Women against Censorship

Darlene Money was a writer in Mississauga, Ontario.

This collection of essays by mainly Canadian artists, filmmakers, journalists, lawyers, and teachers deals with an issue that has split the feminist movement. United in deploring pornography’s degradation of women and the implications of violence in its images, feminists are divided on how this objectionable material should be dealt with. The contributors to Women against Censorship argue that feminists who favour action by the state in the enactment of censorship laws are forming an alliance with right-wing movements that espouse the very patriarchal values that have oppressed women for centuries. As lawyer Lynn King points out, “The censor boards of a male-dominated state will never view films through a feminist’s eye” (p.84), and as long as the subordination of women prevails in the values of censors, police, and the courts, censorship laws are more likely to harm than to help women. Lisa Steele, a video artist and teacher, analyses the sexism pervasive in the mass media and advertising, areas censorship laws would leave untouched. Varda Burstyn puts the issues in historical perspective and proposes constructive alternatives to both censorship and pornography. Appendixes include “Making Sense of Research on Pornography”; Thelma McCormack’s report to a subcommittee of the Metropolitan Toronto Task Force on Violence against Women in 1983; and excerpts from the Minneapolis ordinance against pornography discussed in the essay “False Promises: Feminist Anti-pornography Legislation in the U.S: Women against Censorship is valuable for its cogent and wide-ranging discussion of this important social problem. Both those who agree with the views expressed and those who disagree should find it stimulating and enlightening.