Censorship in books, plays or films is important to everyone
Censorship isn't just an just a trendy topic, or something that pits "decent folk" against "different folk". Censorship isn't limited to silencing political prisoners, or controversial artists. Censorship affects everyone directly, by affecting the flow information that can better our lives. Censorship affects everyone by making topics socially or legally taboo.
Everyone should be accorded the dignity and the ability to make decisions for himself. This is a basic right often subverted through the force of law, through physical restraint or threat, and through ignorance.
The Internet is the latest and greatest in a long line of information tools, and like all those grand tools (the printing press such as book, play, film) it's come under fire and the threat of censorship. And we stand to lose a great deal if that comes to pass.
Censorship can also affect the way especially young women feel about their bodies, or affect their self image by limiting the kinds of female role models they can look up to. The censorship of intelligent women of the past has led many to believe that men "did it all" and that the women were absent, when in fact they had to hide behind male names, or had their words and accomplishments silenced all-together.
And censorship, even of images that offend us, can create profound problems as we fight for our rights -- for any oppressed minority. Recently, Amazon.com has come under fire for making copies of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and "Mein Kampf" available for purchase. (Both of these books are virulently anti-Semitic; the second was written by Adolf Hitler.) If these books are suppressed, it would make it harder to rebut the people who claim that the Holocaust never happened.
One of the most hateful books ever written about women was written by two monks, and was used as the handbook for the Inquisition -- the church-sponsored holocause in which up to nine million women were tortured and murdered. The title of this book is the "Malleus Maleficarum," the "Hammer Against Witches." Sure, reading this book might make a woman want to wipe every copy of it from the face of the Earth. But too many times, a conversation about women's oppression goes something like this:
"Women have been tortured, raped, and oppressed throughout history!"
"Yeah, right. Come on, name one example. Name one -- yeah, you can't, can you? Come on, that's never happened."
If the "Malleus" were censored out of existence -- what could we point to to prove ourselves right? What evidence would exist that we had been oppressed in the past, and that this needs to be addressed? Generations of young children would be raised to believe that things were just fine for women for centuries prior to this, that nothing was ever really wrong, that "those feminists" were just yelling about nothing.
Censoring hate books, plays and filmsis like destroying evidence in a criminal case. If someone kills someone else, the police ideally save the evidence that proves that it happened, no matter how horrific. Destroying the evidence lets the criminal go free.
So, Books,Plays and Films should be censored.
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