From the ice-age to the dole-age
There is but one concern
I have just discovered
Some girls are bigger than others
– Morrissey
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In a perfect world — in an unlikely but beautiful future — we should ban pornography.
But… We live on Earth!
And, to save EVERYONE a ton of time, I am going to put my thesis, my truth, my wisdom, my insight of the ages right here at the beginning of this essay like an amateur hack writer:
If someone asks me if porn should be banned, the answer is “yes.”
If I’m trying to save people, if I’m trying to bring someone into the fold, and if I’m trying to enact positive, meaningful change in our culture, I do not scream “We need to ban all porn!”I regret to inform you that there is little actual value in Twitter slogans, LARPing as Catholic inquisitors, and circle j**king (pun intended) about pious and well-ordered morality.
Banning something destructive from society is a moral good — it’s a tactile rearrangement of human interaction that punishes and expels behavior not wanted by the society that passed the ban.
For example — drugs! While alcohol and marijuana are largely accepted by society in reasonable use, hard narcotics and life-ruining substances remain banned.
I grew up and still regularly spend weeks in a middle-of-nowhere Appalachian area of rural Pennsylvania. I came of age running with my local volunteer fire company, assisting on house fires but also sometimes the becoming the first person to arrive for a medical call.
Hard drugs have decimated the millennial and zoomer generations in my home state. I have a fire in my belly against Big Pharma, state and federal governments, and the education system for allowing so many of the people I rode a school bus with to die vomiting brown sludge from an injection of vital Narcan that came just a second too late.
I want to ban those drugs, and the great part is, the majority of Americans do too! That’s why they’re illegal, of course. In American political systems, that’s where a ban comes from — public assent to a piece of legislation passed by a politician elected to represent the will of his constituents.
And, since so many people hate hard drugs and recognize their danger — heroin and meth and recreational pain killers are illegal. People still do them, obviously, but those that sell or buy them are punished and (hopefully) rehabilitated.
Even though the drugs are still being consumed, we’ve banned them because we as a group have decided that those substances are so destructive that if someone is wrapped up deep in their production or distribution, we want them imprisoned.
By the way — have you ever done hard drugs? I mean hard, recreational drugs that are illegal, addictive, and heavily prosecuted? (Cocaine, heroin, meth, prescription pain killers, crack, etc.)
Yes? No? Whatever your answer, remember it.
Now. Porn.
Porn is bad. It’s really bad. In fact, in the modern day, it might be a major factor in the absolute decay of public cohesion and morality. It’s a syringe of black tar heroin right into the main vein of American morality.
It’s a type of media without any positive benefits. It is, at its absolute best, a fun way to spend an afternoon at home.
It is, at its absolute worst, an isolating and life-draining succubus that separates sex from love, divorces love from attraction, and attraction from humanity.
And yes, while sexual immorality, titillations, and recreationally staring at huge swingin’ knockers are pastimes that have been around since cavemen first realized they could pinch a cavewoman’s buttcheek in-between leopard hunts, the world we now live in is far more complex.
It’s December in the Year of Our Lord 2021 and we’ve learned a lot about what is good for us as a species. We’ve also, unfortunately, gotten a lot better at manufacturing, distributing, and quietly consuming depictions of jumbo honkers in a variety of situations.
In fact, right now, anyone old enough to manipulate a keyboard can go to the most-visited webpage in the world, tab into the search bar, and request a terabyte of amateur girlfriend oral sex real ginger pawg videos beamed directly into their eyeballs.
(Oh my goodness, Timothy, that was a concerningly specific and knowledgeable example of porn terminology! — Yeah, grandma, I’ve watched porn before, sorry.
I turned on my smart TV last week and was greeted with a naked, pregnant Cardi B singing on mainstream television about sucking a watermelon through a straw for a music video — with a featuring artist who was a college student in a similar state of undress funding her education with her rap performance. Sorry I know about PornHub!)
Basically, what I’m saying is, yes — porn is the new drug. You know what makes a drug hard to blanketly outlaw? Everyone in the country struggling with addiction or side-effects of its use.
Imagine a country that had a population strung to hell on heroin. Politicians talked about consuming heroin. Heroin advertisements appear on TV. Pop stars make videos of themselves shooting up. Legal corporations make a fortune selling the syringes.
The vast, vast majority of people in this hypothetical country (let’s call it the Heroin Republic) are hopelessly addicted to heroin. Some try to consume it passively in private or use it “responsibly” or “ethically” but it’s just a central part of their culture.
Now — tell that rapidly dying and miserable country to outlaw heroin — cold turkey. No more heroin. None. Never again. We’re all addicted to heroin, but we’re dumping it down the sewer tonight and executing anyone who brings it into our country ever again.
“But — but — if it’s bad for them, they’ll support the hypoethetical ban on heroin!”
Do you honestly believe this? In the world we’re living in?
We’re sending pregnant women to war in custom flight suits and tearing down statues of our nation’s founders, and you think we’re universally rational actors? You think we know what’s best for our collective good?
No.
“But, but — the libs passed X, Y, and Z laws that no one ever thought would be possible! We need to fight for what’s right! Stop hiding your true feelings and say what you believe!”
If you’re older than, I don’t know, 21 years old, you’ll remember a world where abortions were supposed to be “safe, legal, and rare.”
I mean, who could argue with that? Safe, legal, and rare abortions? No one wants to kill their baby. It’s just, sometimes, you know… Rape! Incest! The hard cases! I’m not a monster, I understand what can happen to an underage girl that could be so heinous that children should have a right not to deal with the life-altering ramifications of human sexuality!
You might not agree with this thought process, but it is, unfortunately, how many Americans contemplate(d) abortion in the decades after Roe v. Wade.
They do not see the procedure itself as a moral good, or even “acceptable,” but they lean on those hard cases, get brought into the fold by the zealots on the premise of women’s healthcare and women’s rights until they’re
And so, now, we can see the fruits of such a simple, acceptable, and specific legislative goals. What starts as a short, punchy, and specific call to action becomes seemingly unstoppable. It’s the slippery slope fallacy, but objectively true.
“Safe, legal, and rare” pro-choicers are all but extinct. You see them mocked and chastised in the comment sections of Ocasio-Cortez tweets and mindless Stephen Colbert videos. You see the slogan dismissed and stomped on by radical culture warriors who insist that it not only doesn’t go far enough, but is immoral in its conservative vision of the abortion industry. The people stomping on “safe, legal, and rare” pro-choicers are those emboldened by their elders, those that followed the ideological path given by their predecessors — which all started with that “safe, legal, and rare” policy.
By introducing the change they wanted to see in society with snappy and specific parameters, the pro-choice lobby successfully convinced the public that they were actually okay with letting fully gestated and viable babies die on the operating table.
Now.
What I am suggesting — No! What I am begging to see manifest — is my own compatriots consider the same basic strategic thinking.
What I am screaming into the heavens is a cry for fellow Americans to come together and present simple alternatives and uncontroversial brakes to the rapidly decaying world in which I live.
For so many issues, for so many cultural battles, the public is truly and unquestionably on our side.
No more children watching porn.
No more minors learning about anal sex at 11 years old.
No more knowing what an orgasm is before you understand how the opposite sex’s genitals work.
No more clicking an “I’m 18” button to see a woman deepthroat her best friend at a truth-or-dare party.
No more learning about G-spots as a 13 year-old.
No more seeing sexual pleasure as the primary qualification for a spouse.
No more high schoolers Googling how to give the best oral sex to satisfy their significant other without sacrificing their virginity.
No more!
These are basic — universal — values that we can set at the foundation of a movement that eventually… EVENTUALLY leads to the type of society that can entertain and even pass bans all pornography.
No, right now, I am not worried about “banning pornography.” Because I live in the real world.
I don’t post on Twitter about putting pornographers “against the wall” or throwing porn CEOs out of helicopters because I am an adult.
Right now, I am concerned with holding PornHub responsible for the thousands of women they have sexually manipulated by allowing their private videos to be posted and shared publicly.
Right now, I am concerned with children being advertised to via sexualized marketing.
Right now, I am concerned about what parts of the body can be shown on daytime television.
The results are pretty clear: since the question was first asked in 1973, a plurality has always said that porn should only be illegal for kids. The gap between that plurality and those who say it should be totally illegal has only grown: in 1973, 41% wanted a full ban compared to 48% who wanted it illegal under 18. In 2018, those figures are 31% and 65%, respectively.
– What Do Americans Think About Banning Porn?
The world is on our side. But only for now. Only for as long as we can keep stop the cracks, pick up the pieces, and start from the foundation. Only for as long as we meet our fellow citizens where they are while maintaining our moral values.
Only as long as we continue speaking common sense.
We’ve been banging our Christian war drums for a long time. Too long.
We’ve been so obsessed with our faith that we’ve forgotten that a lot of these social issues don’t even need God to be obvious to the whole world.
After all, we can’t expect God to do all the work!
I just need to know you’re normal and don’t want this cancerous disease to spread any further. Porn-addicted young people are some of the most valuable allies we have in this issue. They are the ones that know the damage.
And they don’t want future generations to suffer like I have.
I don’t know about you (the reader) but my sexuality is permanently ruined by my childhood of pornography and sexual insanity. And I had a healthy — and some would argue morally above average — upbringing!
What we need to do is look each other in the eye as human beings, recognize what has been taken from us, and try and make life easier piece by piece.
We need to establish a dam — a borderline. What we need is to look around ourselves, to take in the horrific world we’ve inherited, and work constructively to bringing it into a moral future — a future where sex is understood more seriously and ethics are not divorced from pleasure.
Now, some of the pre-teens among you might argue that right is right no matter what.
From there, we can talk, we can discuss. From that point we can talk about sexual ethics and consent and nude pictures and that dick pic you took in college that leaked online and how no one has a right to publish sexual photos of someone without their permission.
No more porn for kids.
Can we agree on that?
Good. Because we have a lot of work to do.
Notes from Hanazono 