Today marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most important free speech cases in US history. Barney Rosset, the publisher of Grove Press, sued the United States Postal Service over the censorship of DH Lawrence’s 1928 novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The book, which you should really read if you never have, was considered obscene due to its sexual nature, though the book also had demonstable literary merit.
Armed with testimony of literary critics who noted Lawrence’s disapproval of extramarital sex and gloomy distaste for industrialization, the plaintiffs argued that the book’s merits overrode any obscenity. Led by a lawyer who had never worked in a courtroom before, the publishers won the case, overturning fifty years of literary censorship and paving the way for books like Naked Lunch and Tropic of Cancer.
The New York Times has the full history of the trial, and it’s pretty interesting, though if you don’t feel like paying to read it the North Dakota Library Association‘s got the whole thing up on their blog. My favorite part is this one,
The distinction is sharpened by another argument Rembar made during the “Lady Chatterley” trial. “A novel, no matter how much devoted to the act of sex,” he said, “can hardly add to the constant sexual prodding with which our environment assails us.” In the mass media of the day, with its appeals to a booming youth market, movies and advertisements were often “calculated to produce sexual thoughts and reactions,” to the point where “we live in a sea of sexual provocation.”
Those who are inclined to rant about how things are too sexualized today might want to remember that even fifty years ago people were constantly prodded sexually, and not always in ways they enjoyed.
[Image: Penguin's Deluxe Edition of the book, with cover by Chester Brown]
More sexual panic in Rhode Island? Actually, yes, now that it’s been “discovered” that sixteen-year olds can legally strip in the state.
The legal age of consent here is sixteen, which I actually think makes a lot of sense. Teenagers have sex, regardless of what you think, and by the age of sixteen I think most teens can make smart decisions about who to have sex with, at least on whatever level the law needs to concern itself with.
But that also means that in Rhode Island teens are allowed to work in strip clubs from the age of sixteen. As long as they have a work permit and don’t dance after 11:30 on school nights, it’s perfectly legal for girls to go topless. It’s another law that police “recently discovered,” when it came about that a sixteen-year old Boston runaway was working at a local club called Cheaters.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Today:
gabe saporta is bisexual
naked boxers
al bowlly my woman blogspot
patrick phelps naked
Yesterday:
jalopy sex window dig dog dinner
lovin muffin
gabe saporta and pete wentz gay together
terry richardson for tom ford penis
“mary lou lord” got no shadow (more…)
3. The Butchies, Sex (I’m A Lesbian)
[My freshman year of college coincided with the (brief) height of the Napster craze. Though I never once downloaded an entire album from the service, I did pillage it for lots of individual tracks, many of which were totally mislabeled. I think that's why this song is #3 on my list of the best songs of 2001, when from what I can tell it only ever appeared on a Mr. Lady sampler from 1999 that I've never heard.]
My first encounter with the Butchies was on my birthday in 2000, when they (and the Gossip) opened up for Sleater-Kinney at the Middle East in Boston. It was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen, though the Butchies ended up being my least favorite of the three bands. (But they were cute! And I kind of had a crush on Kaia Wilson, even though I assumed she was a boy at first. I was so dumb!)
But in a live setting it’s hard to upstage Sleater-Kinney or the garage-band era Gossip. The Butchies songs were slower, more introverted, and featured a lot of wordless guitar parts that unfold better on record than they do when you’re just looking to dance around to All Hands On The Bad One.
