlike that of

VIEWS & OPINIONS

most pre-liberation women: pornography was considered gross, unwanted, and the mark of moral decadence. Secretly, of course, pornography was probably as exciting to lesbians as it always seems to have been to gay men. But proper ladies including proper lesbians-rejected pornography.

our

As the old-guard grew older, however, and their rationalizations began to sound prudish, stuffy, and totally out of step with "liberated" times, along came another rationale for rejecting pornography without at the same time sounding old-fashioned. Pornography, the women's movement proclamed, tended to objectify people and was hence sexist.

Terrific!

Now the old-guard and the new wave could join in denouncing pronography without seeming in the least Victorian.

But the rumblings of a small minority of younger, radicalized lesbians can be heard, and sexual fidelity, sadomasochism, and pornography are among the issues being discussed.

Toby, a 24-year-old lesbian who owns a small printing firm in New York, told me; "I think we need to reexamine the whole thing. What's the value of monogomous, one-toone relationships? What's the sin of casual, non-involved sex? Why is it that required we establish meaningful relationships'

'warm with everyone we have sex with? Aren't those all really the old handme-down answers men have always fed women to keep us from thinking about sex?"

Janice, who lives in suburban West Chester, Pa.,agrees, and goes one step further. "Sex is good," she said, "It's one of the really great things in life. Yet we all seem determined to set up all kinds of moral standards and taboos and proscriptions on what other people should and shouldn't do. I don't think anyone can have a healthy sex life without fantasies, and fantasies are. nothing but objectification-pure one-sided manipulation of your fantasy character. I'd love to see a

A typical "straight" male conception of lesbianism, complete with high-laced, spike-heeled leather boots and a whip...

MANY PERSONS ARE CONFUSED ABOUT THE GAY LIFESTYLE, AND AMONG THE CONFUSED ARE MANY GAYS THEMSELVES TO HELP REMEDY THAT SITUATION. WE WILL PUBLISH A REGULAR FEATURE ON THIS PAGE BASED ON THE EXCELLENT "20 QUESTIONS ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY" BY GAY ACTIVISTS ALLIANCE OF NEW YORK. THE FOLLOWING IS AN INSTALLMENT IN THE SERIES:

15

Does Our Society

proposal that in England was passed with the support of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The sodomy laws have the added effect of inhibiting us from calling the police when robbed or attacked, for fear of being accused of a crime ourselves. But even when the police are present, a denial of equal protection under the law is often official policy. Officers have stood by while gay women and men were beaten and robbed by gangs of "queer-baiters." Assault, theft and even murder have been condoned by police. prosecutors and judges when the criminals have been the supposed "vic tims" of homosexual seduction. Gay men and women are

Discriminate Against subjected to forced "treatment" under court orders: Gay Homosexuals?

"In the United States," says psychiatrist Wainwright Churchill, "a person of known homosexual persuasion or even suspected of such-is likely to suffer common abuse as well as abridgement of his human rights more often and in many more ways than a member of any other minority." The very existence of the sodomy laws in most of our United States is evidence that it is official government policy to discriminate against us by denying us our basic human right to consensual sexual activity in private. Even where such laws also apply to heterosexual acts, enforcement is almost exclusively against homosexuals, often accompanied by acts of police brutality and harassment, illegal entrapment and fanatical penalties that could, in some states, send two 15-year-old boys convicted of sodomy to jail until the age of 65.

Because these laws do not serve the proper purpose of protecting the public from any tangible danger, they are violative of our Constitution's due-process clause, and subject their victims to unreasonable seizure. Because they derive solely from theologically-based taboos, they violate the prohibition against the establishment of religion. They violate the right to privacy and free association. They all too often are exploited by police officers, bail-bondsmen, lawyers and magistrates. They make fearful "criminals" of millions of law-abiding citizens.

For all these reasons, organizations including the American Law Institute, the International Congress of Criminal Law, the American Law Committee, the National Commission on Reform of the Federal Criminal Laws, the American Civil Liberties Union, the national Institute for Mental Health and the American Mental Health Foundation have unanimously urged sodomy-law répeal. A number of states, including Connecticut, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois and Oregon, have responded by repealing their sodomy laws, and other states are in the process of doing so. These lawmakers are answering with reason rather than bigotry and refusing to confess themselves "scandalized" by a

magazine-sort of on the order of Blueboy-for lesbians, put out by lesbians. I think it would do a lot of women a world of good."

Toby and Janice, of course, are not representative of all lesbians, most of whom still feel somewhat.. uneasy about pornography, open relationships, and casual sexual affairs. Unlike their gay male counterparts, most lesbians wouldn't think of picking up someone on the street and having sex with them without even knowing the person's first name.

Janice believes lesbians have a long way to go in the sexual revolution: "Most lesbians relate to each other pretty much the way women have always related to men. We're not aggressive; we go through a sort of courtship ritual before we sleep with anyone; we tend to think in terms of settling. down rather than getting it on with someone. We're so Victorian sometimes that I honestly think. we'd swoon if another woman came. up to us in a bar and said, "Come on, let's go fuck."

Where is it all leading to? Perhaps not far for the immediate future.

The prospects for a truly lesbian pornography developing are small, and for most lesbians sex and romance are still identical"you can't have one without the other."

But the rumblings of change

bars are harrassed on trumped-up charges, underworld exploitation of the gay community is condoned, and groups of us demanding our rights are brutally beaten. by the police themselves."

The catalogue of official discrimination also includes denial of employment to know homosexuals by. virtue of state and federal civil service regulations. Gay women and men are denied the right to serve voluntarily in the armed forces, and if we are in the services we are subject to discarge-without veterans rights or benefits, on mere suspicion of being homosexual, However stable or hardworking, we are denied the right to keep our own children or adopt others. We have been barred from holding public office, denied the right to public housing, expelled from or denied admittance to state-supported schools which often systematically deny their students the right to learn the facts about homosexuality..

Private institutions are no better, and often worse. Employers and employment agencies use draft and civil service recordsor simply their own "impressions"-to deny jobs to qualified gay people. Landlords refuse us housing: bonding and insurance companies deny us coverage; hotels, restaurants and bars refuse us admittance to places of public accommodation. Sometimes the sodomy laws are used as an excuse by such bigots. but even without these laws they are presently within, their rights to impose their own personal prejudices. The only way they can be prevented from doing so is by the passage of laws which will protect the rights of sexual minorities, just as they protect the rights of racial and religious minorities.

Repeal of sodomy laws annd passage of civil-rights. protection will not immediately change the prevalent at titudes toward us pity, disgust, discomfort, fear and, humorous disrespect but they will help to recast these attitudes by serving notice that a government supposedly built on the principles of freedom, justice and equality will no longer allow a tenth of its population to be used as scapegoats; to be ostracized, dehumanized, persecuted vindictively and subjected, as Kinsey and his fellow researchers put it, "to cruelties not often matched."

are there. Some lesbians are beginning to question the restrictions on sex which have been there so long" they've become almost second nature. Whether these women represent a trend of things to come. or only a passing fad is a question

Shapp

(Continued from Page A11).

one member as Chairperson of the Council.

c. Members of the Council shall serve for terms of one or two years as the Governor shall designate. The Governor shall fill any vacancies which may occur.

d. Members of the Council from the general public shall serve without salary but shall be reimbursed for necessary expenses incurred while attending official Council meetings and performing other of ficial functions as the Chairperson, with the written approval of the Governor's Office, shall prescribe.

2. Functions.

a. The Council shall study problems of sexual minorities and make recommendations to the Gover nor as to policy and legislative changes needed to further the goal of obtaining equal rights for all persons.

b. The Council shall work with state agencies to end discrimination against persons solely on the basis of their affectional or sexual preferen-

ce.

c. The Council shall work to educate state personnel and the public in general about problems and

the future will determine.

In the meantime, however, they are raising questions that make many lesbians uncomfortable to deal with. And that, after all, may be the best indicator of the need to raise the questions in the first place.

issues affecting sexual minorities. d. The Council is authorized i receive complaints from pers claiming that they have her discriminated against on the basis o serual or affectional preference. the purpose of referring such c plaints to an appropriate place f resolution, where possible.

e. The Council shall adopt rules of procedure consistent with the provisions of this Executive Order.

1. The Council shall convene for meetings or hearings at the call of its Chairperson. A majority of appointed members shall constitute a quorum. for the purpose of conducting the business of the Council. A vote of the majority of members present shall be sufficient for all actions of the Cour cil.

g. The Council shall issue an annual report to the Governor.

3. Duties of Agencies Under the Governor's Jurisdiction.

Agencies, under the Governor's jurisdiction are hereby directed to cooperate with the Pennsylvania Council for Sexual Minorities and to supply the Council with information requested in order that goals of this Executive Order may be realized.

OHIO EAST GAY NEWS-Saturday, March 6, 1976--Page A13