Susan Jacoby A First Amendment Junkkie

Conferring to activist author, Susan Jacoby's essay “A First Amendment Junkie," the First Amendment should be centered on complete construal solely. All through her essay she conveys numerous cases that people have brought up as exemptions to the Amendment, but she states that they are just a ordinary misdirection. Child Porn is a status quo that several discuss should be an exception to the Amendment. However, rendering to Jacoby, Child Porn and the First Amendment are not associated. Child Porn is just an abuse of power that one has bequeathed upon themselves and it should be punished by law, but not as disobeying the First Amendment. Throughout Susan Jacoby's essay, she makes it very

To MacKinnon, in depicting women as sexually obedient and submissive, pornography buttresses the archetypal roles of women as passive objects wanting abuse. "Pornography constructs women and sex, defines what 'woman' means and what sexuality is, in terms of each other"(MacKinnon 414), she says. MacKinnon believes that pornography creates an open forum for sexual terrorism by men, in which women are discriminated against and male dominance is expected. Tisdale, on the other hand, argues for the necessity of pornography as a medium that can bring sexual freedom to men and women alike, and help defeat such stereotypical female roles of passivity and weakness. As she explains:

As of today, the supreme court has interpreted the first amendment to say “The First Amendment provides no protection for obscenity, child pornography, or speech that constitutes what has become widely known as “fighting words.” The First Amendment provides less than full protection to commercial speech, defamation (libel and slander), speech that may be harmful to children, speech broadcast on radio and television (as opposed to speech transmitted via cable or the Internet), and public employees’ speech.”(Ruane, Kathleen Ann) with this loose definition in mind many people have begun to think whether freedom of speech should be further limited to several cases seen in recent years such as what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia.

What is pornography? According to the dictionary pornography means “Obscene writings, drawings, photographs”. Yet, many people disagree with what is consider to be pornography in society today. Susan Brownmiller is a feminist activist who wrote an essay “ Lets Put Pornography Back in the Closet” argues that pornography should be not be protect by the 1st Amendment or be allowed into society. Meanwhile, Susan Jacoby a writer of “ A First Amendment Junkie” disagrees with Brownmiller because she believes that it’s everyone’s right and that society should not be able to censor pornography. Should society let the government censor pornography just because we may not approve this type of act. I agree with both of the writer’s that pornography should

Susan Brownmiller's essay voices her feminist view towards pornographic material. Her claim is that without restriction, the first amendment has allowed women to be publicly perceived as objects.

Freedom of speech is an essential part of our democratic government. The only way that the truth can be brought to the fore is when there is a forum where ideas and opinions can be openly expressed. However, there is a strong support of censorship when people start mentioning extremely offensive opinions. Should the freedom of speech be limited in this case? The answer is “No”. “If liberty means anything at all,” writes George Orwell, “it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” (Wikipedia, 2016) If

One hears about censorship of free word happening all the time in other countries, but did it ever happen in the United States of America? Not many people know that restriction of free speech and personal expression did in fact occur in America, mainly during the 1950s. During this tumultuous time, newfound fears of threatening outside influences, mainly political in nature, had set in and as a result the government tried to protect the American public from these “radical” ideas through the use of censorship, or a restriction in the flow of information or ideas. Working feverishly to control what they deemed inappropriate, they launched multiple programs to combat these influences. Unfortunately, the government’s reasonably good intentions

With all the freedom that we have, we must remember that Freedom of Speech is not absolute. The United States Supreme Court ruled that the United States government has the right to limit speech. The question then becomes, “Where do we cross the line with free speech?” What type of speech is “impermissible”? According to government of the United States, offensive speech such as libel, obscenity, and fighting words that may incite violence should be limited or banned.

Throughout the years of US jurisprudence, the Supreme Court has interpreted the First Amendment to allow latitude to speech of the press and of the people. However, the restrictions on speech the Court determined to fall outside the limits of permitted speech and therefore considered “unprotected speech” include fighting words, incitement to imminent lawless action, defamation, solicitations to commit crimes, child pornography, blackmail, perjury, obscenity, and false & misleading commercial speech. To look back at recorded foundations of the first amendment regarding speech – words used to incite imminent lawless action, can be seen in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969). The U.S. Supreme Court held that “the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” That is to say, a state can’t stop free speech unless there is imminent danger of inciting violence.

“She chose to live with it by looking, by seeing, by trying to know- by making an act of private witness.” Censoring images and artwork removes the right to see and know for oneself, a right all people should

At one point, Mackinnon wonders what warrants the restriction of freedom of speech in the US. One judge once wrote, “fear of serious injury cannot alone justify the suppression of free speech”. She points out that it is this exact fear – a fear of serious injury – which justifies the government’s prohibition on child pornography.[8] She continues that it is the plight of the abused, which is frequently trivialized in the United States. Those who are assaulted are told to “accept the freedom of your abusers” and that “you are not really being hurt”.[9] But one of the most important differences

MacKinnon(1981),claims that if pornography is part of a person 's sexuality, then that person has no right to their sexuality. Women who enjoy pornography claim that they are offended by these kinds of attitudes, and want it recognized that they get more out of pornography than oppression. As writer Sallie Tisdale writes, "pornography tells me the opposite [of what Dworkin and MacKinnon tell me]: that none of my thoughts are bad, that anything goes. The message of pornography is that our sexual selves are real." (Strossen, 1995). (Albee, 2002)

One issue that feminists should bring to the open and question is the definition of pornography. Often times anti-porn feminists argue that we can tell what is and isn’t porn easily. Yet the definition these feminists use to decide what counts as porn and whether it should be censored from the public applies to many things as Lumby points out in paragraphs nine and twelve. She draws up the movie Siren as an example of how Elle Macpherson’s nudity in the movie was widely accepted and went uncontested, but then Lumby points out how Macpherson’s shoot for Playboy was more modest than some of the shots in the film yet the photo shoot receives more flack because it’s categorized as porn (par 9).

12.5. Is this it the average number of times Cornell students cry during Finals week? Nope. 12.5 is the number of videos viewed per person on Pornhub.com if it was divided evenly among every person on Earth. Pornography has become a crucial part of our our entertainment consumption, especially with the rise of the Internet, where anything you can dream of can be found with a click. Although porn is as accessible as Facebook nowadays, many feminists believe that pornography is problematic and is a tool for female oppression. One feminist scholar who believes that pornography should be eliminated completely is Catherine MacKinnon. In her essay, “Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: ‘Pleasure under Patriarchy’”, she discusses the issues with pornography in our society. Although McKinnon makes valid points in saying that pornography is an extension of the patriarchy, I believe that pornography should not be eliminated because doing so will not address underlying social problems and because alternative ways, such as changing pornography to be more feminist, is more effective.

Although the United States is considered to be a “free country”, censorship is still a problem today. According to The First Amendment to the U.S constitution guarantees, the right to free speech. However, some commonly censorship in the United States include the displacement of excessive of graphic violence, government licensing media companies and journalists, creating stealth, fake new sources, and even the removal of LGBTQ+ content. The word “censorship” means the suppression of free speech, often the removal of speech that harms or offends the public. Despite the fact the word is often associated with governmental restrictions in free speech, we are still faced with non-governmental challenges. For instance, recently Youtube has regulated its policy and has restricted “forms of content from being included in videos being monetized with advertising, including strong violence, language, sexual content, and "controversial or sensitive subjects and events”. It has been evidential that LGBTQ+ videos have been restricted or removed from Youtube because of the fear that the video will be controversial. Thus, since the video does not fit the heterosexual normality America has, in the eyes of Youtube, the video should be removed. However, on the other hand a video of Logan Paul vlogging on someone’s suicide and laughing about the hanging body was trending on Youtube and was deleted by Paul himself after receiving backlash. In other words, although censorship in countries like