Either there are dozens of haters stalking me or one very industrious blobfish who’s been chasing me down on every social media platform lately.
On Pinterest, a photo was reported. On YouTube, a video. On FaceBook, multiple reports against me, for everything from PG-rated memes to political comments, kept me checking my TimeLine review for frustrating notices saying that, in some mysterious-to-me way, I had not complied with FB Terms of Service. (Even though I had, unless I am supposed to read between the lines and assume that if an ordinary civilian had posted it, no one would care, but when a queer BDSM woman posts it, it’s probably going to be illegal).
I can’t remember being censored this frequently since the 1990s, when Different Loving changed my life and my professional destiny. Yeah, it’s not easy being a famous pervert, though it sure as fuck is full of black humor. The tales I could tell of hypocrisy and censorship could fill a book. My favorite, though, was in 1996 when the long-closed Borders Books in Buckhead invited my estimable husband, Will, and I to do a reading of Different Loving for Banned Books Week. Borders was so proud of their support for free speech, they created all kinds of events featuring books by authors who historically were censored, from Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs to James Joyce and Rabelais. Seemed like Different Loving would be a good fit, given how many newspapers had already refused to review a book about the then-still-unmentionable subject of kinky sex.
We were excited about the opportunity but then corporate headquarters in Minnesota got wind of it and insisted that the only way we could appear in the store would be as part of a free speech debate: they wanted to bring in some feminist scholars from Emory College to stand against us on a panel.
My head swam with the challenge. On one hand, what the fuck? On the other hand, what the fucking fuck! A debate?! On the third hand (shhhh), I began having visions of getting dressed to the teeth in my leathers and inviting everyone I knew at The Atlanta Eagle to please show up in their leathers to watch us counter every argument the women’s studies department threw our way. I saw myself letting my inner Bitch Goddess energy flow down the aisles like the blood of a warrior woman, vanquishing ideologies and shredding political correctness.
And then Borders called back and said they couldn’t find people willing to do it at Emory. Poof went that dark little fantasy.
“So just a reading from us?” I asked the shaky-voiced manager when she gave us the news.
“Uh, no. Corporate says no. They don’t want to appear to endorse a book on BDSM. They told us to cancel you. They think if you speak, it’ll be like they approve of your book’s subject, and they can’t do that.”
“So…you’re banning us from speaking at Borders during Banned Books Week?”
“Well, yeah, if you want to look at it that way.” I could almost hear the manager sweating. “But we’ll still sell your books, don’t worry.”
It was the absurdity of it all that got me. I knew what I was getting into when I wrote the first mainstream book on BDSM that was accepting and candid. It was “here is the truth, this is how we live, we are living our lives authentically, we make no apologies for embracing our truths, don’t judge us.” It was our positive point of view about SM, sex and gender diversity that really angered critics, including one reviewer claiming the book was a long, twisted rationalization for perverts doing perverted things.
Fortunately, readers didn’t agree. The book is still in print. 25 years later, BDSM is less stigmatized and more accepted — particularly among Millennials and fans of 50 Shades — as a meaningful way to push the envelope of eroticism. Some of the big media outlets who once mocked us for even imagining they’d review us now routinely publish BDSM-positive articles and stories.
I won’t enumerate all the censorship Will and I endured because it’s been too voluminous. Besides, I know others who’ve had it worse and have been permanently banned, or lost gigs and pretty much gave up on fighting for sexual freedom in favor of occupations that guaranteed a steady income.
I also know that too many people in the world are afraid of candid discussion of sex. I don’t hate them but I hate that society allows them to control the narrative about sex and censorship. I hate that sex-negative people get more of a voice in public discussion than sex-positive ones. You see it all the time on interview shows: radically anti-sex ideas get a platform, while only moderates are allowed to voice sex-positive ideas. When was the last time you saw me or someone like me go up against an anti-abortion or anti-women’s rights person on national TV? Pretty much never. Media want to talk about the sexual revolution but they don’t want to “appear to endorse” it any more than Borders did with a book about BDSM. Of course, they still want to profit by it.
The world in general panders to faith-based, anti-sex ideologies. Yet there is no rational reason why any adult would want to limit another adult’s access to sex information, sex education and sexual entertainment. It’s been proven time and again that sexual ignorance is the enemy — abstinence-only education doesn’t work while fact-based sex ed does; porn doesn’t harm society and can actually improve relationships; STIs and infant mortality rates are rising in the US even as reproductive rights and sexual health services are vanishing.
Whether it’s a book, a movie, a strip show, or queer sex, no one should have the right to tell other adults what harmless, consensual activities they may pursue. If it harms none and brings joy to a human, it’s not up for judgment by others. I mean, really: I love toy trains but why is building them a better use of human time than stimulating orgasms? In fact, when I think about the hours, the effort, and the money some people put into their toy train collections, I think it’s obscene. Imagine if they devoted all those energies and resources to feeding the poor! What an obscene thing for an adult to focus so intently on doing funny little things with funny little toys for entire weekends, spending half a paycheck to acquire that working drawbridge for your trains to run under, and doing it all because it makes you happy. How selfish. How odd. How self-indulgent. Those are the arguments people use against sex. Anti-sex people will say we’re selfish to “choose” to be kinky, gay, trans, or something else. They don’t understand it and find it weird. They blame us for not caring about society.
Funny that nobody cares about how people amuse themselves as long as it doesn’t involve sex. After all, who wants to separate a grandpa from his harmless hobby? Nobody. Unless that hobby, of course, involves patronizing sex workers, watching porn, or putting some wrist cuffs on his wife and spanking her to orgasm. Then, suddenly, it becomes other people’s business and new laws are written by lawmakers terrified that people are having orgasms from the wrong things, i.e., things they don’t approve of. Look back up at the blobfish: it’s the look they all wear when they judge us.
In no order, here are things I consider totally gross and obscene, things I’d love to ban from my consciousness and would prefer never to see online: Misogyny. Misanthropy. Elitism. Racism. Homophobia. Transphobia. Weight-shaming. Nazism. Violence. Rape. Assault. Child abuse. Animal abuse. Domestic violence. Cults. Meth addictions. Alcoholism. And everything else that fucks up human life and brings people down to their knees and destroys their future.
I know that if I was a miserable harridan who condemned queers, I would be free as a bird to spew poisonous, hate-filled rhetoric across the mediaverse. I’d be a treasured guest on Fox. I’d get introduced to right-wing billionaires who’d secretly ask to submit to me while fighting against perversion in their public lives. I know that for a fact, because it happened to me once. Bullshit on that.
As a child of Holocaust Survivors, I find American Nazis the most obscene people of all. Yet FaceBook hosted virulently anti-Semitic pages for years and repeatedly told me they saw no problem with its contents. That changed 2 months ago when Zuck got in hot water. Suddenly FB wrote me to say they agreed with me that a page I’d reported for two years about Jews drinking the blood of Christian babies was indeed anti-Semitic. You don’t say!
So what is obscenity, anyway? There is no such thing, not really. Despite myriad efforts by judges and media censors to define and set terms on obscenity, there will never be a true consensus because obscenity is not a thing but a reaction to a thing. When it comes to human sex/gender behaviors and their records — whether visual or written — reactions, perceptions, and the interpretations of laws are as varied as the people who react to them.
Nudism illustrates the point very well. Everyone has an opinion about nudity and the conditions under which it is permissible. Some people can appear nude if they are appearing nude in the right places, like a nudist beach, locally-legal nudist event, or at home. Some people can appear partially nude whenever they like (people with male bodies and male breasts can go topless) while others (people with female bodies and female breasts) are subject to arrest for doing the same. Adults are subject to criticism, snickering, or, equally bad, sexual harassment and arrest on charges of indecency if their clothing is “slutty” or “shows too much flesh.” Sure, you can flash your breasts all your like during Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, but if you flash in other cities, no matter the parade, you might get arrested.
The difference between a male-body going topless and a female-body going topless is a matter of human perception. In the US. we culturally attach special meanings to breasts, in part because they are a commodity in the eyes of hetero men (who see them as objects of sexual desire), in part because they are treated as a sacred symbol of motherhood. It’s not because they are bigger than male breasts (as moob-watchers know all too well), either. The big deal about female breasts in the US is a complicated web of het-male-privileged cultural and economic assumptions.
Assumptions include that, on some level, women’s breasts are men’s business and they get to control where and when they are viewed. On another level, male breasts aren’t interesting to het males. (That narrative doesn’t include all the women and gay men who feel differently about male nipples, of course, but the laws aren’t written for them.) So that which is perceived as arousing to straight men is more often than not what is considered as obscene. At least outside of men’s clubs and stripper bars, where men pay to see breasts to other men who sell breasts as casually as other people sell hot-dogs.
Breasts uphold a lucrative web of economic profiteers. First, there are all the men who own the club and venues where you can see women bare their bosoms, and all the men who run the porn magazines and websites that feature breasts. Plastic surgeons enjoy the fetishistic intensity of het male desire, and millions of women have been raised to feel that the size and shape of their breasts is a golden key to social success. Overall, lady tits are a multi-billion dollar industry in the US, and most of it is controlled by het men.
And, for every man who sees a naked woman as an obscene sight, you can count on at least one or two women in his life who agree with him, though perhaps not for the same reasons. Feelings of jealousy, competitiveness, possessiveness make a lot of wives blow up when they discover their husbands looking at porn or staring at a hottie on the street. Anti-sex women are a secret force in culture, stubbornly devoted to wiping out anything that could potentially make their men stray from them.
If you think it’s shameful to be naked, you won’t want others to go naked. If you think breasts are too arousing to be viewed, you freak out when someone flashes a nipple. If you think sex is shameful, you’ll see sex everywhere, and complain about the “over-sexualization” of society, another empty term that speaks to fears, not realities. “Over-sexualization” is used most frequently by people who can’t deal with sex outside of their own definition of what they think sex should be. They squirm over candid conversations about unconventional sex. Or they hate sex and want everyone else to stop having it except to make babies. So any and every trace of a boob, a penis, even a naked behind, must be censored from their world — and from our world too.
Is nudity itself obscene? No. In some countries, it’s perfectly legal. It is US law which dictates how and when and where it is obscene, driven by current social mores, on which circumstances allow for nudity and which ones don’t. It’s all an artificial system set up mainly by people who fear sex and think it is a destructive force in society, instead of a beautiful, natural, and healthful part of human life.
Their fear controls us. It’s their fear that lends motive to rapists (“sex is dirty, sex hurts people”), that bans breastfeeding moms from sharing gorgeous photos of themselves with their babies, and which feeds homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and hate crimes against sex and gender minorities of every ilk.
Everything is obscene if you look at it the wrong way. Our culture is blind to the real obscenities and living in the dark ages on sex. Obscenity is a bullshit term invented by prudes who simply wanted to shut down the dialogue on the real meaning of free speech, who can’t handle “live and let live,” and who ignore that problematic little phrase in the Declaration of Independence about “the pursuit of Happiness” for ALL Americans, not an elite group of them.
Sex is not obscene. People who hate sex are. They are the unnatural creatures, the abominations on earth, the obstacles to human progress, and the enemy of humanitarians who seek nothing more than a system of justice based on truth and reason.
