Letters to the Editor The Boston Globe Boston, MA Dear Sir/Madam: Thomas Palmer's editorial "A Divorce for Women" (Boston Sunday Globe, March 29) aptly captured the split among feminists over the anti-pornography bill pending before the state legislature. However, he erred in depicting the debate as a conflict between sexual equality and freedom of expression. In truth, both liberty and equality will suffer if the legislation is enacted. As feminists opposed to the bill note, the proposed legislation threatens publishers of sexually-explicit material with a flood of lawsuits by offended individuals. But more importantly, it promotes sexism by reinforcing reductive stereotypes of male sexuality. By declaring that pornography is "sex discrimination" against women and assuming a link between exposure to pornography and the sexual abuse of women, the bill implants the prejudiced notion that men are sexually depraved and animalistic, unable to view erotic depictions of nude females without being predisposed to rape. In linking pornography to sexual abuse, the legislation contradicts even the repeated findings of commissions on pornography called by anti-porn politicians like President Nixon and Attorney General Meese that no link exists between exposure to depictions of consensual sex and the commission of rape. In describing the role of feminist writer Andrea Dworkin and law professor Catharine MacKinnon in drafting the anti-porn bill, Palmer overlooked the irony of their crusade against pornography for its "sexism", given their own long records of attacking men and heterosexuals on the basis of their sexuality. Denouncing straight men, Dworkin has claimed that all heterosexual sex is rape. Her most famous book, Pornography: Men Possessing Women , describes intercourse as "the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women." In it, she labels men as latent pedophiles, claiming that "A man does not molest his son or close male relatives so as not to be raped by them in turn." Not limiting her attacks to straight men, she adds that "Gay men share in the moral degradation common to all men." Similarly, MacKinnon has called heterosexuality "the eroticization of dominance and submission." Attacking married men, she has alleged that "marital sex is sexual harassment is rape." In the New York Times last fall, she labelled men "a group sexually-trained to woman-hating aggression." Palmer astutely anticipated the broad sweep of the anti-porn bill when he pointed out that it might be used censor even lingerie advertisements. The anti-porn bill poses its greatest threat to artistic freedom. In 1983, Dworkin and MacKinnon sought to ban French and Italian art films, avant-garde art, and even Rolling Stones album covers under an unconstitutional Minneapolis anti-pornography ordinance similar in language to the bill pending before the legislature. Rather than advancing sexual equality, the anti-pornography bill promotes censorship and sexual stereotyping. Lawmakers should uphold the freedom of expression that is the cornerstone of American democracy by rejecting the bill.