Those who war on sex have an extraordinary arsenal of weapons at their disposal. It includes:
How could any social movement with these advantages fail to accomplish its agenda? Let’s look at some of the specific strategies of anti-sex forces. Enhancing our literacy about media, statistics, and oratory may not stop the War on Sex, but it will enable us to see it more clearly, and therefore make it visible to others.
The very framing of phenomena is the first step toward controlling the conversation about it. Americans hear about “the problem of indecency,” “the problem of abortion,” and “the problem of pornography” constantly. This means that anyone who isn’t concerned about indecency is for indecency, doesn’t care about children, and so forth. It’s far less common to hear about “the problem of censorship” or “the problem of others’ discomfort with sexuality,” which would make it easier for the public to appreciate the importance of anti-censorship efforts. Similarly, we hear far more about “the problem of gay marriage” than about “the problem of intolerance and discrimination.”
Protecting our rights now requires standing up and saying, “We don’t have an indecency problem, we have a censorship, intolerance, and hijacking of government problem.” As linguist George Lakoff says, “Framing defines the problem. Framing limits what you can talk about. They have achieved the ability to frame public discourse their way.”1
Compare these two versions of our sex-related social problems. Note how the definition of a problem determines why we should be upset, and in which direction possible solutions will be found.
• “the gay problem” |
Intolerance |
• “anti-Christian bias” |
Anti-secularism |
• “the abortion problem” |
Anti-contraception |
• “the porn problem” |
Censorship |
• “the indecency problem” |
Repression |
• “the adult business problem” |
Erotophobia |
• “the promiscuity problem” |
Moralism |
• “the immorality problem” |
Religious extremism |
• “the sex-is-out-of-control problem” |
Irrational public policy |
The legislators who write our laws can make anything illegal. All they have to do is create a category of what’s illegal, and define behaviors that fit into that category. By criminalizing “public sex acts,” “mailing indecent substances,” obscenity “in public view,” material “harmful to minors,” “contributing to immorality,” and “undermining community morals,” various communities have made an enormous range of activities illegal. These now include private swing clubs, lap dances, nude car washes, and, as 21-year-old Clemson University student Christine Vetter found out, mailing her worn, unwashed panties.2
Control a society’s vocabulary, and you control the society.
Normal conversation depends on many words that lack objective meaning but have emotional resonance—that is, subjective meaning. We agree to use expressions like “intimacy,” “frustrated,” “overcrowded,” “rude,” and “in charge,” even though we each mean something different by these words. We’re all against “sex abuse,” but exactly what constitutes it? We all want people to feel “respected,” but what do you and I each mean by that?
There are many words associated with sexual problems, and those who war on sex keep expanding what those words mean. “Sex abuse” and “child molestation” used to mean the physical violation of children by adults. Now we hear that adults who go to strip clubs are molesting their kids “spiritually.” And we have eight-year-olds busted for “sexually abusing” a classmate by casually peeking under her dress.
A particularly dramatic example of that appeared in Newsweek during 2011. With the provocative title “The John Next Door,” the article discussed a single study by anti-prostitution activist Melissa Farley based on interviews with 201 men.3 Attempting to show the contrasting traits of men who “buy sex” and those who don’t, her categories are defined in ways that skew the results—and support her ideological agenda.The “sex buyers” are defined as men who “have bought” sex from a prostitute, escort, massage parlor or sex worker (even once, a jillion years ago), or anyone who has exchanged “something of value” for a sex act (which sounds a lot like dating in college). Thus, this category is tremendously broad.
This group is compared with men who are less involved in all aspects of sexual entertainment, have little or no interest in porn, and in some cases presumably masturbate less (she says it was hard to find these guys!). Not surprisingly, she found this second group is less likely to view women sexually, less likely to have many sex partners, are less likely to have sexual conflict with women, and so on. It’s the equivalent of finding that people who go to church are more likely to believe in God than people who don’t go to church.
But she—and more importantly Newsweek—ate it up. They conclude that men who “buy sex” are violent criminals who dehumanize women, view them with anger and contempt, and relish their ability to hurt them. After damning all legal forms of adult sexual entertainment, including the single most common form of adult sexual expression—porn use—the article brings in the artillery: the dreaded “sex trafficking.” Yes, an article that starts out bemoaning America’s level of prostitution use moves on to the vicious sadistic mentality of the average customer, then climaxes with “sex trafficking.” From there it’s just a tiny step to “underage sex trafficking.”
It’s a perfect example of today’s Axis of Erotic Evil: the alleged nexus that is supposedly destroying America:
“Sex offenders” used to describe people who were violently intrusive. Now the criminal category includes harmless exhibitionists, those who solicit prostitutes, and teens who email sexy photos of themselves to their friends. “Date rape” is a terrible thing, but at some colleges, if you change your mind the morning after sex and can prove you’d had a few drinks, you can claim you’re a victim. Everyone’s language has gotten saltier since the 1970s and 80s, but Morality in Media urges people to petition the Federal Communications Commission about “indecent” words like “butt” and “boob.”
And there’s the word “child.” The War on Sex loves to talk about the horrible stuff “children” are seeing and doing—without mentioning how many of those children are 16, not 6.
Then there are the phony categories used to scare us. It’s easy. Take two separate things, one common and one unusual. Put them together and watch how many things fit in. Like, um, “Millions of wives scold or even hit their husbands on the honeymoon,” or, “Tens of millions of people leave restaurants feeling too full or even sick.” How about these common, misleading and disingenuous categories:
A popular use of this strategy involves attacking something benign by associating it with something bad: “The F word shouldn’t be allowed on late night cable TV because porn is bad for kids.” Another popular tactic is setting up and attacking a pointless straw man: “Sex education shouldn’t encourage bestiality.” Yes, even I can agree with that totally inane statement.
And here’s my favorite, repeated endlessly (from Nicholas Jackson in The Conservative Voice): “The average age now of exposure to pornography is 5 years of age.” I challenge Mr. Jackson to say exactly how he defines “pornography” and “exposure.” I haven’t seen too many five-year-olds bumping into Voyeurweb.com or ButtBusters 3. If he’s talking about kids seeing a half-second of Janet Jackson’s nipple, or some of Meryl Streep’s cleavage at this year’s Oscars, or ads for Brokeback Mountain, I can live with this. I don’t call that porn, I call it the reasonable life of a five-year-old.4
And while we’re on the subject of language, here are expressions that are part of the problem. They have an anti-sex message built into them and are used as part of a sex-is-dangerous and we-good-people-are-being-victimized narrative:
Pro-life |
Sex addict |
Childhood innocence |
Porn addict |
Cybersex addict |
Sex and violence |
Abstinence is 100% |
Hardcore, smut, filth |
Activist judge |
Baby killer |
Pro-abortion |
Traditional values |
Promiscuity |
Unborn child |
Perversion |
Culture of life |
Pornographer |
Normal |
Abortionist |
Victim of porn |
Secondary effects |
Partial-birth abortion |
Morality group |
Obscenity |
Pro-family |
Decency |
Indecent |
Homosexual agenda |
Christian nation |
Harmful to minors |
A week doesn’t go by that we don’t hear about some guy, present or past, who:
You get the idea. But no matter how many anecdotes erotophobes pile up, correlation is not causality. Just because two things happen near each other doesn’t mean that one caused the other. Buying nachos at Taco Bell at 8:00 doesn’t make the moon rise at 8:15. Of course many rapists consume porn. Fifty million other Americans do, too. Every one of those 50 million drank milk as a kid, like every rapist did. You don’t hear people saying, “Milk made him do it.”
For a perfect example of this, see Jan LaRue’s (Concerned Women for America) piece on victims of pornography, which cites “a lieutenant colonel who admitted killing his wife during an argument about his use of the Internet to view pornography.”5 One bizarre story doesn’t constitute an analysis. As heartbreaking as the story might be, it doesn’t even constitute information. As Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science reminds us, “The plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data’.”6
The abstinence folks report teens tell surveys they want abstinence. Then 90 percent of them have sex before marriage. The decency folks report that viewers want wholesome programming. Then viewers make Desperate Housewives, CSI, and Grey’s Anatomy huge hits. Anti-porn groups report that people want obscenity laws enforced. Then 50 million Americans look at porn, and hotel room porn skyrockets when anti-porn groups come to town.
Perhaps these surveys indicate something different than anti-sex groups think they do. They’re actually proof that (1) people tell surveys what they think the desirable answer is, and (2) people say one thing and do another. Social psychologists have known the first for over 50 years, and everybody has known the second for about 50,000 years. Of course, when survey statistics are based on heterogeneous categories, the results can mean anything a sponsor claims it does. For example, “Parents favor abstinence until a couple is married or close to marriage,” (emphasis mine) according to a Heritage Foundation survey.7 They have the nerve to say that this proves public support for abstinence programs.
Other statistics are abused as well. Lifenews.com decries how both the absolute number and the percentage of American abortions being done by Planned Parenthood keeps rising. What Lifenews.com conveniently omits is that the number of places Americans can get legal abortions has declined every year since 1982, and is at its lowest in three decades. Of course Planned Parenthood is doing more abortions. It is quickly becoming the only organization with the money and political courage to cope with the harassment and violence that abortion providers must endure.8
Conservative government and the Religious Right love to portray regular Americans as victims of porn and nasty TV assaulting their homes, and strip clubs invading peaceful neighborhoods. Exactly who do they think pays for these products? Or do they think South Park, Jenna Jameson, and the local tittie bar are brought to us by altruistic nonprofits? It is staggering that the Right can decry how much bad culture surrounds us, while simultaneously pretending there is no consumer demand for the things they hate.
Similarly, they somehow claim to be fighting an uphill battle against a flood of dangerous eroticism, while claiming that theirs is the voice of the majority that must be heard and given power.
The rhetoric in the War on Sex is ripe with assumptions that it never tests or proves—because it can’t. It’s easy to say that kids should be shielded from all sexual imagery because it destroys their alleged innocence and warps their moral vision, but where’s the evidence? Without evidence, these assumptions shouldn’t be the foundation of endless hand-wringing editorials, one-sided hearings, and apocalyptic states of emergency—and they certainly shouldn’t be driving public policy.
Here are some other key assumptions of the War on Sex:
Local and federal government hearings feature these assumptions—invariably without giving anyone from the other side a chance to challenge them. Legislators and would-be censors alike describe their opinions in quasi-scientific ways (“we all know … ” “it’s clear that … ” “the obvious connection between … ”).
One enormous scam getting virtually no scrutiny is the well-intentioned but poorly conceived Megan’s Law. Tens of millions of dollars are spent around the country maintaining complex databases and complicated notification schemes that scare the hell out of people. But there isn’t a single study validating that this approach actually makes anyone safer.
Phil Burress started Citizens for Community Values because, he says, he was a porn addict for 25 years. He isn’t alone; many “decency” leaders have led lives of debauchery (a tradition that goes back to St. Augustine). But having been dysfunctional doesn’t provide expertise. That would be like selecting an attorney because he kept getting sued, selecting a marriage counselor because she is divorced, choosing an architect because his house came down in a storm, or looking for a doctor whose broken leg refuses to heal.
The real reason these “decency” crusaders are interviewed over and over is that their stories are titillating, and provide the perfect morality tale to reassure anti-sex forces (and it allows the media to showcase its “community concern”). “Look at how sex ruined me” promises a peek under someone’s underwear, as well as the “proof” that sex destroys us. Throw in some divine revelation, and you have a moralistic hat trick. If you have a decent bookkeeper, there’s faith-based funding in it, too.
The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to say that “everyone has a right to their own opinion but nobody has a right to their own facts.”9 Unfortunately, the War on Sex is being conducted by people who are extremely skillful at portraying their opinions as fact, and successfully ridiculing facts that challenge their opinions.