Rape – a pertinent question
Feminists and Catholic Action combine to campaign against “pornography” in Britain on the basis that it leads to rape, child sex abuse and a generally poor attitude to women. They lump together under “pornography” both sexual material of an ordinary hetero-sexual nature as well as materials more properly dealt with under the heading of violence. They are particularly vehement about pictures of partly-clothed women in popular newspapers. All this erotic pornography is supposed to have dire social consequences.
How, then, do they account for the existence of rape and child sex abuse in Ireland, where a Censorship board carefully bans all erotica from the country? It has recently even banned sex-manuals such as The Joy Of Sex, and sex-reports, such as The Woman Book Of Love And Sex (issued by Woman magazine in Britain: a report summarising the responses of 2,000 Woman readers).
In Ireland, the most common female image is the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, but even this positive, non-sexual ideal has not led to any better treatment of women.
Perhaps the feminists should think again.
Angela Clifford
This article appeared in October 1987, in Issue 4 of Labour and Trade Union Review, now Labour Affairs.
Long Revolution 