A4 - Friday, November 30, 1984 - North Shore News

N ‘

Strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

REMEMBER, as a youth, smuggling several of

Henry Miller’s books into Canada. Miller was

my favorite writer. It seemed incredible to me
that my ‘‘democratic’’ government dared to tell me
what | could or could not read.

In my innocent eyes
(beheving as 1 did that
freedom meant freedom)

there was only one person to
judge what | could or could
not read and that person, so
obviously, was me

It wasn't long before all of
Muller's works were available
here. They were period
pieces, of course Today I ex-
pect they are not much more
widely read than the works of

an earlier literary hero,
Havelock Ellis, author of
what was, in its time, the

most controversial book of
the day, The Psychology of
Sex,

It was Ellis who wrote that
obscenity 1s a ‘“‘permanent
element of human life and
corresponds to a deep need of
the human mind."’ He added.
“‘Adults need obscene
literature, aS much as
children need fairy tales, as a
relief from the oppressive
force of convention.”’

There is no doubt in my

mind where Miller and
Ellis—as well as
Aristophanes, Plato,
Catullus, Ovid, Shaw,
Shakespeare, Shelley and
Shaw, to mention a
few—could stand on the

question of the freedom to
distribute pornographic
video tapes of Magazines
They would understand that
freedom means the bad ANI)
the good You can't eliminate
one without ultimately
eliminating the other

It seems to me thal one of
the modern tragedies that we
have to live with is the

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degeneration of the feminist
movement from a struggle
for equality and liberation in-
to a neo-fascist altlempt to
reintroduce censorship into
Western society after we have
finally freed ourselves almost
completely from its grip

I] happened to be in
Chicago when | learned that
Canadian customs
authorities had seized the
December issue of Pen-
thouse. Naturally, | went
straight to the mearest smut
shop to buy one. Why?
Because if a thing ts cen-
sored, I feel duty-bound to
look at it. I'm not kidding.
ee

“If a thing
is censored
I feel duty-

bound to look’’

|

Repression and thought
control, whatever form they
take, are the natural enemies
of anybody who thinks and
Wiles

Anyway, having stepped
into this hard-core Chicago
porn shop and asked for Pen
thouse, | was greeted by a
sneer from the bored,
sanpaku-eyed clerk perched
on a stool among the dildos
and whatnot With infinite
contempt, he sand: "You get
THAT atthe Seven Eleven *-

You see, it's all relative As
Theodore Schroder, who
devoted tis whole life to
fighting for freedom of

a Ae

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CARPETS

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ou can't have one...

speech, wrote in A Challenge
to the Sex Censors:
“Obscenity does not exist in
any book or picture, but is
wholly a quality of the
reading or viewing mind.’’

He added (and this cuts to
the heart of the issue): ‘‘No
argument for the suppression
of obscene literature has ever
been offered which by
unavotdable implications will
not justify, and which has
not already justified, every
other limitation that has ever
been put on mental
freedom "’

Just as misguided as the
customs Officials who stop-
ped Penthouse are the people
who protested at the El-Cid

hotel in Gastown recently
‘‘against men’s dis
cnmination over women,

men profiting from making
money out of their fantasies
of women, men selling this
stuff to profit from women's

inequality in society,’ as
their spokesperson put it.
Sun columnist Der Hoi-

Yin (a mother, by the way)
made a rather nice point, |
thought, when she noted that
a major shareholder in the
hotel in question 1s a woman,
Dayle Solloway

Behind the urge to control
what | may or may not read,
view or listen to hes a radical
left or mght-wing impulse
toward totalitarianism
When it comes to sex, 1 can
hardly see any difference bet-
ween Manrvxust-style feminism
and the ravings of the Moral
Mapority

In Cuba, by the way, there
was no porn Neither was
there a copy of the Magna
C arta, the Gulag Archipelago
or the Bible

Pause Think about 1 Do
you really want censorship?

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