The Right to Be Smutty

Re “Smut’s Insidious Threat,” Opinion, March 20: Catharine A. MacKinnon’s piece disgusted me. I am a male raised by a self-proclaimed “libber” and have strong feelings about the equality of men and women. However, I am a professional screenwriter and understand just as well the notion of creative liberty.

The human imagination is a wondrous thing -- 100% responsible for all art in any medium, great or mediocre. Sometimes the imagination needs to go to the darkest places in human experience to draw out the greatest truths. The only way to get there is by ensuring that this imagination has a completely safe environment to work in, free of censorship or restrictions of any kind.

Though it’s too bad Amaani Lyle took these comments personally, it is akin to a secretary at an art school being offended that a professor has a nude model in drawing class. Offensive to some but a necessary inspiration for others. To somehow spuriously equate writers’ free associations with the grandiose “pervasive pornographization of women” is to miss what we do completely.

David Gilbreth

Los Angeles

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In the world according to MacKinnon, pornography is everywhere and must be legislated out of existence. The problem with her prescription is that it’s worse than the disease. MacKinnon makes no distinction between quid pro quo sexual harassment and the more nebulous notion of a “hostile workplace environment.” Maybe MacKinnon can’t tell the difference between a woman forced to sleep with her boss to keep her job and someone offended by a dirty joke.

In the case at hand, Lyle vs. Warner Bros., a woman hired to work with the writers of TV’s “Friends” was shocked to find that much of the talk in the writers’ room was blatantly sexual. “Friends” is about young single men and women, and most of the plots revolve around their sexual/romantic adventures. What did Lyle think the talk in the writers’ room would be about? Feminist theory? Victorian morality? Clearly, some strange combination of these would be to MacKinnon’s liking, but should everything that offends her sensibility be criminalized? I don’t think so.

Whether MacKinnon likes it or not, sexuality is central to the lives of adults. And a sense of humor is the saving grace of human life. MacKinnon should get one, along with a sense of proportion. And until she does, she should keep her prim, doctrinaire hands off everyone else’s 1st Amendment rights.

Richard Oliver

Thousand Oaks