Last year, America On-line shut down the account and website of Dr. Susan Block. This web site has been viewed by thousands of people in only a few months. Dr. Susan Block is the Director of the Dr. Susan Block Institute for the Erotic Arts & Sciences, best-selling author, host of the Dr. Susan Block Shows and Radio Sex TV on HBO.
The shut-down occurred completely without warning. Suddenly, we got a flurry of calls from fans who couldn't get into our website. Then we discovered that even we could not enter our own website. AOL would not even allow us to read our mail, let alone update our material or let Dr. Block answer her clients' inquiries. A total unilateral lock-out. After several calls to various AOL employees, Dr. Block reached AOL Supervisor Lexie Haines who agreed to look at the Website (which she'd never seen), and find out just what was so "offensive" that someone (who still remains anonymous) at AOL had decided to shut us down. Following are notes e-mailed between the two of them over this incident of brute censorship on-line...
Listen
to the Real Audio 28.8 broadcast
of Dr. Block's response to the following letter.
Subj:
Home Page
Date: 96-06-14 19:33:50 EDT
From: AMHaines (no longer employeed by AOL)
To: DrSuzyB
Dear Dr. Block,
I'm very glad that I had a chance to speak with you so that we could work out the details of reactivating your account. I have had a look at your web pages and believe that I can now give you a much more clear idea of what type of content will need to be removed from your pages.
There are numerous referrences to masturbation and giving ones self orgasms, these should be removed. Discussion of genitalia will have to be removed, as will discussion of specific sexual acts. I would reccommend that, rather than having the "Cyber Sex Toy Catalog" and the Video Catalog appear on the page, that you, instead, offer visitors a number or address through which they can get copies of the catalogs. Mention of S&M, B&D, swinging, threesomes, water sports and the like should also be avoided as should words such as "horny". The photos of the cover of "Love" magazine and the one of the Chimpanzees having sex should come down.
I understand that, as a sex therapist, some of this may seem a bit extreme to you but I sure that you also understand that our Terms of Service and Rules of the Road have been established with a very broad range of people in mind.
If you have any further questions you should feel free to E-mail me, I'll be happy to assist you in any way that I can.
Regards,
Lexie Haines
Supervisor, Graphics Review
Community Action Team
America Online, Inc
Subject:
Home Page
Date: 96-06-14 19:40 PST
From: DrSuzyB
To: AMHaines (Lexie Haines)
Dear Lexie,
Your e-mail listing the “parts” of my web pages that you and/or AOL find offensive and that must be “removed” gives me no choice but to remove virtually all of the information I have on AOL that many thousands of your members have been grateful to access. After all, as a sex therapist and sex educator, how can I educate people about human sexuality without references to “genitalia,” “masturbation,” or “orgasm,” or without discussing “specific sexual acts”?
You write that you “understand this may seem a bit extreme” to me, but that your “Terms of Service and Rules of the Road have been established with a very broad range of people in mind.” What range of people? The Ralph Reed-Pat Robertson-Phyllis Schaffley-Ayatollah Khomeini Koffee Klatch?
Really, Lexie, I must say that I am horrified and astounded at the “broad range” of your squeamishness and the arrogance of your censorship. As I told you over the phone, I am a very reasonable, cooperative professional. I am not some sort of salacious, exploitative kook. I work within FCC guidelines and according to community standards for my radio and TV shows. I am a Yale graduate, best-selling author and respected lecturer in the field of sexuality. I have spoken on the subject of sex in numerous universities, high school, bookstores, even in churches and temples, and I have never encountered such an absurd, sex-phobic, body-hating, diversity-loathing list of no-no’s as you have e-mailed me.
I hope to God, Lexie, that you and your ilke are not involved in the raising of children, because an attitude such as yours makes children grow up confused, tormented, and hating their bodies, themselves and the opposite sex. Numerous studies (including those by developmental neuropsychologist James Prescott) have shown that this kind of pleasure-loathing, genital-fearing, shameful attitude contributes greatly to violence in our society, especially male violence against women.
And yes, Lexie, I consider this attitude to be YOURS. I won’t allow you to hide behind the veil of hypocrisy that says “These are AOL’s rules, not mine. I’m just following orders.” We all know that the worst crimes of this century were committed by people who were just following orders. Evil abounds when good people do not stand up for what’s right.
I think of you as a good person, Lexie. You sounded so understanding on the phone, laughing in agreement when I suggested that censoring nudity and language on-line results in censoring some of civilization’s finest works of art and literature. Please don’t stand by and let the evil of censorship thrive under your supervision. When you start by censoring certain parts of the human body because they “offend” a few right-wing nuts, you next find yourself censoring great art (as those people following orders did), next women will be made to cover themselves head-to-toe as they must in fundamentalist countries, next books will be thrown out of libraries and burned, next “offensive” people will be locked up, and our society will look very much like Orwell’s “1984” (which, by then, will have long been burned into oblivion).
And so, Lexie, when everything is “cleaned up” and “pure” enough for the Popes and Ayatollahs and AOL Supervisors, we will wait for history and our children to judge us. What will they say about the army of censors that charged through our times, excising parts of our bodies, acts of love, expressions of consensual pleasures and works of art? They will say that we destroyed a culture.
E-mail like yours makes me shudder for our future.
Very sincerely,
Susan M. Block, Ph.D.