Arts Censorship Roundtable
The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies
at The City University of New York
February 7, 1998
by Susan Wright
So often when examples of arts censorship are raised, the media and homophobic right-wing spokespeople focus on certain key works that include the images of diverse sexuality. You don’t have to look far for an example – a special prejudice quickly rose against Mapplethorpe’s photographs because they often dealt with the difficult subject of gay s/m.
Sexual diversity can include a wide range of safe, sane and consensual practices: s/m, fetishes, crossdressing, polyamory, and others. These consensual activities occur among all genders and orientations. And everyone – gays, lesbians, bi-sexuals, trans and heterosexuals – are all sexual minorities when it comes to this misunderstood issue.
BDSM and fetish images are easy targets as examples of "bad sexuality"because these forms of safe, sane and consensual sexual expression are usually confused with violence and abuse. But that is the same misconception that is used to denounce pornography as bad because it supposedly incites violence. In both cases, our freedom of choice is being threatened and restricted by people who believe they know what’s best for us, when there is clearly no imminent danger involved.
An undeniable social stigma has arisen against those who create art using these "taboo" images. Filmmaker Kirby Dick, produced Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, a frank film about the longest-living victim of cystic fibrosis who defied his illness through s/m, recording his experiences in writing and performance art. Sick won the Special Jury Prize at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival and accolades as Best Feature at the 1997 Los Angeles Independent Film Festival.
Yet during the production of Sick, one company agreed to work with Dick but backed out at the last minute because of the film’s content. As Dick said in the January 1998 issue of American Cinematographer:
"I didn’t make a big deal about it, but it incensed me that this same company would think nothing of contributing to some of the violent, regressive films that come out of Hollywood, while Sick is about integrity, bravery, and a loving, consensual relationship – it was completely hypocritical."
When images of diverse sexuality are attacked, the media usually exploits the sensationalism and stereotypes of s/m, so-called "sadomasochism," which inevitably extends to wider condemnations of GLBT orientations. This happened at SUNY New Paltz, when the November 1997 Women’s Studies conference entitled, "Revolting Behavior: The Challenges of Women’s Sexual Freedom," was criticized by the Chair of SUNY’s Academic Standards Committee, Trustee Candace de Russy.
The two workshops de Russy and Governor Pataki chose as examples of the "crudity and lack of decency" of the entire conference were: "Safe, Sane and Consensual S/M" and the other was "Sex Toys for Women." These two simple self-explanatory titles have been reduced by conservatives of Change-New York, and by the Chancellor of SUNY to the inflammatory and meaningless labels of "lesbianism and sadomasochism."
The Board of SUNY has now arbitrarily decided that "how to" topics of sexuality are unfit for academic study. This is putting constraints on workshops of safe sex in conferences on dozens of SUNY campuses, affecting hundreds of thousands of students. Obviously, when we neglect to protect the rights of diverse sexual minorities, then we lose the fight on all fronts.
Most of the new obscenity laws specifically mention s/m material and equipment as obscene and proscribed objects, no matter what the artistic content. This not only keeps us from exhibiting artists in our community, but hinders educational efforts as well.
At Vanderbilt University in 1993, associate fine arts professor Don Evans, a recognized photographer, was charged with sexual harassment and subjected to restrictions on his future teaching. One female student in Evan’s course on photography and design had complained about the display and discussion of sexually oriented photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe and Evans himself that allegedly "degraded women."
There’s also the ongoing civil lawsuit against Gay Male S/M Activists involving copyright infringement on a photograph of sculpture of a man in bondage. Yet Judge Constance Baker Motley threatened to dismiss the $5,000,000 civil case, leaving no recourse for compensation of court costs, because she believes the topic of the photo infringes on the penal code (x245.11) which specifically condemns images of so-called "sadomasochistic abuse."
Images of sexual diversity are the first to be abandoned even by those fighting the good fight for anti-censorship. Recently a change in Australia’s obscenity law was supported by the Eros Foundation, a group that lobbies for sex workers’ rights and ostensibly fights censorship. Yet Eros approved of a ban on most material that features SM, bondage, fetish, or fisting imagery, acknowledging that approximately 25% of the material than can currently be sold in Australia will be eliminated, including gay and lesbian works. Eros decided to compromise to exclude sexual minorities in order to prevent more sweeping censorship legislation.
When we do nothing to defend images of consensual sexual expression, then we have lost the very principle of the fight. It happens in other countries and in the heart of our most enlightened cities: In 1990 the New College of San Francisco censored the Mark Chester’s portraits of gay playwright Robert Chesley, putting on a spandex Superman suit while covered with Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions.
As Pat Califia wrote in "We are All Thought Criminals," the afterword of Mark Chester’s Diary of a Thought Criminal:
"These photos are simultaneously difficult and inspiring, witnessing in a very intense way the courage of a person with AIDS who refuses to give up his sexuality or prettify it for mass consumption. Ironically, these censored photos were part of an event to benefit the San Francisco Bay Area Coalition for Freedom of Expression (BACFE), which had been organized to respond to attacks on the First Amendment and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)."
So while we’re developing a plan for shaping a progressive public debate on arts censorship, let’s not neglect to include diverse sexualities in our anti-censorship efforts.