Exploring Pornography Propoganda

A selected bibliography, by Zach Tomaszewski

for LIS 693, Summer 2001, taught by Dr. Rebecca Knuth

• Rimm, Marty. "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway: A Survey of 917,410 Images, Descriptions, Short Stories, and Animations Downloaded 8.5 Million Times by Consumers in Over 2000 Cities in Forty Countries, Provinces,and Territories" <http://trfn.pgh.pa.us/guest/mrtext.html> Last Updated: 7/11/95.

The report of very questionable nature that formed the basis of an article in Time magazine, which spawned a small cyberporn scare.

• "On a Screen Near You: Cyberporn." Time. (3 July 1995): p38-45.

The Time cover story based on Marty Rimm's faulty study.

• Godwin, Mike. "Fighting a Cyberporn Panic." Chapter 9. Cyber Rights. New York: Times Books, 1998.

By a journalist who opposed the Marty Rimm study and fought to expose its flaws, this chapter explains this history of the study and how it came to be published in Time.

• "Alessandra's Smile." <http://www.alessandrasmile.com/> Accessed 14 June 2001

This site is the closest thing I found to child pornography, though it does state that all images are legal in the US. By the site's own description, it includes "Photography & Fine Art, Literature & Erotica, Naturist and Glamour Videos, and Nonfiction." Though startling at first, the site made me realize that we very rarely see nudity outside of the confines of either "art" or "pornography." Yet nudity is much more natural than the violence we accept as normal on television. Aren't we all naked at least once a day?

• "Open Hands: Index." <http://www.openhands.net/> Accessed: 13 June 2001.
  
  
• "The Danish Pedophile Association" <http://www.danpedo.dk/english/> Accessed: 22 June 2001.

These two sites hope to spread awareness of pedophilia as a sexual orientation that is as naturally-occurring as homosexuality or heterosexuality. Consists primarily of discussion boards and life testimonies. Certainly there is a variety of viewpoints: from those people that express a platonic adoration of children, to those that secretly harbor sexual desires they hope they never act on, to those that claim that consentual relationships between a minor and an adult are possible and that they need not be any more damaging than the sexual relationships children already form between themselves. It does seem that equating all pedophiles as child molesters may be similar to equating all heterosexuals as rapists or all homosexuals as a prison sex sodomites. Don't bother going here without an open mind.

• "Child Liberation" <http://fly.to/kidsliberation> Accessed: 22 June 2001.

A site that argues that children are one of the few groups left in our society that is blatantly discriminated against. All persons under the age of 18, regardless of personal maturity or individual circumstance, are lumped together in a group labelled "minors." This group is then denied most basic rights and freedoms. Legally, a 1 year old is frequently treated the same as a 17 year old. Though unconventional, I think this site poses a good point. Assuming anything about a person's characteristics or abilities simply because they belong to a certain group is discriminatory. If a person's maturity is an issue, laws and establishments should focus on tests or standards of that individual's maturity, not on their age.