Serbian Rapes and Pornography

* Re “The Real Pornography of a Brutal War Against Women,” Opinion, Sept. 5:

Andrea Dworkin’s relentless campaign to criminalize the depiction of sex in movies and books reached new heights of manipulation and distortion when she leaped from justly condemning the filming of gang rape by monstrous hordes of Serbian soldiers in Bosnian concentration camps to unjustly condemning U.S. constitutional protection for sexually explicit movies and books. By cleverly referring to “living pornography” or the “pornography of genocide,” Dworkin purposely blurs the distinction between actual rape (an atrocious crime subject to punishment in all decent societies) and sexually explicit speech (a form of expression subject to First Amendment protection). She simultaneously trivializes the former and mischaracterizes the latter.

It is more than ironic that the day after The Times published Dworkin’s demagogic tirade, it reported that two of the first books seized by customs officials under Canada’s newly broadened pornography laws--which Dworkin enthusiastically supports--were written by Dworkin.

STEPHEN F. ROHDE

Los Angeles

* Dworkin’s article was more of a tirade based on personal anger than a reasonable analysis of the factors underlying the unconscionable crimes against tens of thousands of women in Bosnia.

Dworkin overlooks some basic facts in her “pornography made them do it” rationale. First, the vast majority of incidents of torture around the world involve men and have nothing to do with sex. Second, we see dramatized incidents of torture and killing on TV nightly and don’t automatically assume that normal people will immediately be driven to carry out the same behavior. Finally, unlike the case with most pornography in North America, where the participants willingly participate and there is no violence, Bosnian women are taken against their will and tortured (sometimes while the acts are recorded on videotape) in defiance of any semblance of basic human rights.

Without question, the fate of the Bosnian women and the acts of the Serbian military represent some of the most heinous crimes we can imagine, and something must be done quickly to stop it. But the issue needs to be addressed in a rational way, not with an emotional tirade which would trash the Constitution to support a personal agenda.

ALANA ALE

Simi Valley

* For Dworkin to use the suffering of the women in Bosnia to promote her own agenda of censorship is to rape and prostitute the victims one more time.

JOE REILLY

Lakewood