Republicans take aim at risque jokes and romance novels with anti-sex billshttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/17/republican-anti-sex-legislation-state-levelI put this up, because nobody, but nobody, offers up for one's reading pleasure the genre of cognoscenti put downs of miscreants and grifters better than the Brits.
What does exposure to porn do to impressionable teen minds, you ask?
“Eight states have justified their actions by saying that porn is “creating a public health crisis”. Louisiana’s bill claims that pornography “may lead to low self-esteem, body image disorders, an increase in problematic sexual activity at younger ages … impact brain development … shape deviant sexual arousal, and lead to difficulty in forming or maintaining positive, intimate relationships, as well as promoting problematic or harmful sexual behaviors and addiction.”
I think I get the “deviant” reference – even more queers, et al – but a history professor has a bit more to add:
“Historian Whitney Strub, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University, doesn’t think these ideas are well-founded. “Framing pornography as a public health crisis is not driven by serious engagement with the social scientific literature,” he said. “They’ve even got fake peer-reviewed journals that give the imprimatur of scholarship … It’s been a very smart rebranding of evangelical Christian conservatism.”
‘Why are all these bills being proposed now? Strub thinks it’s partly because of the overturning of Roe v Wade. “Abortion gave a certain coherence to conservative politics in the United States. And it certainly still does … but they’re in the position of Ahab if he slayed the white whale … I mean, there’s no more Moby-Dick.”
And there you have it. What more is there to be said? I guess you all will tell me.
