Free spech claims cannont excuse harassment

   
   
   
   
   
   
   Once again, Adam L. Dershowitz G has appointed himself the champion of
   free speech and expression on the MIT campus ["Political correctness:
   censorship from the left," April 23]. 
   
   Dershowitz states that he showed Deep Throat five times in the five
   past years as a protest for free speech. This in spite of many letters
   in The Tech stating that Deep Throat is basically a documentary of
   brutality and rape, or the equivalent of a "snuff" film where the
   images and scenes depicted on the movie screen are reality and not the
   work of special effects and the magic of the movie camera. 
   
   Many individuals on this campus have exhorted Dershowitz to select a
   pornographic movie for his "exercise of free speech" that is not a
   documentary of criminal activity. 
   
   Dershowitz claims that he neither subscribes to the views, nor
   supports the criminal activities against women shown in Deep Throat.
   Yet even after five years of discussion in The Tech and with
   "Profemina," Dershowitz 
   
   
   
   continues to show this worst example of how pornography exploits and
   degrades women. 
   
   I do not believe for a minute, and I hope that no one on this campus
   believes either, that Dershowitz is a champion of free speech.
   Dershowitz is a person still strung along by adolescent impulses that
   lead him to indulge in the viewing of pornography depicting the rape
   and violent degradation of women. 
   
   By showing Deep Throat, he signifies that he is a champion of
   oppression and degradation of women, a champion of the well-documented
   male culture of rape and violence towards woman that unfortunately
   exists in our society. 
   
   
   
   Dershowitz is not a champion of free speech, instead he is a champion
   of self-promotion and self-aggrandizement, and a champion of the
   unsavory platitude that the ends justify the means. 
   
   A more thoughtful individual might take the time to research the
   instruments that he uses to protest for free speech, and select a film
   that is equally controversial, but perhaps not so clearly anti-women.
   Instead, Dershowitz hides behind the political claptrap of "political
   correctness" as in his letter. 
   
   A gentleman would not show Deep Throat, and you, Dershowitz, are no
   gentleman. 
   
   
   
   Norman M. Wereley PhD '91-> 
   
   
   
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Copyright 1991 by The Tech. All rights reserved.
This story was published on  Friday,  April 26, 1991.
Volume 111, Number 22
The story was printed on page  5.
This article may be freely distributed electronically,
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