Editor’s Note: This post is the first in a series by YNOT’s LynseyG that gives an overview of the history of anti-porn sentiment in America. Look for additional installments in the series in the days ahead.
After the recent Pornhub debacle—a hugely popular petition to shut down the streaming platform giving rise to a New York Times op-ed accusing the site of being “infested” with non-consensual content followed by Pornhub removing 80% of its content but major credit card companies nevertheless cutting the site, and its thousands of models, off from payments, all of which led to the further marginalization of legal, consenting sex workers around the world—I got to thinking. About the porn industry as it stands today in America, and about where it came from. And about how, at every stage of its development as a legitimate industry, there have been those in this country who have fixated on tearing it down.
Some have campaigned (Laila Mickelwait comes to mind), others have protested (here’s to all the hand-painted signs outside porn conventions!). Writers (Naomi Wolf), academics (Gail Dines), activists (Michael Weinstein), politicians (Edwin Meese), religious zealots (the whole Exodus Cry crew), even former porn stars (Shelley Lubben) have all turned on the adult entertainment business, and steadily, continuously worked to undermine it, delegitimize it, outlaw it, or regulate it into oblivion.
Some have galvanized the masses or their own personal organizations against it; others have shown up at porn conventions to cause trouble; still others have written ill-informed treatises on the harms of smut. Some have done all this in the name of a greater cause, some to “save” the people who work within it, and some have simply turned the personal chip on their own shoulder into a lifelong obsession. But no matter their various reasons, these crusaders are united by one common principle: to dismantle the American porn industry. From at least the late sixties onward, it seems there’s always been someone out there fomenting widespread outrage or suspicion or revulsion against those who willingly, even happily, make pornographic content.
As I reflected on these malcontents, I found myself pondering: Why is there always someone out to get porn? What is it about the ancient practice of exchanging sexually exciting material for profit that so distresses, offends, even consumes those who fight against it? Is there some fundamental problem with porn that makes them unable to turn away and find something else to worry about? Is it simply that porn is an easy scapegoat, a dog that lies under the table just waiting for easily offended people to kick it?
Or, rather than some quality inherent to pornography itself, is there a trait that those who take up the cause of destroying it all share? A certain sour grapes attitude, perhaps? Or a need to feel superior to others?
Whatever the case, the constant campaigning is getting old. Legal sex workers and the directors, producers, managers, agents, camera operators, editors, sound techs, lighting folks, and others who make them into stars are being forced farther and farther out of “polite” company on the internet and in the economy. They’re being pushed further out toward the fringes of acceptability, where it’s harder to get paid for legal work, and where illegal work that’s more dangerous becomes a bigger possibility. It’s not okay.
So I’m going to take some time to look at the people who have led the decades-old anti-porn campaign over the years in the hopes of discovering just what drives them. Perhaps I’ll find a commonality, perhaps not. But in the end, I hope that by getting to know the enemies of the porn industry, we can all learn to better work against them…starting next week with President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, set up by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the late sixties, and the very weird circumstances and individuals involved.
Masked person with gun to head photo by Vijay Putra from Pexels
