An Eroticist's Manifesto
by Mark Aster
December, 1995

I'm the author of the My Friends the Allens series of erotic
short stories, which I write and post under the name Mark
Aster.  If you want to find out more about the stories
themselves, see the regular MyFrThAl FAQ (Frequently Asked
Questions text).  Be warned, in case such things concern you,
that that document contains graphic, if light-hearted,
descriptions of sex.  This document does not.  (If you're
a MyFrThAl fan who received this thinking that it was one
of the usual stories, I apologize.  Do consider reading
it anyway, though, and please pass it on to the usual
other fans.)

One of the questions that I get asked now and then goes
something like this:

  Aren't these stories obscene, and illegal under various
  anti-obscenity laws?  Aren't you ashamed and/or afraid
  of breaking the law?  Aren't you in fact a criminal?

I think this is a serious enough question to deserve more
than a passing answer in a FAQ.  I would like to argue that
the MyFrThAl stories, and most of the other stories in their
class, are not in fact obscene, and that they have and
deserve (for instance) protection under the first amendment
to the U.S. constitution.  If there are countries or locales
with even more draconian laws (where it is illegal, for
instance, to write anything at all about sex, or women),
I will grant that my stories are illegal there.  But in
the long run, places like that don't count anyway.

Current constitutional doctrine in the U.S. says that speech
(including writing) is obscene, and outside the protection of
the first amendment, only if it is (among other things)
"without redeeming social importance."  What gives speech
that sort of importance, and in particular do the MyFrThAl
stories and their ilk have it?

With the fall of Communism, most governments, media, and
other cultural engines have largely abandoned the idea that
the State can or should determine the economic activities,
and even the economic fate, of their citizens.  Sadly,
the reverse seems to be true in the social realm.  The
emerging industrialized nations in the Orient heavily
censor the information to which their citizens have
access, and attempt to exercise considerable control over
their social lives, including their sexual lives.  In the
U.S., powerful groups stand shamelessly in the way of any
recognition of homosexual or multiple-partner unions, and
credibly suggest that even non-obscene speech should be
forbidden if it is "indecent".  It seems to be a bad time
of century to be a consenting adult.

Sex is a vital part of human life.  Procreative sex is
obviously key to the survival of the species, the culture,
the nation.  Sex is a strong and hardwired bonding force
between people.  And recreational sex is a popular hobby,
a great and often unacknowledged source of creative energy,
and a way to spread good-feeling within and between communities.

Because of the central role that sex plays in human affairs,
governments, religions, and other power-groups have always
been eager to regulate it.  If the state or the priesthood
(or, often, both) must approve all unions, they can control
who may have children by whom, who may love whom, who may
have some of the sweetest fun with whom.  If it is taboo
even to speak about non-sanctioned forms of sex (or about
ALL forms of sex, for that matter), it is that much easier
for the state and the church to keep their control.  Which
isn't to say that there is any conscious Conspiracy involved;
the relevant institutions have been building up their rules
and regulations for centuries, in a mostly automatic process
of evolution.  Jesse Helms may not consciously realize that
the reason he labels certain kinds of sex disgusting is that
long ago a predecessor to western culture needed to apply that
label for reasons of power-consolidation.  He may be an
entirely unconscious link in that unbroken chain of power
groups, acting in the sincere belief that certain sorts of
consensual flesh-contact are just inherently immoral.

The regulation of sexual speech and action does have some
effects on society that could be shown in a good light.  Societies
do not survive without cohesive forces: beliefs and rituals
and habits and attitudes that remind people that they are
part of THAT society.  Sexual norms can serve that purpose:
giggling about racy pictures behind the schoolhouse can bind
together chilren, and education in the officially-mysterious
facts of procreation can be an effective part of the formal
or informal ceremonies that welcome children into the adult
world.  Giving sex a taboo status may help to strengthen the
institution of marriage (i.e. those unions that are state
licensed), and thereby lead to stronger families and more
rational children.

But there is another view of the role that sex should, or might,
play in society.  In that view, the celebration of sex, even
sex that is not licensed by state and church, can enrich the
life of the individual, and (directly and indirectly) of the
society.  Perhaps if we were freer about sex, we would have
fewer dark anxieties about other parts of our lives.  Perhaps
if we taught our children about their bodies without shame
or blushing, we would have less anorexia, bulemia, mutilation.
Perhaps talking about sex is actually OK.

Now not even Robert Bork would argue that simply making that
claim is itself obscene or indecent, and should be forbidden
(although I would make no bets about the government of
Singapore).  But is it enough just to allow the making of
the claim, raw and unadorned?  Or, since what we're talking
about is the role that certain sorts of speech might have
in society, isn't it also necessary to allow that speech
itself?  Without examples of the speech itself to give the
citizen some idea of what is being debated, it will be
impossible to make any rational determination about the
effects of that speech on the world.  Without some place
where talk of unlicensed sex is in fact permitted,
encouraged, and celebrated, where bodies are considered
an acceptable subject of discourse, and where pleasure can
be mentioned without punishment, how can the argument for
sexual discourse really be said to have been made?

To put it more simply: without the example of alt.sex.stories
to point at, the political argument about the social role of
sexual discourse cannot be presented in full.

There are some obvious counterarguments to this: "Is it
necessary to have some place where guns are provided to
everyone in order to have a political argument about guns?
Must we allow free distribution of LSD, to enable the
political debate about drugs?"  But these miss the point
that the behavior we are talking about, the writing and
exchange of speech about sex, is itself a form of speech,
of communication, and therefore has a special privilege in
any rational system of laws.

To the question "Do the MyFrThAl stories and such have any
redeeming social importance?", then, the answer must be a
strong Yes.  These stories, and the others that flow through
the same channels, are exemplars of a part of society and
social behavior that is seriously endangered.  The struggle
to save that part of ourselves, the part that demands the
right to talk about sex outside the license of state and
church, is a social and political struggle.  The stories
therefore have social and political importance, and cannot
be denied protection as "obscene".  I would go farther, in
fact, and argue that they themselves are in the deepest sense
POLITICAL speech, which means that even Robert Bork would have
to grant them their first amendment protection.  You can't outlaw
a class of speech acts on the grounds that they aren't important,
when the question of whether or not they are important is in
fact a critical political issue.

The argument I've outlined here is of course not the only,
or even the most important, argument for keeping the State
out of the bedroom-fantasies of its citizens.  A strong case
could be made, for instance, for the deeper claim that the
State has only a very limited sphere of legitimate activity,
and that laws regulating this sort of communication are not
within it.  But that is a broader case that I'm not up to
making here.  The current argument, that erotic stories are
simply protected by the U.S. constitution due to their
importance as part of political debate, is narrower and
simpler.

In a more rational world, I would be using this time and
space to tell you more stories of the Allens and their friends.
I apologize to any MyFrThAl fans who received this text under
the impression that that's what it was.  But I thought this
was an important issue to address, and I'm glad I've spent the
time on it.  Please distribute this as widely as you would
distribute a new story, and since it's Sex-Free, you can
probably think of a few other people to send it to as well...

An Eroticist's Manifesto
by Mark Aster
The End