The geography of pornography: Neighborhood Feminism and the Battle against "Dirty Bookstores" in Minneapolis

Frontiers

Volumn 32, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 125-151

  Hickey, Georgina ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; DEMOGRAPHY; ECONOMICS; ETHNOLOGY; FEMINISM; HISTORY; LEGAL ASPECT; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; PUBLIC OPINION; PUBLICATION; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL STATUS; UNITED STATES;

ECONOMICS; EROTICA; FEMINISM; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; MINNESOTA; PUBLIC OPINION; RESIDENCE CHARACTERISTICS; SOCIAL CONDITIONS; SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY;

EID: 80053314374     PISSN: 01609009     EISSN: 15360334     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5250/fronjwomestud.32.1.0125     Document Type: Article

References (107)

1. Tom Sorensen, "'Browsing' Is the Weapon Women Use to Attack Neighborhood Pornography," Minneapolis Times, July 28, 1979, Special Collection clippings files, Minneapolis Public Library.
2. Harry Boyte, The Backyard Revolution: Understanding the New Citizen Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980), 8.
3. Robert Fisher, Let the People Decide: Neighborhood Organizing in America, "update edition" (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994), xiii.
4. See also Ronald F. Ferguson and William T. Dickens, eds., Urban Problems and Community Development (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999).
5. Makani Themba, Making Policy, Making Change: How Communities Are Taking the Law into Their Own Hands (Berkeley: Chardon Press, 1999), 3.
6. Anne Enke, Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 9.
7. Anne Valk, Radical Sisters: Second Wave Feminism and Black Liberation in Washington, D.C. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008).
8. Benita Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana and White Feminist Movements in America's Second Wave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
9. Judith Ezekiel, Feminism in the Heartland (Columbus: Ohio State University, 2002).
10. Winifred Breines, The Trouble between Us: An Uneasy History of White and Black Women in the Feminist Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
11. Stephanie Gilmore, ed., Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), ix.
12. Marjorie Pearson, South Minneapolis: An Historical Context (Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission, Final Report 2000), 56.
13. John S. Adams and Barbara J. VanDrasek, Minneapolis-St. Paul: People, Place and Public Life (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 115.
14. Judith A. Martin and David A. Lanegran, Where We Live: The Residential Districts of Minneapolis and Saint Paul (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 87-88.
15. Mark Simons, interview with the author, June 11, 2008. Simons owns Robert's Shoes, a store that has anchored the Lake-Chicago intersection since the 1930s. One of the most controversial adult businesses, Ferris Alexander's Chicago-Lake Bookstore, was across the street from Simons's store. Simons also rented space above his store to one of the feminist antipornography groups in 1984 and 1985.
16. See also Wizard Marks, interview with the author, June 11, 2008. Marks is an activist in the Central neighborhood, where she has lived and crusaded since 1979. Using the snowball method and beginning with an interview of former politician Sharon Sayles Belton, I started interviewing participants in these events in the spring of 2007. I interviewed seven activists and one long-time business owner from South Minneapolis in 2007 and 2008.
17. Statistics from a 1984 study of Lake Street commercial strip are referenced in "Once-Maligned Developer Is Backed by Neighborhood," Minneapolis Star and Tribune (MST hereafter), July 8, 1985.
18. See, e.g., Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 48.
19. Raymond Mohl, "Planned Destruction: The Interstates and Central City Housing," in From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America, ed. John F. Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin M. Szylvian (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 226-45.
20. The history of Minneapolis's Gateway District-an area without these assets that faced wholesale clearance of twenty-five city blocks-underscores this point.
21. See Joseph Hart and Edwin C. Hirschoff, Down and Out: The Life and Death of Minneapolis's Skid Row (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
22. Judith A. Martin and Antony Goddard, Past Choices/Present Landscapes: The Impact of Urban Renewal on the Twin Cities (Minneapolis: Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, 1989), 89-90.
23. Mickey Lauria, "Community Controlled Redevelopment: South Minneapolis" (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1980), 110-12.
24. Linda Wejcman, interview with the author, June 15, 2008. Wejcman remains a committed activist in the Central neighborhood. She organized the pickets outside the adult bookstore located at 4th and Lake.
25. Ruth Hammond, "Porn Arouses Neighborhood Passion," Minneapolis Tribune, Jan. 31, 1981.
26. Teri Mach, "Powderhorn Fights Live Sex Shows," Twin Cities Reader, Oct. 16, 1985.
27. Helen Robinson and Ann Stumme, "Adult Bookstores in Minneapolis," Seventh Annual Urban Journalism Workshop Report, Minneapolis Star, Aug. 4, 1977.
28. Hammond, "Porn Arouses Neighborhood Passion."
29. Wejcman, interview, June 15, 2008
30. Robinson and Stumme, "Adult Bookstores in Minneapolis."
31. Marks, interview, June 11, 2008
32. Joan Gilbertson, interview with the author, June 15, 2008. Gilbertson held offices in the Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association and wrote about the pornography issue for the neighborhood paper. She was one of two women who organized pickets against the Chicago-Lake Bookstore.
33. Hammond, "Porn Arouses Neighborhood Passion."
34. Mach, "Powderhorn Fights Live Sex Shows."
35. Sharon Sayles Belton, interview with the author, June 6, 2007.
36. Marks, interview, June 11, 2008.
37. Vernon Watternach, interview with the author, June 6, 2007. Watternach was active in local politics, helping to get Sharon Sayles Belton elected as a city council member and, later, mayor. He was also a member of the Men's Auxiliary for the South Side Sewing Circle in the early 1980s.
38. Gilbertson, interview, June 15, 2008.
39. Wejcman, interview, June 15, 2008.
40. This goal is also visible in early 1970s protests against gender discrimination in bars and restaurants.
41. Georgina Hickey, "Barred from the Barroom: Feminists and Public Accommodations in U.S. Cities," Feminist Studies 34 (Fall 2008): 387-88.
42. Gilbertson, interview, June 15, 2008.
43. "City Officials Visit Adult Bookstore," MST, Sept. 23, 1983.
44. This law and a subsequent zoning law passed in 1986 have succeeded in locating most new adult businesses on the edge of downtown, in the warehouse district, although a few "saunas" and massage parlors still dot the smaller commercial districts of the city.
45. Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women (New York: Crown Publishers, 1991).
46. Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 331-37.
47. Belton, interview, June 6, 2007.
48. Emily Warren, "Radical Feminism in Political Action: The Minneapolis Pornography Ordinance," Center on Women and Public Policy, Humphrey Institute on Public Affairs, University of Minnesota 2005, 1, http://www.hhh.umn.edu/centers/wpp/pdf/case_studies/radical_feminism_political_action/radical_teaching_note.pdf.
49. Ordinance of the City of Minneapolis, Amending title 7, Chapter 139 of the Minneapolis Code of Ordinances relating to Civil Rights: In General (First reading: 11-23-83, 1983).
50. The full text of proposed revisions to the ordinance can be found in Catharine A. MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, In Harm's Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 426-32.
51. Paul Brest and Ann Vandenberg, "Politics, Feminism, and Constitution: The Anti-Pornography Movement in Minneapolis," Stanford Law Review 39(Feb. 1987): 616.
52. Reprinted in Brest and Vandenberg, "Politics, Feminism, and Constitution," 619.
53. Charlee Hoyt to unnamed, n.d. (seems to be a template for a letter that could be sent to anyone inquiring about the 1983 civil rights ordinance), Organizing Against Pornography (OAP hereafter), Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.
54. Marks, interview, June 11, 2008.
55. Gilbertson, interview, June 15, 2008.
56. Transcripts of the hearings have been published in MacKinnon and Dworkin, In Harm's Way.
57. Marks, interview, June 11, 2008; Wejcman, interview, June 15, 2008; Gilbertson, interview, June 15, 2008.
58. Catharine MacKinnon's testimony, Government Operations Committee, Session I: Monday, Dec. 12, 1983, reprinted in MacKinnon and Dworkin, In Harm's Way, 41.
59. Wejcman, interview, June 15, 2008.
60. Mayor Donald Fraser to Honorable Alice Rainville, Jan. 5, 1984, Office of the City Clerk, Minneapolis.
61. Untitled typed report, handwritten attribution to "Jane Miller" [July 1984], OAP.
62. It is precisely this haste that scholar Donald Downs has pointed to as the single largest factor in the ordinance's ultimate failure. The city council did not take the time to properly investigate and deliberate.
63. See Donald Alexander Downs, The New Politics of Pornography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 51-52.
64. "Community Rally against Pornography," flier, May 23, 1984, OAP; Dworkin quoted in Kate Parry and Martha S. Allen, "Dworkin Ends Return to City with Rally," undated clipping [Mar. 1984], "Pornography: MPLS 1984" clipping file, Special Collections, Minneapolis Public Library.
65. Therese Stanton of the Pornography Resource Center, quoted in Martha S. Allen, "Civil Rights Approach to Antipornography Founders," MST, July 3, 1984.
66. "Citizens against Pornography-July 27, 1984," press release, OAP.
67. Janet R. Shaddix and Associates, transcription of public hearings, June 1984, 66-67, Pornography Resource Center Collection, Minnesota Historical Society.
68. Statement of Barbara Wiener, 1984, OAP.
69. "Citizens against Pornography-July 27, 1984," 3.
70. Mayor Donald Fraser to President Alice Rainville (City Council), July 13, 1984, Office of the City Clerk, Minneapolis.
71. The literature on feminism and pornography is voluminous and often quite strident. Despite Susan Brownmiller's personal involvement with Women Against Pornography, I find her account to be particularly sensitive to why this was such a divisive issue in the 1980s.
72. See Brownmiller, "The Pornography Wars," in In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (New York: Dial Press, 2000), 295-325.
73. See also Ronald J. Berger, Patricia Searles, and Charles E. Cottle, Feminism and Pornography (New York: Praeger, 1991).
74. Rosen, World Split Open, 191-94.
75. Feminist defenses of pornography (especially through the lens of free speech) appear in Nadine Strossen, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights (New York: Anchor Books, 1996).
76. Alan Soble, Pornography, Sex, and Feminism (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002).
77. Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter, Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture, rev. ed. (New York: Routledge, 2006).
78. Drucilla Cornell, Feminism and Pornography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
79. MacKinnon and Dworkin's work remains the most visible representation of the feminist antipornography camp.
80. See MacKinnon, "The Roar on the Other Side of Silence," in MacKinnon and Dworkin, In Harm's Way, 3-24, 25-36.
81. Dworkin, "Suffering and Speech," in MacKinnon and Dworkin, In Harm's Way, 3-24, 25-36.
82. Downs, New Politics of Pornography, 35.
83. Feminist scholarship on pornography includes reflection on the Minneapolis civil rights ordinance, the first of its kind in the country, as a matter of course. It is most often raised in relation to its legal theory's potential impact on free speech. A crude measure, to be sure, but its inclusion, even in passing, is a good indication of the importance of the ordinance and its underlying theory to feminist discussions of pornography.
84. Andrea Dworkin, quoted in Teri Mach, "Anti-Porn Ordinance: Taking It to the Streets," Twin Cities Reader, May 16, 1984.
85. Martha S. Allen, "Pressure by Residents, Not City, Making Impact on Pornography," MST, Feb. 4, 1985.
86. The Pornography Resource Center built on the work of the Neighborhood Pornography Task Force and offered guidelines for any neighborhood interested in developing a similar campaign.
87. See "How to Get Pornography Out of Your Neighborhood Stores," n.d., OAP.
88. Martha S. Allen, "Pornography Fight Wanes as Attentions Start Turning Elsewhere," MST, July 10, 1985.
89. "Closing of Adults-Only Theater," unattributed clipping, Apr. 9, 1985, Powderhorn Park clipping file, Special Collections, Minneapolis Public Library.
90. "Community Group Closing Its Doors for Lack of Money," MST, Oct. 26, 1985.
91. Mike Kaszuba, "Uncertain Plan May Give Avalon an X-rating Again," MST, Aug. 21, 1985, OAP.
92. Mike Kaszuba, "Inaction Plagues Effort to Stop Live Nude Shows," MST, Oct. 25, 1985.
93. Interoffice communications between the assistant city attorney and the members of the Zoning and Planning Committee indicate that city officials were diligently looking for ways to stop the dancing, even to the point of considering whether the business could be closed because of a technical violation of some aspect of the building code. See Allen Hyatt to Gerry Bruins, Feb. 4, 1986, Office of the City Clerk, Minneapolis.
94. Mike Kaszuba, "Powderhorn Activists' Rivalry Brings Ouster of Pornography Task Force," MST, June 20, 1986.
95. Kaszuba, "Powderhorn Activists' Rivalry."
96. Gilbertson, interview, June 15, 2008.
97. The beginnings of these trends in Minneapolis are outlined in Martin and Goddard, Past Choices/Present Landscapes, 137-46.
98. A detailed analysis of another Minneapolis neighborhood appears in Randy Stoecker, Defending Community: The Struggle for Alternative Redevelopment in Cedar-Riverside (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994).
99. On the trends nationally, see Alice O'Connor, "Swimming against the Tide: A Brief History of Federal Policy in Poor Communities," in Ferguson and Dickens, Urban Problems, 77-137.
100. Harry Boyte's work on "citizen advocacy" reveals that groups moving from work on single issues to broader campaigns to tackle the sources of decline was a common pattern in neighborhood organizing in these decades (Boyte, Backyard Revolution, 45-46).
101. "Fight Back," in "Chants and Songs for Take Back the Night," n.d., OAP.
102. Laura Mansnerus, "For Lawyers, Crime May Not Pay," New York Times, Dec. 17, 1989.
103. Arthur Hayes and Bob Hagerty, "LAW: Obscenity Case May Affect Media Firms," Wall Street Journal, July 8, 1992.
104. "Close the Solid Gold Committee," minutes, Apr. 25, 1989, OAP.
105. "Close! Solid Gold Demonstration," press release, Sept. 22, 1989, OAP.
106. Untitled typed report, handwritten attribution to "Jane Miller" [July 1984], OAP.
107. Van Anderson, "State Plans to Open Job Center at Chicago & Lake," Alley (Phillips neighborhood paper), Oct. 1989.