the magazines and pictures is part of the general censorious attitude that hampers ordinary sexuality and thereby heightens the need for satisfaction by means of the magazines and pictures. It is said that the pornography artificially stimulates, and no doubt this is true (though there is no evidence that there can be such a thing as "too much" sex), but it is not so importantly true as that the pornography is indulged in because of a prior imbalance of excessive stimulation and inadequate discharge. Given such an imbalance, if the pornography heightens satisfaction, as it probably does in many cases, it is insofar therapeutic. This is an unpleasant picture of our country, but there is no help for it except to remedy anti-sexuality. I have argued that the revolution is irreversible, and the attempt to re-establish total amnesia must lead to more virulent expressions, e.g. still less desirable pornography.

ET US consider two aspects of poor

L pornography, its mere sexuality or

"lust," devoid of any further human contact, drama, or meaning; and its very frequent sado-masochism.

The experience of mere "lust" in isolation is a neurotic artifact. Normally, affection increases lust and pleasure leads to gratitude and affection. The type neurotic case is the sailor ashore, who seeks out a "pig" and. works very hard not to get emotionally involved. Why should he behave so strangely? Let me suggest an explanation. His promiscuity is approved by his peers but, more deeply and morally, it is disapproved by himself. If he regarded the woman as a person, he would feel guilty and hate her, and sometimes he manifests this as brutal violence, really meant for himself. More decently, he restricts his experience to bare lust, though this is not much of a sexual experience. I choose the example because it is a fair analogy of the attitude of a large population in America, not unknown in middleclass suburbs. We accept the naturalness of sexuality in an abstract and permissive

way, but we have by no means come to terms with its moral, family, and pedagogic dilemmas during a hard period of transition. There then occurs an isolated "sexuality" which at its best is, hygienic and at its worst is mate-swapping, disowning the sexuality of those we love.. Finally, I would suggest that this is the style of much of what the court elegantly calls "dirt for dirt's sake," the sexually stimulating without dramatic, plastic, or other artistic value. Necessarily this must be limited to a few stereotyped anecdotes and a few naked poses; and it must soon become boring.

The sado-masochistic pornography, however, that combines lust and punishment, torture, or humiliation, is the darker effect of a more restrictive and guiltymaking training, for example certain kinds of religious upbringing. There are comparatively few real-life sado-masochists, but all the more do the smash hits of popular culture cultivate fantasies that proceed in guilt and end in punishment, genre of Tennessee Williams. This calamitous requirement, that the lust be punished, used to be a standard of legality employed by learned judges. How stupid can grown men be! For the consumer, such fantasies have a dual advantage, they satisfy both the need for righteousness (sadistic superego) and the "weakness" of giving in to pleasure; they embody an exciting conflict. But the bother with such images when used privately as pornography is that they are socially disapproved and enhance individual guilt; the excitement proceeds against strong resistance, and mounting fear, and often dies; and there is a tendency to raise the ante. It is said that this kind of pornography creates juvenile delinquents; my hunch is rather that the type of delinquent who has a need to prove his potency has a hankering for such pornography, all the better if it can be combined with cerebral know-how, as in hipster literature. Nevertheless, it doesn't do him any good, for, on balance, it increases tension.

ROM EVEN SUCH rudimentary analysis, it is clear that we can differentiate the moral quality of various pornography and make a rough rating of useful, indifferent, damaging. The social question, obviously, is how to improve the first and climinate the last. Police courts and administrative officers, however, and even jury courts and high courts, are hardly the right forum for important and subtle moral debates. But' expert opinion doesn't agree either; I could quote a crashing dissent to every proposition I have been making (except this one). Still, I am even less impressed by the bellow of J. Edgar Hoover that the police cannot wait for the experts to make up their minds, since one of the few things that is demonstrable is that ignorant suppression is wrong.

Yet I do not think that moral problems are private problems and can be left alone. Here I must dissent from my bold and honest classmate Judge Murtagh, who wants to leave most such issues, to a person's conscience before God. On the contrary, it is because moral problems are so publicly important that they must be ongoingly decided by the whole public; and they are so subtle that only the manifold mind of all the institutions of society, skirmishing and experimenting, can figure them out and invent right solutions. In this essay I have been proposing to the judges a particular public experiment, a particular "firm morals and culture" and "permissiveness" in which there might be both the on going solution of these social evils and, more important, a growth into a more living culture. Let us speculate about it. Suppose that the courts altered their previous doctrine, as I have suggested, and now decided that it was not obscene to stir sexual desires and thoughts. And suppose that at the same time they somehow strengthened the requirement of a provable social or human utility (as would be a reasonable requirement for TV stations, for instance, since they use the public channels). This decision would simply express our best present-day think-

ing: that sexual feeling is a fine part of life and it is a part of life.

What might occur?

An immediate effect of this drastic change would be to open to the legal public media a very large, and I think soon preponderant, part of the traffic that is now subterranean and culturally uncontrolled. This is an advantage, for now the traffic can meet open evaluation, the appraisal of critics, the storm of angry letters that frightens advertisers.

In principle anything might now be shown, from a hint of sexual desire to the drama of the sexual act itself. Since the change-over would be so drastic, the court might aim at a deliberate slowness, and the great mass media would wisely want to meet together and agree on a prudent rate of change. The test of proper deliberateness would be that, regarded as mere isolated and excerpted pornography, showing the act would be little more interesting than the hint. And in between, it is hoped, there would develop the habit of treating sexual facts as the common part of life which they are.

Artistically, of course, the extremes are quite different, for it requires a setting of powerful passion and beauty to make artistically workable só vivid a scene as the sexual act. And indeed, one of the most salutary and hoped-for effects of the change I am proposing would be the radical diminution in sheer quantity, and the improvement in variety and quality, of the hundreds of shows that a person exposes himself to every year. Since at present the stimulation is low-grade, the regetition is chronic; perhaps if the experience were fuller, there would be less repetition. Perhaps we could have something else than the endless westerns, crime stories, and romances if there were more animal satisfaction and not merely the stereotyped symbolic satisfactions that these genres offer, with the sex climaxing in shooting, which for some reason can be shown. As it is, the public never gets beyond sex and violence. Culturally, the

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mattachine' REVIEW