Anthony and Sheldon,

I've now had a chance to visit the pro-porn activism site under discussion, and while its intentions are admirable and its content often valuable and always interesting, I'm concerned that it may be subject to the law of unintended consequences.

First of all, I think I should share with you and other forum participants here a disturbing phenomenon I can clearly observe from the panels available to me as an administrator. Over the past few months, we've experienced a high volume of anonymous traffic, much of it originating from geographically centralized IPs in a certain part of the Upper Mid-West, clearly seeking out printable versions of threads dealing with anti-porn feminism. By following the links from your new site, I'm sorry to say I think I know where some of that traffic is ending up. Various items from nina.com have been exhibited and/or quoted (obviously without notice to or permission from us) by presenters at anti-porn feminist events held on college campuses during that time period. The images and information used are extremely specific and, predictably, used to demonize Nina and by implication, other women who share her views.

What worries me is that your new site, just like this one, has the inadvertent effect of channeling traffic to the othewise obscure corners of the Internet inhabited by what is basically a small and isolated group of fanatics of whom the larger public to which we appeal takes little or no notice.

The question we must ask ourselves is this: in attempting to rebut their essentially preposterous arguments at great length and in excruciating detail, are we not giving them the very attention they crave and otherwise could not hope to attract? I already know how I feel about this, which is one reason why I've stopped posting on these subjects on this site. I don't see any reason to encourage them to come here to or arm them with out-of-context snippets of commentaries they can recontextualize for their own despicable purposes.

This is not to say that those arguments don't need answering or to discourage the establishment of forums for that use, but rather to raise the practical question of how best to neutralize whatever political threat to freedom of expression, their bette noir, they may represent.

For my own part, I've elected to engage in a the Japanese practice of "mokusatsu" - literally to kill by silence. I don't want them using our words against us and I don't want people from here upping their Alexa scores simply out of morbid curiousity.

Obviously, as genuine advocates of free speech, I would never ask any contributor to stop posting on this topic, but for my own part, speaking strategically, I've decided to let them carry on their vendetta with no help, direct or indirect, from me.

Just a thought to consider.

Ernest