Masculine Policy: The GOP’s Plan To Outlaw ‘Porn’ And Suspend The First Amendment
Does watching porn threaten your masculinity? Science says it doesn’t. Is porn addictive? No, it’s not. Is sexual expression that is consenting legally protected by the First Amendment? Yes, …
It is mind boggling to me that in the year 2023 we're complaining about porn, LGBT existence, and fucking book content. Isn't this what we were laughing at 20 years ago? About book burnings and how stupid the previous generations were for fearing and banning media that challenged them?
It is mind boggling to me that in the year 2023 we're complaining about porn, LGBT existence, and fucking book content. Isn't this what we were laughing at 20 years ago?
It's easy to forget because of how quickly the cultural zeitgeist shifted when it finally did, but the early 2000s was still very homophobic. Watching pretty much any comedy from that era reminds you of just how common the punchline to jokes was just, "teehee they're gay."
In the early 2000s it was exceptionally common to hear things referred to as “gay” if they were “bad” in some way. Chandler’s “Dad” in friends is one I look back on and shudder. I understand when boomers say things like “things were different back then, but our ability to reflect and do better is what moves our species forward. Not dig in and scream no!
Isn’t this what we were laughing at 20 years ago?
We were laughing, they were seething and planning.
The real impact of the 9/11 attacks: There is direct line from shock and confusion to nationalistic rhetoric and "'OOORAH!"- patriotism to the rise of the Tea Party, the growing influence of the Evangelicals up to the emergence of Trumpism and Qanon.
Don't forget that the CIA armed and trained the militias that would eventually become Al Qaeda. We were the architects of our own demise.
History is cyclical if large chunks of the population refuse to acknowledge it.
You should watch the documentary show about the duggars and how they’re part of a huge cult that systemically indoctrinates kids, fucks them, and gets them into politics. It’s disgusting. It’s an organized push of quiverfull fundamentalist shit being pushed into law.
Shiny Happy People, for the people wondering what the documentary is called.
Human nature doesn't change that much over time. Teenage me thought the future would be awesome because people like me would be in power. Adult me knows that people my age and younger are like everyone before them, just younger.
Most of them ARE previous generation.
So, let's get this straight. They're going to take a bunch of dudes, take away their porn, not teach them sexual health, not tech them about consent, strip abortion rights, make women scared to come forward, teach them it was their fault, and do nothing about police ineptitude/corruption. I'm not even exaggerating when I say that it seems like the GOP wants a generation of rape babies. Banking on their future voting bloc?
If I had no context and read your comment I'd think you're describing the Taliban or some other islamofascist government. The GOP has really gone off the deep end.
The gop has really gone off the deep end
"You merely adopted the deep end... I was born I it!"
-The gop
I mean, even with context it's no different.
When you start talking about consent they get uncomfortable and that's just a bridge too far. It's really, really close to accountability, the one thing they hate more than anything else.
rape babies.
Rabies for short.
This is not going to stop porn. All it will do is criminalize the actors, producers, and viewers.
I'm reminded of the drug war, where they took a relatively harmless narcotic used disproportionally by minority populations at the time (Marijuana), and used it to criminalize and imprison large swaths of the population, especially within the black community.
It's no coincidence that most of the folks targeted by this effort are women and sex industry workers, which skew liberal by a large degree. Note I'm not just talking about prostitution or porn actors, but the entire sex industry, including toys and books.
The GOP is scared shitless of the rising power of women in modern society, and being able to criminalize and consequently attack the revenue stream of sex industry workers is a way to blunt it. There's also an element of class warfare involved, as OnlyFans or similar sites are often the most economical way for a young woman to lift herself out of poverty if she has no other marketable skills.
Marijuana was so they could arrest hippies. Cocaine was so they could arrest black people.
Source: one of the guys responsible for the war on drugs straight up said it.
Actually, when William Hearst originally started the campaign in the 20s to take out the hemp farmers that were competing with his timber business (he bought up most of Humboldt so he could corner the paper market), he targeted Hispanics (primarily Mexicans) with Marijuana in his articles about drug crimes and how they were ruining America. Henry Ansligner bought it hook, line and sinker, and he set the tone until the 40s, when hemp was briefly made legal for the war effort. Note that Jack Herer's The Emperor Wears No Clothes does an excellent job illustrating this historical relationship.
Once the Beats started smoking weed in 50s, hemp was criminalized again, and the prohibition was expanded to felony status as law enforcement started targeting the evolution of the Beat movement, the hippies.
The subsequent prohibition on cocaine products was targeted at black neighborhoods (as per the GOP intention during the Nixon/Reagan era), and was built upon the "successes" of the previous marijuana prohibition.
This is why I don't think they'll stop at porn.
The GOP is scared shitless of the rising power of women in modern society, and being able to criminalize and consequently attack the revenue stream of sex industry workers is a way to blunt it.
I agree that this is a big part of the war on porn. These stuffy prudes are seeing soceal/cultural norms changing before their eyes and they hate it.
I also think they're using it as an angle of attack to undermine online privacy/security in an effort to chill free speech/expression online. It's all about control.
The GOP/Nazi party is where humanity goes to die. Good thing they are in an ever shrinking minority.
A minority that could cheat its way into governance in 2 years. Vote, FFS
The boomer remover aka Covid knocked a bunch of those out- disproportionately in red states.
Shrinking? They increased their seats in the house last election, and now control >50%.
The Republicans party is very much elderly people, uneducated people, and religious people.
The old people are dying, religion is on a steady decline.
The thing is that Republicans show up to vote because their bubble is largely fear driven politics.
They also have gerrymandering on their side, they limit polling places, they unconstitutionally use poll taxes that disproportionately affect minorities, they make voting harder by eliminating vote by mail... In short, they cheat like fuckin crazy and rile up their base to get out and vote.
I would not agree that they're gonna disappear by 2028, but they are waning.
Globally, far right politicians are getting more votes.
GOP will be around for decades or more.
They won the overall popular vote for the House by 2.8% in a midterm election with a somewhat unpopular President from the opposite party plus economic turmoil. The standard assumption would be that they'd blow it out. In the 2018 midterms, Democrats won the popular vote for the House by almost 10% under somewhat similar circumstances.
2022 should have been a rout in favor of the Republicans, and every political insider considers 2022 a disaster election for Republicans.
Wouldn't it be nice if these clowns stopped trying to legislate away their hangups and instead sought some fucking therapy?
A mentally unwell population hyped to chase an overblown issue is easier to control. They'll let themselves be exploited as long as the moral panic is hijacking their attention, which is why there is always a new one.
Can we stop blaming this on being “mentally unwell” and recognize these people are assholes? I was suicidal for 18 years, and I managed to never be “unwell” enought to pull the lever for a Republican or to think that policy should only be made for the interests of people like me, so clearly mental wellness isn’t the deciding factor here. Most Nazi voters weren’t mentally ill, and neither are most of these people. They’re deeply, profoundly selfish, not sick.
Fucking therapy? I'm interested
Look up sexual surrogacy. 😉
It's always incredibly ironic when the party that favors small govt, minimal State, is also the one that loves to make the most bullshit laws curtailing personal freedom.
Not exclusive to the USA, unfortunately.
I'm pretty sure when they say small government they just mean they want a gov that isn't strong enough to keep them from being the assholes they really are.
Because all those "minimal State" parties are usually corporate beaurocracy parties.
Maybe except anarcho-comunists, they are for "no State at all" or direct democracy.
Well, without knowing it, they are for a very strong dictatorial government.
America is losing the fucking plot!
Correction.
A very small yet very loud part of the USA is losing the plot and their mind. The rest of us are just trying to get on with our own lives while navigating the mine field that is the gop magats.
I mostly agree with you. I'd say the "rest of us" have a certain population that feel like getting on with their own life is now being made impossible/illegal/unsustainable. That leads to disharmony between citizens who would be better off teaming up against the common enemy of Oligarchs. The GOP feels like a symptom of legal human rights violations at this point. If we just keep living our own lives like I would also like to, the blight will just continue to get worse.
As someone who stood in front of some dude trying to force me to suck his dick (and I fucked off immediately) and getting back assaulted by randoms on the midschool (while dressed) yet I'm still an hetero, biological male...? What the heck is going on? Why on earth I'd start sucking dicks just because I saw some dude naked on screen? That'd be ridiculous, and a demonstration of a severe lack of wit and common sense. That is like, staring at my own cock would make me gay or something amongst those lines.
But would you do it for a Klondike bar?
When you pry it from my warm, sticky hands...
Or even secretly renting hookers and escorts, even if they are gay or trans.
Don't mind the ladybugs.
Dumb af and would never happen. I'm sure the porn industry has enough money to buy off politicians.
Or interesting information about them
Never say never.
Look you can call me any name in the book. The current where children can easily form para social relationships with what are essentially pornstars and it's extremely easy for teenagers to become sex workers isn't healthy.
I'm not saying Hawley is right but there needs to be some real effort to address this.
Uhhh, porn is definitely addictive... not against banning or removing it, but..
“Addictive” means so many different things to different people at this point, it’s become useless. If you can compare the erotic materials I share with my spouse to heroin with a straight face, I’m not the one with a problem.
Lol, you jump straight up to haroin? Just because you and your wife have a healthy relationship with porn doesn't mean it can't be addictive to other people. If someone has physical withdrawal symptoms from not consuming the thing, it's an addiction.
Like, caffeine is highly addictive, but you wouldn't compare that with haroin.
Being a European, I am seeing extremists of both sides picking at each other.
No normal people left anymore?
The US doesn’t have a left wing party. We have a extreme right wing party, and a center right wing party. This both sides shit is stupid as fuck. “We want to ban gays” is extreme. “We want gay people to have rights” is not
💀
Name one left extremist in a position of power.
Go ahead, tell on yourself.
Yes, so far at least the Democrats seem to be far less tolerant of extremists in politics. Maybe that's untrue - but they tend to not be violent or wanting to overthrow the system. Part of it is how you define extremists - I'm more tolerant of people who want to campaign and try to make most any change via the democratic process via voting no matter their position. I'm less interested in those who feel we should invade the capital to try and overrule the outcomes of elections or violently intimidate opponents.
Not giving guns to children. It's like they don't even want freedom! Everyone knows that more guns equal more freeduhms
Lol did you just do a “BoTh siDes” which leftist extremist have actual political power in the US. Defending people’s freedom to make and consume legal porn is not an extremist take LOL. I’m also European by the way
Oh yes. Extreme Left Wing ideas like: Trans people deserve human rights, We should feed our children, We should forgive college loans to borrowers that are being burdened so heavily with debt they can't start a family or buy homes (and the impact of it on the US Economy), Everyone has the right to vote. Wow....
The US Democrats aren't great, especially from our European perspective, but this is such a stupid enlightened centrist type of shit take. The Democrats after all aren't the one who are banning media and take peoples right away.
You can always tell a disingenuous response with the both sides bullshit.
They pretty much always respond with transphobic shit too
I guess if you're mostly happy with how something is then you've no reason to bring it up.
Nobody is writing long articles, posting tweets or appearing on TV shows to talk about it being quite nice that they can currently go and buy a beer from a shop. But someone could easily decide that they want to rile people up about the easiness of buying beer. And it all goes from there.
I'm usually happy to hear an international perspective of us politics because it can be grounding. But you can't "both sides" your way out of fascism. There is no far left institutional power in the us. Kindly keep your boot licking to yourself
It's just right wing extremists who ruin democracy. Ya know, like Hitler with Germany not too long ago lol.
both sides
Except "both sides" are right wing parties
Sure, from a European perspective, but one is center-right and the other is far-right (farther right than any of your parties).
Another dumbo heard from.
Odd, the topic is about a plan for 2025. It is not about two sides bickering at each other.
So weird you brought up a typical conservative argument without anything to prompt it.
Lots of them, but normal doesn't sell advertisements or make headlines. I see by the downvotes (or whatever Lemmy calls them) that you've been visited by the Reddit groupthink. It feels weird when it happens. Some of us just want everyone to get along...which feels radical in its own way.
Groupthink my ass. How about it's not some idiot conspiracy and he's just straight up wrong? Tough, I know.
It's harder to see where the other side is coming from when you're standing so far apart.
"Normal people," or people anywhere in the middle of the two poles, who can see both sides still are generally pretty quiet now because they get attacked by one side for "sympathizing" with the other. I talk to both extremes daily in my line of work, and it's exhausting to be respectful of either far-directional sentiment all day, every day
Normal people get attacked by both sides until they learn to be quiet.
I love how your downvotes illustrate your point; such sweet irony.
The far-left purity test alienates many mostly-left people.
You can be pro-choice, pro-women, all for supporting the poor, gay rights and trans rights - but if you dare suggest that maybe trans women shouldn’t be competing against born women in top-level sports, then the vocal left brand you as a transphobic TERF whose opinion isn’t even worth listening to. They would rather fight you over the 2% of things you disagree on, than embrace you for the 98% of values you have in common.
The vocal left want diversity in color, gender and sexuality - but they will not tolerate any diversity in thought or opinion.
You overly dramatic fools just want to be the victim so bad.