Nikki Craft Vs. Porn Industry

Women’s activist, Nikki Craft, has spent more than two decades fighting the violently explicit images published by the porn industry. Pornographic empires such as Hustler and Penthouse have stood behind their constitutionally provided rights to say and print what they pleased so long as it is protected by the first amendment. Citizens of the United States have the right to express themselves and voice their opinions freely and should take advantage of this right as long as it does not prove to be harmful to others.

Nikki Craft is known for her political activism and civil disobedience within a feminist group that went by the name of the Preying Mantis Women’s Brigade (later renamed Citizens for Media Responsibility without Law). This organization vows “… that until women are created equal, [they] refuse to hold mankind’s laws, objects and positions of power to be sacred… and by any means necessary work to topple the empire that profits from the rape, death, and psychological destruction of [women]”# Nikki Craft and her followers have done everything from protesting outside the Hustler building to entering local convenience stores and destroying issues of Hustler and Penthouse magazine by ripping them up or pouring black ink over them. The issues being destroyed contained pornographic material of a violent nature, such as women being “… tied up with heavy rope… images [also] show women bound and hanging from trees, heads lolling forward, apparently dead.”# Nikki Craft, being a rape victim herself, and others like her spoke publicly about the effects that the images inside these magazines have on men and how the violence portrayed in the images makes it seem more socially acceptable for the acts to occur in real life. The Preying Mantis Women’s Brigade feels so strongly about stopping the distribution of the magazines that they have gone as far as to try and have them removed from convenience stores as well as have the actual printer of Penthouse, Meredith Corporation, seize printing the magazine altogether.

Although Nikki Craft and her brigade made a valiant attempt to shut the two porn powerhouse’s down, they are very much still strong operating forces within the pornographic industry. (The industry as a whole rakes in just under $13 billion a year#) Larry Flynt, Hustler’s editor, has had to face much ridicule for the content of his publications and found himself in the midst of many legal battles, the most common one being “The People vs. Larry Flynt”. Upon entering his website, www.LarryFlynt.com, he is quoted on the top of the website as saying:

“HUSTLER has always been involved in political and social issues. This Web Site allows us the opportunity to let people know where we’re coming from, and where we’re going, and what our intentions are on issues such as free speech, individual rights and civil liberties.”#

In his opening statement on his personal website Larry Flynt makes it perfectly clear that he says and does what he wants under the liberties provided by the first amendment and the right to free speech, and expresses these rights when confronted with Nikki Craft and others like her. He seems to completely disregard them and even slightly mock them by printing a centerfold of a woman kneeling while reading a newspaper with a headline that read “Woman Found Strangled”# in his May 1985 issue.

No facts state that any pornographic publication has ever enticed another human being to commit any crime. Just the same as violent video games are commonly to blame when a child acts out and hurts someone (such as in the case of Devin Moore and his shooting of three officers after supposedly playing the video game “Grand Theft Auto” for long periods of time), sexually violent photographs could and are to blame for many rapes and murders. To say that pictures and videos of a violent nature may contribute to a persons actions is credible but