JD Vance wants to ban porn
Like all Republicans, JD Vance thinks that banning guns is a very bad idea. On Thursday the Republican Senate candidate and bestselling author of the memoir Hillbilly Elegy tweeted a long explanation as to why Joe Biden’s ideas about gun control are misguided. Enacting new laws won’t do anything to improve the gun violence problem in the US, he tweeted. Bans don’t work.
Except in some cases, of course. While Vance is firmly against banning guns, he’s very keen on banning porn. Yes, the man who made a name for himself with a book often described as “poverty porn” now has his sights set on eliminating actual porn. In a “newly unearthed” 2021 interview with Crisis magazine (an outlet which describes itself as A Voice for the Faithful Catholic Laity), Vance opined that porn is one reason why birth rates in the US are declining. There should be an outright ban on pornography, he suggested, because it’s stopping young people from getting married and having kids.
“I think the combination of porn, abortion have basically created a really lonely, isolated generation that isn’t getting married, they’re not having families, and they’re actually not even totally sure how to interact with each other,” Vance said.
I think the combination of being endorsed by Donald Trump and spending too much time in the public eye may have rotted Vance’s brain. You don’t have to be a genius (or even remotely pro-porn) to realize that porn is not why birth rates are going down in America. Porn is not to blame for the fact that a lot of Americans simply can’t afford to have children anymore. Porn is not to blame for the fact that giving birth costs tens of thousands of dollars in America. Porn is not to blame for the US being the only industrialized country in the world not to guarantee paid family leave. You need to fix all these issues if you want people to voluntarily have more children. The problem, however, is that fixing all of these policy issues is difficult. Blaming porn, on the other hand, is easy.
For the record, I am not pro-porn or anti-porn. Like lots of things in life, it’s a complicated issue. What I am firmly against, however, is people using porn as a simplistic scapegoat. And blaming porn for all the problems in the world seems to be becoming increasingly popular. In 2016 the Republican party made porn a priority of the GOP platform, stating it has “has become a public health crisis that is destroying the lives of millions”. Last year, Republican senator Josh Hawley lamented that feminism has driven men to “pornography and video games”. And, after Vance’s 2021 comments started making headlines this week, other Republicans have chimed in with support for his position. The West Virginia governor, Jim Justice, also blamed porn (among other things) for school shootings during a briefing on Wednesday.
Expect to see a lot more porntificating from the right; the Republicans have become a party of moral panics. Adding to the war on porn, is the fact that Christian nationalism is on the rise in the GOP. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, recently shared a video in which she declared that the “Christian nationalism” will be “the movement that stops the school shootings”. Porn is just one part of a larger (im)moral crusade in the US. God help us all!
Pro-choice sentiment in the US is the highest since 1995
A new Gallup poll has found that 55% of Americans identify as “pro-choice”. Similarly, a majority of Americans (52%) consider abortion morally acceptable, while a record-low 38% call it morally wrong. Only 13% of Americans think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. I suppose those 13% are all Republican politicians.
Mathematics prizes have a gender problem
Female representation among mathematicians is slowly improving but all the top prizes are still going to men. Only one woman (the late Maryam Mirzakhan) has won the prestigious mathematics Fields Award since its inception in 1936.
Sheryl Sandberg leans all the way out
After 14 years as COO of Meta (the surveillance company formerly known as Facebook), she’s stepping down from her role. She leaves behind a complicated legacy.
The Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial was an orgy of misogyny
“No victim is perfect,” writes Moira Donegan in the Guardian. “No victim should have to be. After all, if a man cannot be considered abusive towards an imperfect woman, then just how perfect does a woman need to be before it becomes wrong to beat her?”
Rumours of #MeToo’s death have been greatly exaggerated
In the wake of the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard verdict, a lot of people have been declaring that #MeToo is dead. Tarana Burke, who started the movement, however, is sick of people saying that. “You can’t kill us. We are beyond the hashtag. We are a movement,” Burke tweeted. “The ‘me too’ movement isn’t dead. The system is dead.” With all due respect, the system isn’t dead – it’s working exactly as intended: protecting rich and powerful men.
Your regular reminder that Jeffrey Epstein’s associates are all escaping accountability
Speaking of powerful men … let’s not forget that the only Epstein associate who is currently in prison is Ghislaine Maxwell. Meanwhile all the masters of the universe who partied with Epstein are like ‘whoops, my bad’ and seem to have suffered no consequences whatsoever.
Prince Andrew gets a convenient case of Covid
Well, that last bit isn’t entirely true. Jeffrey Epstein’s buddy the Duke of York may not be behind bars but he is (supposedly) in quarantine: the disgraced royal tested positive for Covid on Thursday. Which was A+ timing really because it provided a convenient excuse for not having him at the Queen’s jubilee service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral on Friday.
The week in pop-triarchy
I don’t know if anyone pays attention to music charts anymore, but here’s a good reason to: a song called Prince Andrew Is a Sweaty Nonce**** was climbing the UK charts ahead of the platinum jubilee. Lyrics to the song, released by a comedy rock group called the Kunts, include the following: “The grand old Duke of York, he said he didn’t sweat / So why did he pay 12 million quid to a girl he’d never met?” Good question!
Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for order
