Republican Senator Mike Lee introduced Interstate Obscenity Definition Act (again) last week, which would criminalize porn at the federal level.
Republicans are drunk with power. What a stupid fucking idea. There’s no chance of banning porn. Then they wouldn’t be able to jerk to Trans women and feel shame after.
Trans women are hot, in case that reads as though the shame is correct. It’s not.
Under the bill, content would be considered obscene if it appeals to prurient interests in nudity
And since they've already taken away due process, they're basically paving the way to send anyone who has a body they don't like to a death camp. I don't think it's hyperbole anymore to say that that US is fucked.
[is] manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children [. . .] It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed (Roberts, 2023: 5).
This invocation of pornography is intentionally broad, vague, and amorphous. By equating trans issues (“transgenderism” and “transgender ideology”) with pornography, child abuse, and misogyny, this vision takes one step toward the outlawing of trans people altogether. Roberts (2023) goes on to detail the draconian and restrictive mechanisms necessary for eradicating pornography and all that comes with it: “The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered” (p. 5). Such extreme rhetoric signals a no-holds barred approach to regulating gender, sexuality, and privacy. Aware that more left-leaning states would be unlikely to arrest trans people on such counts, the document later details a wider plan through which the Department of Justice would intervene and prosecute any local officials not willing to bring criminal action against LGBTQ people (Hamilton, 2023: 553).
This is basically how we ended up with the burqa. A woman's body is evil because it makes men unable to control their sexual urges, therefore women must be banned. Now, in Afghanistan, a woman's voice must not even be heard.
The US is heading surprisingly rapidly towards that point. It was a tragedy when it happened in the Middle East. Unfortunately many of the right wing people in the US don't understand this yet.
The bill may not be a new proposal, but the environment it's being proposed in is. It has a far higher chance of passing now, with this government, than it ever has before.