SEXIS WRONG

his boss has endearingly, and coarsely, dubbed “Turd Blossom”),
opines that a desire to fight immoral TV and films was
the reason Bush won re‐election. “I think it’s people who are
concerned about the coarseness of our culture, about what
they see on the television sets, what they see in the movies.”
Desperate Housewives’ popularity in the Bush‐friendly states
aside, 3 this has to be the last word. Rove engineered the defamation
of three military heroes as variously mentally unbalanced
(John McCain), unpatriotic (Max Cleland), or dishonest
(John Kerry). 4 Each was running against either a prominent
Republican or Bush himself, whose tour of duty was in a National
Guard office. In any discussion of hypocrisy, and of the
way well-spun, sickening fantasies about political opponents
fuck with the facts on the ground, Rove on indecency is an
obscenity no one can beat.
Having studied the publication, distribution, and prosecution
of pornography in America in the twentieth century, I am
convinced that the very same attitudes and procedures apply
now as did a century ago regarding the red flags, or taboo
signals, that sexual explicitness raises. Regardless of the
groundbreaking changes in obscenity law, there has never
been a sexual revolution in America. A New Deal, yes. Progress
toward social equality, fine. In Bushworld, these are endangered,
while under its watch the following revolutionary
developments have progressed: destruction of safety nets
protecting citizens from loss of job and Social
Security benefits, faith-based initiatives that
would put institutions with a specific religious
raison d’être in charge of medical and educational
public services, militarized police forces,
cynicism about how America has controlled
other nations’ destinies, and the capitulation of professional
journalists to the demands of their employers’ PR offices.
harder to determine the hidden source of the sexually explicit
entertainment. The result is better and better for business.
I
The present generation has witnessed the tolerance of sexual
subcultures as legitimate consumer groups, legalized abortion,
a narrower range of obscenity prosecutions, and different
erotica-distribution methods. Once‐taboo “perversions”
are now the subject of titillation on sitcoms. Also as part of the
mainstreaming of porno into popular culture, fetish costuming
and accessorizing have taken their roles in the drama of high
fashion. One socioeconomist opines that the bear market is
an explanation for the mainstreaming phenomenon, which
has produced lucrative gentlemen’s clubs, ladies’ nights at
the Penthouse Boutique, autobiographies of porn stars, and
Fortune 500 adult-entertainment corporations. 5
But mainstreaming means that what made individual pornographers
wealthy fifty years ago makes a fortune for corporate
sponsors now. Anyone who thinks that 1950s erotica customers
couldn’t have imagined what is available today was
never below the counter in a Times Square adult bookstore.
Those cheaply produced booklets, photo sets, and films allowed
a few porn kings to buy homes in exclusive New York
and Connecticut suburbs. Distributors themselves have
There has never been a revolution
in the prurient ambiguities and
anxieties that sex stimulates in the
American consciousness.
morphed from Jewish middlemen to Mafia lieutenants to upper-middle-class
Internet providers with college degrees.
This President has also embraced ideas geared at initiatives
regarding faith‐based and, thus, abstinence‐only programs
here and abroad. He is “pro‐life,” anti‐abortion, anti‐gay marriage,
anti-adult entertainment. As Attorney General, John
Ashcroft attempted to block any website adjudged indecent
in order to protect young people, even if it meant ignoring
principles established half a century ago stating that adults
cannot be prevented from accessing what might unbalance
the most impressionable members of a community. Yet Bushworld’s
agendas concerning the morality of what people can
do or vicariously experience sexually cannot be called radical.
As I hope this essay shows, there has never been a revolution
in the prurient ambiguities and anxieties that sex stimulates in
the American consciousness. The prurience leads to censorship
or five-second delays in transmission or decency codes.
Any such actions just shift the temporary onus from one
bookseller, one company or medium to another, and make it
There are no more Societies for the Suppression of Vice or
citizens privately deputized to spy and inform on publishers
and booksellers of erotica, but associations dedicated to protecting
the “traditional” (i.e., now nearly obsolete) family unit,
federal obscenity task forces, and anti‐indecency clauses in
NEA grants have taken up the slack. Bush’s Secretary of Education
Margaret Spellings began her reign by attacking a PBS
children’s TV show that, in just one episode, portrayed gay
moms as ordinary folk one’s kids might enjoy meeting. Faced
with a loss of funding, the network voluntarily pulled the episode.
It couldn’t afford to dissent from a “healthy marriage
initiative” which a godly administration has managed to fund
with taxpayer’s money. 6
We are still making the same fantastic distinctions between
acceptable mass entertainment and obscenity as we did
when pin‐ups on magazines were red‐blooded fun but the
same newsstand publications showing cover girls brandishing
THERE HAS BEEN NO SEXUAL REVOLUTION 309