Women Against Pornography

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Women Against Pornography (WAP) was a radical feminist activist group based out of New York City and an influential force in the anti-pornography movement of the late 1970s and 1980s. WAP was best known for their anti-pornography informational tours of sex shops and pornographic theaters in Times Square.

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[edit] Formation

The group that eventually became Women Against Pornography emerged out of the efforts of New York radical activists in fall 1976, after the public controversy and pickets organized by Andrea Dworkin and other radical feminists over the public debut of Snuff. It was part of a larger wave of radical feminist organization around the issue of pornography, which included protests by the Los Angeles group Women Against Violence Against Women against The Rolling Stones' sadomasochistic advertisements for their album Black and Blue. Founding members of the New York group included Adrienne Rich, Grace Paley, Gloria Steinem, Shere Hite, Lois Gould, Barbara Deming, Karla Jay, Andrea Dworkin, Letty Pogrebin, and Robin Morgan. These initial efforts stalled after a year of meeting and resolutions over a position paper, which they hoped to place as a paid advertisement in the New York Times, expressing feminist objections to pornography, and distinguishing them from conservative complaints against "obscenity". (Brownmiller, 298-299)

In November 1978, a group of New York feminists participated in a national feminist antipornography conference, organized by Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM) in San Francisco. After the conference, Susan Brownmiller approached WAVPM organizers Laura Lederer and Lynn Campbell, and encouraged them to come to New York City to help with anti-pornography organizing there. Lederer decided to stay in San Francisco to edit an anthology based on the conference presentations (Lederer 1982), but Campbell took up the offer. She arrived in New York on April 1979, with Brownmiller, Adrienne Rich, and Frances Whyatt contributing money to help her cover her living expenses while the organizing work progressed. Dolores Alexander was soon recruited as a fundraiser, and Barbara Mehrhof was hired as an organizer soon thereafter with the money that Alexander was able to raise. Brownmiller soon took an unpaid position as the fourth organizer (Brownmiller 302-305).

[edit] Educational tactics

Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Women Against Pornography focused on educational campaigns to raise awareness of what they viewed as the harms caused by pornography and the sex industry. Their activism took on many forms, including expose slide-shows, tours of sex industry outlets in Times Square, conferences, and public demonstrations.

[edit] Slide shows

The group's earliest educational efforts were a series of slide shows of hardcore and softcore pornography, which were shown with critical commentary by a WAP presenter. The format of a slide show with critical commentary had been used earlier by Julia London of the Los Angeles group Women Against Violence Against Women to illustrate soft-core pornographic themes in rock album covers (Brownmiller 298); WAP adapted the format to discuss pornography in general, including hardcore pornography. Slide shows were generally organized by local feminist groups, and held in women's homes as part of consciousness-raising meetings. The anti-pornography movement has continued to use slide shows as an educational tactic for feminist group meetings and public events.

[edit] Times Square tours

Women Against Pornography's best-known tactic was a guided tour of the pornography and prostitution outlets in Times Square, which they led twice a week for a suggested contribution of $5.00. (In San Francisco, WAVPM had conducted similar tours in the red-light districts of that city.) Lynn Campbell suggested that people who did not consume pornography knew very little about the content of the pornography or the atmosphere in sex shops and live sex shows, and that actual guided tours of the sex industry in Times Square would provide an excellent educational tool. Susan Brownmiller planned an itinerary for the tour and wrote a script for the guides (with the help of information supplied by Carl Weisbrod, a police officer tasked with finding and closing down underground brothels in Midtown, and Maggie Smith, the owner of a neighborhood bar). The tours often involved unplanned encounters -- such as being physically thrown out by enraged store managers, watching businessmen try to hide from the tourists, or talking briefly with nude performers while they took their breaks. After a reporter for the New York Times took one of the first tours and wrote a feature article for the Style section, WAP received coverage in People, Time, The Philadelphia Inquirer, European newspapers, local TV news programs and talk shows in New York City, and The Phil Donahue Show in Chicago.

[edit] March on Times Square

Women Against Pornography also organized a March on Times Square, held October 20, 1979. The march drew between five and seven thousand demonstrators (Brownmiller 311), who marched behind a huge stitched banner reading "Women Against Pornography / Stop Violence Against Women," including Brownmiller, Alexander, Campbell, Mehrhof, Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan, Andrea Dworkin, Charlotte Bunch, and Amina Abdur-Rahman. The march drew extensive coverage of the CBS evening news and in the morning papers.

[edit] Later educational actions

After the March on Times Square, Lynn Campbell resigned her position as an organizer (due to her failing health) [1] and Brownmiller resigned to finish work on her book Femininity, while Dorchen Leidholdt took on a new leadership role in the organization. The group continued the Times Square tours and slide shows, organized smaller-scale protest demonstrations, sent out speakers and held public panel discussions on pornography, and announced "WAP zaps," a series of publicly announced awards and condemnations focused on the advertising industry, and expressed public support for Linda Boreman after she publicly stated that Chuck Traynor had violently coerced her into making Deep Throat and other pornographic films as "Linda Lovelace" (Brownmiller 312-313).

[edit] Membership and Support

The original organizers of Women Against Pornography came primarily from the New York radical feminist groups that had developed during the 1970s, but once their organization began they found unexpected sources of membership and support from across New York. According to Susan Brownmiller,

The group that became Women Against Pornography was livelier and more diverse than any I'd ever worked with in the movement. Maggie Smith's bar, with "I will Survive" blaring on the jukebox, was a pit stop for the neighborhood prostitutes she was trying to keep off junk. Amina Abdur Rahman, education director for the New York Urban League, had been with Malcolm X in the Audubon Ballroom on the night he was murdered. Dianne Levitt was the student organizer of an anti-Playboy protest at Barnard, Dorchen Leidholdt had founded New York WAVAW, Frances Patai was a former actress and model, Marilyn Kaskel was a TV production assistant, Angela Bonovoglio did freelance magazine writing, Jessica James was starring off Broadway, Janet Lawson was a jazz singer, Alexandra Matusinka's family ran a nearby plumbing supply store, Sheila Roher was a playwright, Ann Jones was writing Women Who Kill, Anne Bowen had played guitar with The Deadly Nightshade, and Myra Terry was an interior decorator and a NOW chapter president in New Jersey.

– Susan Brownmiller, 'In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (1999), p. 303.

WAP's decision to focus attention on pornography and prostitution in Times Square drew unexpected support from Broadway theater owners and city development agencies despairing at the increasing crime and urban blight in the neighborhood of Times Square. Carl Weisbrod, the head of the Mayor's Midtown Enforcement Project, helped them find rent-free office space in an empty bar and restaurant storefront that they were able to use until a buyer could be found (they occupied the storefront for more than two years, until two adjacent buildings collapsed during a renovation). St. Malachy's, a Midtown actors' chapel, contributed surplus desks. When Bob Guccione tried to buy the storefront space (in order to open an establishment to be named the Meat Rack), WAP alerted neighborhood residents, who protested and defeated the proposed deal. However, the wider involvement sometimes created conflicts with supporters who did not realize that the group's goals extended beyond Times Square:

The League of New York Theater Owners wrote us a check for ten thousand dollars, although Gerry Schoenfeld of the Shubert Organization, the czar behind the generous gift, threw a fit when he saw that our mission was somewhat broader than "clean up Times Square." "Playboy?" he yelled one day, barging into the office. "You're against Playboy? Where's Gloria Steinem? Does she know what you're doing?

– Susan Brownmiller, 'In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (1999), p. 306

[edit] References

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