Project 2025’s porn problem
The lines between art and obscenity aren’t always clear; pornography can be hard to define. “I know it when I see it,” the late US supreme court justice Potter Stewart said in his famous non-definition of the term.
The far right knows it when they see it as well. And they see pornography everywhere. Experts have noted that worries about pornography among social conservatives seem to go up and down over time: right now we seem to be at a high point of porn panic. The Republican Missouri senator Josh Hawley, for example, has repeatedly claimed that feminism has driven young men to “pornography and video games”. And the Republican party has called porn a “public health crisis that is destroying the lives of millions”.
Porn also plays a big part in Project 2025: a Christian nationalist manifesto and list of desired policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation that has been described as “a wishlist for a Trump presidency”. (Donald Trump has said he knows nothing about it.) The 900-page plan proposes policies like mass deportations, extreme abortion restrictions and the dismantling of climate change protections. It also says that pornography should be outlawed.
On the surface the conservative obsession with porn doesn’t seem overly problematic. There are, after all, plenty of serious issues with the porn industry. It’s often exploitative and it’s helped to normalize violent acts like strangling during sex. The problem, however, is the incredibly broad way in which Project 2025 Mandate talks about porn. No definition of porn is provided; rather, it’s talked about in the context of things like transgender rights and non-normative gender expression. Porn, we are told is “invading [children’s] school libraries”. The word has been weaponized as a useful way to attack LGBTQ+ rights. See, for example, this extract from the foreword of the Project 2025 Mandate:
“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology … is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. 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.”
What does this mean? Well it seems to mean that the far right want to define a book that features a same-sex couple as illegal pornography and throw the author of the book and any distributors of the book in prison. It seems to mean that a book talking about sexual violence could be classified as porn and banned. It seems to mean that talking about the existence of trans people would be “porn” and criminalized. In short: anything that goes against normative gender roles and hierarchies, or interrogates those hierarchies, could be considered obscene and criminalized.
Project 2025, it can’t be stressed enough, isn’t some sort of hypothetical dystopian possibility. The scariest part of all this is that it’s very much under way. Republicans are already classifying anything they don’t like as obscene pornography and finding ways to ban it. There’s been a surge in book bans in American schools, for example. From July to December 2023, PEN America found that more than 4,300 books were removed from schools across 23 states. Many of the targeted titles feature LGBTQ+ characters. Works that address rape and sexual assault are also increasingly being targeted. So don’t be fooled by Project 2025’s preoccupation with porn. The far right aren’t interested in the exploitation of women, they’re interested in controlling exactly what it means to be a woman. This isn’t a crusade against porn, it’s a crusade against progress.
Katy Perry is getting backlash for Woman’s World, her new ‘feminist’ anthem
Woman’s World is Perry’s first solo single in three years and, the singer explained, the first thing she’s done “since becoming a mother and since feeling really connected to my feminine divine”. Unfortunately, however, the single isn’t getting a divine reception. The Guardian’s Laura Snapes gave it a one-star review and described it as “Bic for Her of pop, the pink Yorkie for girls (get your lips around this!), a song that made me feel stupider every sorry time I listened to it”. Perry is also facing criticism for working with the controversial producer Dr Luke on the single. In 2014 pop star Kesha accused Dr Luke of sexual assault and he then sued her for defamation. In 2023 a legal settlement was reached in the defamation suit.
Elon Musk denies volunteering his sperm to help start a colony on Mars
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The all-women patrol team protecting Sumatra’s rainforest
“We have to remember that conservation is only necessary as a result of colonialism and the forced displacement of Indigenous people who have stewarded the land for thousands of years,” says an Indigenous female ranger in this beautiful Guardian photo essay.
Canadian serial killer Jeremy Skibicki given life sentence for murders of Indigenous women
Skibicki appears to have been motivated by white supremacist beliefs and targeted vulnerable women in Winnipeg’s shelter system. The “jarring and numbing” murders helped draw attention to the broader crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada.
Attempt to ease Poland’s strict abortion laws defeated
In Poland anyone convicted of aiding a woman in getting an abortion faces up to three years in jail. On Friday a slim majority rejected legislation that would have decriminalized abortion assistance.
Death at US women’s prison amid heatwave sparks cries for help
There’s no air conditioning in the cells at the California’s largest women’s prison and there are worries there may be even more preventable heat deaths.
Etsy sellers say imminent ban on sex toys is a betrayal
“Bans like this one also further the idea that sexual health and pleasure is somehow taboo or something to be ashamed of,” one seller said. “It has broader impacts on society as a whole.”
Israeli forces used US-made bombs to murder kids playing soccer in a Gaza playground
Just another day in the graveyard that is Gaza! Meanwhile pundits in the western media and politicians keep saying Joe Biden is a “good man”. Biden is facilitating one of the worst atrocities we’ve seen in modern times–if you think he is a “good man” then what you’re really saying is that you don’t think Palestinians are people.
The week in pawtriarchy
The latest status symbol for the paranoid 1% isn’t a bunker with a safe room, it’s a Svallin. This is a “an undisclosed mix of Dutch shepherd, German shepherd, and Belgian Malinois”, bred to be “beasts that could rip out an attacker’s trachea yet also function as pets”. The top dogs cost $150,000 each and only 20 are sold a year after an in-depth vetting process.
