MacKinnon Does Not Speak for Me : The legal scholar is wrong to make pornography, not poverty, the most urgent feminist issue.

Poverty, not pornography, is the most pressing feminist issue of the 1990s.

But try telling that to Catharine MacKinnon, the charismatic legal scholar who has been waging a passionate campaign against pornography. MacKinnon is a superstar on the college lecture circuit, and her fans have played a decisive role in derailing the feminist movement from addressing women’s most urgent problems.

The controversy is hardly new. Feminists have clashed over pornography since the 1970s. Some have closed their eyes and held their noses, committed to the principle of free speech. Others, like MacKinnon, have argued that since pornography causes sexual violence against women--an unproved premise hotly contested by social scientists--it should be banned.

In her new book, “Only Words,” Mac-Kinnon goes further, arguing that pornography is not merely speech but a hostile act that must be banned as a violation of women’s civil rights. For MacKinnon, words are the same as acts; like sticks and stones, they break your bones. Her argument is seductively clever: If pornography is a hostile act, then protecting women from violence is more important than defending smut as “free speech.”

MacKinnon’s claim that sexual violence is a violation of women’s civil rights is right on target; rape is a terrorist act that reinforces women’s inequality. But sexual violence and pornography are not the same thing. And what if pornography is--as many contend--a symptom but not a cause of American society’s misogynist depiction and treatment of women? Then MacKinnon’s effort to pit free speech against women’s equality creates a bogus choice. Chipping away at the First Amendment is rarely a good idea, and especially dangerous for groups committed to radical social change. Censorship, as history teaches, is more likely to be used to silence leftists and feminists than pornographers.

The situation in Canada is a case in point. In 1992, MacKinnon’s analysis influenced the Canadian Supreme Court to permit censorship of pornography when it portrays “women as a class as objects for sexual exploitation.” Not surprisingly, Canadian censors first targeted gay and lesbian bookstores. Uninformed and confused customs officials have seized books written by Oscar Wilde, Audre Lorde, Marguerite Duras and Jean Genet.

Poverty, not pornography, is what steals women’s dreams and starves their spirits. The much publicized glass ceiling is not what afflicts most American women; it is the sticky floor that keeps so many women glued to poverty.

Think about it. How many women would identify pornography as the source of their misery? Ask a single mother raising her children on minimum wage if pornography is her greatest problem. Ask a battered wife if pornography is what she most fears. Visit an illegal sweatshop and ask immigrant women if pornography is the cause of their degraded existence. Ask a mother who tries to shield her children from stray bullets if pornography is her worst nightmare. Go to a poor neighborhood polluted by toxic waste and ask the mothers if pornography is what most threatens the health of their families.

Consider, instead, what does affect women’s daily lives: poverty and the fear of domestic and sexual violence. Without economic equality, women can’t leave violent husbands. Without accessible, quality child care, women can’t work--or get off welfare. Without an adequate minimum wage, women can’t feed their families. Without paid family leave, many working mothers must choose between survival or neglect of their babies. Without a ban against guns and assault weapons, women fear for their children’s safety. Without a drastic change in the social contract, women can’t walk the streets or relax at home without fearing violence.

In the wake of the Cold War’s end, we have the political opportunity to form a feminist economic agenda that crosses class and race lines. Pornography is not the worst obscenity. Yes, it reinforces degraded views of women, but real obscenity is a hungry child, a teen-ager without hope, a homeless family, a battered wife or the permanently unemployed victims of capital flight.

The greatest indecency in America is not pornography but poverty in the midst of plenty.