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71 B.U. L. Rev. 793 (1991)
Pornography as Defemation and Discrimination

handle is hein.journals/bulr71 and id is 803 raw text is: PORNOGRAPHY AS DEFAMATION AND DISCRIMINATIONt CATHARINE A. MACKINNON* What matters for a legal system is what words do, not what they say ....1 A few years back, during a referendum campaign in Cambridge, Massa- chusetts, on the civil rights ordinance against pornography that Andrea Dworkin and I conceived,2 a xeroxed leaflet was placed on cars and tele- phone poles in several neighborhoods late one night. Over a large scrawled black swastika, it said: Help stop commie kike lezzie cunts from telling us what we can read. This little triumph of economy of abuse referred, of course, to the supposed politics, religious heritage, sexuality, and gender of the ordinance's proponents, and made the further quaint assumption that consuming pornography is reading. While we absorbed this and pondered what to do, to our astonishment the police decided that a crime had been committed and confiscated most of the leaflets before morning. We had forgotten that Massachusetts has a law against group defamation.' Freedom of speech in Massachusetts seems to t © Catharine A. MacKinnon 1991. * Professor, University of Michigan Law School. This lecture was given in the Boston University School of Law Distinguished Lecturer Series on February 16, 1990. It was delivered in a different form at the Hofstra University Conference on Group Defamation & Freedom of Speech, April, 1988. The comments of Owen Fiss and Burke Marshall were especially helpful, as was the valuable research assistance of Carmela Castellano. The contributions of Andrea Dworkin, as always, were formative. 1 Edward J. Bloustein, Holmes: His First Amendment Theory and His Pragmatist Bent, 40 RUTGERS L. REV. 283, 299 (1988) (discussing Oliver Wendell Holmes's approach to freedom of speech). 2 The ordinance received 42% of the vote. The Nation, L.A. TIMES, Nov. 12, 1985, at 2 (reporting that 9,419 people voted for the measure and 13,031 against it, while 1,931 voters abstained). 3 Whoever publishes any false written or printed material with intent to maliciously promote hatred of any group of persons in the commonwealth because of race, color or religion shall be guilty of libel and shall be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars or by imprisonment for not more than one year, or both. The defendant may prove in defense that the publication was privileged or was not malicious. Prosecutions under this section shall be instituted only by the attorney general or by the district attorney for the district in which the alleged libel was published. MASS. GEN. LAWS ANN. ch. 272, § 98C (West 1990).

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