Across America, pictures are coming down and sculpture is being covered; workplaces are being sanitized, as bulletin boards and screen savers are cleared, and e-mail blocking is ever-stricter. College campuses are in the grip of speech codes, as professors are being disciplined for discussing the realities of historical or contemporary gender, intimacy, and, most of all, sexuality.
Now that American culture has decided that sex is a primary source of most of its problems,1 removing it from the public arena as much as possible is seen as the solution.
The War on Sex is committed to eliminating any public experience that causes anyone discomfort around sexuality. This is the Lowest Common Erotic Denominator project. It’s stripping us of meaningful art, diminishing our creativity at work, interfering with normal adult relationships, and constraining academic and media discussions of philosophy, social science, the humanities, and politics. But many people apparently feel this is a small price to pay for making sure no one is offended or uncomfortable about sex.
When America outlawed the creation of a “hostile work environment” in the 1980s, the idea was to prevent racial and gender harassment that was repeated, pervasive, and so severe as to obstruct individuals from performing their job.
But now even the most indirect reference to sexuality at work or school can be considered the creation of a hostile employment or learning environment. Given the breadth of sexual influences and expression in human life, this means that any individual can exercise a veto over a huge range of workplace or school issues: dress, language, decor, personal memorabilia, charitable policies, even after-hours recreation. “Hostile environment” law has been perverted to create a right to not be offended when one leaves one’s home.
While everyone deserves a fair chance to succeed, appealing to the most erotophobic sentiment to create a sexless work or university environment is not about fairness—it’s about bleaching eroticism out of society. This is patently unfair, and this is offensive to many. But sex-positive feelings have no legal standing because people comfortable with sex are not a protected class like ethnic minorities or women. When can someone sue because short skirts are banned in a private office? Or because a gold cross around someone’s neck is acceptable, while a silver vulva isn’t?
Patrons of public facilities have also acquired the phony “right” to never be uncomfortable about sexuality, no matter how repressed they are about it. This is used to justify Internet filtering in libraries. People applying for driver licenses or phone service are complaining if municipal clerks show too much cleavage. Art that has civilized, comforted, challenged, and enlightened people for 500 years is being taken down from city halls across America.
So whose standard of discomfort shall we use—the person whose threshold of discomfort is lowest? No one says to an employer or city government, “By the way, I’m cool with the thought-provoking artwork around here.” No one says, “By the way, I’m fine that the person at the next desk, or the clerk who processed my forms, wears an open marriage button on her lapel.”
Those not offended by sexual words or images are a crucial part of the continuum of the public’s values. But the standards and feelings of those not obsessed with sex are never taken seriously in this matter.
Historically, democratic countries have focused primarily on controlling behavior, while totalitarian governments have attempted to control speech and thought as well. American laws of the last 20 years are changing that, however. Public art, company e-mail, and casual speech are increasingly monitored and restricted, as the “feelings” of coworkers, classmates, customers, and neighbors are seen as sufficient reason for government intervention.
Removing a perfectly legal statue or classical play from public view because its sexual aspects make someone uncomfortable is increasingly common. The workplace, college campus, and public square are now places where some are entitled to the comfort of not having their sensibilities challenged, while the rest of us suffer arbitrary censorship. In such an inhibited, anxious environment, no one grows, and ultimately everyone loses.
We need laws protecting the rights of people offended by the neurotic stripping of human eroticism from workplaces and civic spaces across America.
Wrestling with eroticism has been one of humanity’s most glorious, productive (albeit troubling) challenges throughout history. Every culture that interrupts this adult project pays for it in violence or stagnation; that’s the lesson of the Spanish Inquisition, Sharia law, the Soviet Union, and “modern” Iran.
It’s no coincidence that in 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft covered the breast on the 70-year-old “The Spirit of Justice” statue before launching a massive assault on Americans’ liberty.