<a href="http://www.plastic.com/article.html?sid=03/02/25/18260099;cmt=76" title="What About A Twelve Foot Deep Vagina? Harvard Feminist Goes Off Half-Cocked, Stimulates Debate">...Harvard Feminist Goes Off Half-Cocked...</a> on <a href="http://www.plastic.com/">Plastic</a> is about repression on campus. A bunch of people on campus tore down a <iq>nine foot tall snow-phallus on university grounds</iq> (Harvard, if you must know). It was mostly women irate that it was <iq>offensive because it was pornographic</iq>; offended because <iq>[a]s a feminist, pornography is degrading to women and creates a violent atmosphere</iq>. Whatever that means. I'm not being flip. That is an honest evaluation of the intellectual content of that statement. It's zero-meaning fluff mouthed by a pawn. This is the type of a person that will be a pawn, no matter the cause. At worst, a nine foot penis is bad art. It's relatively unimaginative, but it's also not even close to the dictionary definition of pornography (which has no close correlation to the legal definition our elders have chosen to inflict on us): <bq>1) the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement ... 2) material (as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement</bq> So there has to be arousal and excitement in order to qualify as pornography. Whereas these people were undoubtedly excited about smashing down a 9-foot snowman (a common instinct), they were most assuredly not aroused. Or were they? They just wanted to smash the shit out of something someone else had made, an instinct almost as basal as sex, and wanted a rationalization that would let them get away with it without punishment (an instinct arguably <i>more</i> basic than sex). <a href="{data}/news/old_attachments/images/snow_fellatio.jpg"><img src="{data}/news/old_attachments/images/snow_fellatio_tn.jpg" class="frame" align="left"></a>Now this is a great snow sculpture. At least it's a sculpture. Look at the emotion expressed in this piece. It's truly a work of art, no? I bet some people had a great time smashing the crap out of that one too and feeling all good about themselves afterwards. Because that's really what it's all about, isn't it? Who are you protecting from this "pornography"? No one. When I was in college, our sculpture was made out of Christmas lights and greeted people as the left the main dining hall on our side of campus. It was relatively detailed especially after we doubled up the lights to gain the fine-grain resolution we needed to allow people to determine religion. We too had to stay up to all hours defending it against would-be gelding. It's amazing how many open minds think that the presence of a penis is degrading to women. By the logic of common thinking on pornography, if a magazine has nekkid women in it, it's degrading to women. Therefore, if a penis is built out of snow in public display, it's degrading to men, no? "No!", comes the resounding cry. We say what's offensive, not inexorable logic (which turns out not to inexorable at all, experience teaches). It's called consistency in thinking. Here's a quarter, buy a clue. If the argument were that it's stupid, I'm right there with you. It's not even stupid, actually. It's just not that funny. Compared to the brilliant humor evinced by the artists who built the sculpture pictured above, our Christmas Penis of yesteryear was also admittedly a childish, trite sculpture ... but not pornography.