Just thinking about how republicans are going after normie sex shit like “internet porn” and “dildos” now
we fucking told y’all
to be clear: the right views any sex that isn’t purely procreative as deviant. it’s not just kink, or queer sex they find abhorrent. And they genuinely believe that the better educated you are about sex in general, including about gender shit, the more deviant you are. they’re legitimately trying to claw everyone down to hell with them.
I’ve been thinking about this for a bit since this post blew up, but I wanted to wait until the waterfall of notes abated a bit before trying to articulate it.
I’ve gotten a few reblogs/replies that are confused as to why I’m putting a proposed porn ban and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Target dildo outrage in the same little ~package~. Some objected to my use of the term “normie” to describe internet porn; others were upset by my implicit defense of porn because of its position as a vector of sexist exploitation. Some folks didn’t like that I didn’t make clear that using sex toys is normal, while porn shouldn’t be normalized.
I don’t think you can separate the two. And I think banning porn in the same way as FOSTA/SESTA tried banning internet sex work will have a pretty extreme negative effect on everybody, including those who don’t consume porn.
Let’s start out with this first, though. I think porn (and sex work; even though that wasn’t part of the original topic it’s necessarily a part of this discussion) is absolutely a vector of exploitation. There’s no question about that. And I don’t want to be glib and say “oh the porn industry exploits its workers just like any other industry” because there are definitely unique, shitty, sexist ways porn exploits its people that other industries don’t.
But, you don’t get rid of that exploitation by shoving the industry back into the shadows. It can be argued that, if the industry has improved at all over the past two decades, it is because of its relative normalization and not in spite of it. Passing legislation that seeks to remove porn from the Internet would have the opposite effect.
Forcing porn back into the shadows of digital society would likely actively harm performers, removing their ability to unionize and otherwise organize, as well as eliminating their ability to report on abusive directors or producers (or other performers) without getting into legal trouble themselves, and opening them up to being forced to participate in dangerous situations.
What criminalizing internet porn wouldn’t do (and you can see this in how other forms of sex work have evolved post-FOSTA-SESTA):
- Get people to stop working in porn.
- Remove porn from the internet entirely.
- Keep porn out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have it (e.g., children).
And like I said in the original viral post: when people like Mike Lee and Marjorie Taylor Greene tell you they want to ban evidence of sexuality in everyday life, their goal is not a carefully-considered, sensible, means-tested and laser-targeted removal of “just the bad stuff.” The world they want is best described as a Christian nationalist monoculture, and they’re not going to be selective about what they get rid of.
One thing I can tell you for sure? Their world still won’t get rid of all the worst elements of modern society that people justifiably hate, like human trafficking and pedophilia, because as shit like the migrant bus stunts (human trafficking) and the Southern Baptist Convention report from last year (pedophilia/CSA) proves, these so-called Christian nationalists are themselves often the worst perpetrators of the crimes they say they’re trying to prevent.