Out In The Mountains : News - Cyber Center Deletes Porn

       Burlington – It wasn't a positive working atmosphere for R.U.1.2? Americorps Vista staff member Peggy Luhrs. Her primary responsibility is staffing the David Bohnett Cyber Center. "We started to get lots of 19-year-old straight guys," Luhrs said, whose primary online activity was searching out cyber porn images of women.
Luhrs was not the only person concerned. "One woman complained about 'why are they doing this here,'" she said, also noting a recent influx of middle-school-age girls at the center, who, she said, "shouldn't have to be exposed" to the explicit and sometimes violent content on neighboring computers.
       The computer stations at the center are not isolated within carrels or booths, but sit side-by-side on two long counters.
      In response to these complaints, the center has instituted a new policy that reads, "In order to help maintain safe space in R.U.1.2?'s David Bohnett Cyber Center, we must ask that patrons refrain from visiting pornographic websites while using the computers in the Cyber Center. Repeated violations of this rule may result in the patron being asked to leave the center. Questions about this policy should be directed to the staff."
       The struggle is between preserving the center's mission to be a safe place for all users to access explicit "information about sex, sexuality and sexual orientation," and the realization that some pornography harms women. Requiring a staff member to involuntarily be exposed to such images could be construed as allowing a "hostile workplace" atmosphere.
        Luhrs identified the Center's philosophy as "sex-positive" but suggested that the phrase has become a shield for violent pornography. "I'm a sex-positive person. But it seems that people who get it about what safe space is about, when it comes to pornography, suddenly sex-positive is a priority.
     "We are not anti-sex. Christopher [Kaufman, executive director] had us all come up with our favorite informational sex sites," she explained. The list will be made available to any patron who asks for it.
       "My objection is that porn is harmful to women," Luhrs continued. "People are not thinking about how this stuff is made. The feminist analysis has been obliterated by the so-called sex radicals. They're not very radical. It's Marcuse's theory of 'repressive tolerance': the culture will allow whatever supports its values. It's all these big corporations pushing commodified body types. That's not sex liberation."