These disciples of a jewish zombie want you to hate sex

For about the last week and a half campus hereabouts has been bombarded with flyers, posters, and earnest fresh faced kids pushing something called “Porn Nation” and encouraging people to go to My Sex Survey. It’s obnoxious and in your face and supposedly hip and cool but it’s also more than a wee bit deceptive and sketchy as all hell.

To start with Porn Nation is bankrolled by Bravehearts LLC, an organization that seeks to raise awareness of ‘porn addiction’ but also to bring “the gospel of Jesus Christ” to thousands. But the flyers make no mention that this is basically a religious pitch to a sense of guilt and shame using bullshit statistics to coerce people into thinking that they are a) addicted to porn and b) can only be saved by getting down on their knees and praying fervently to some made up dude in the sky.

As you can tell by my tone I’m not a huge fan of these sorts of groups operating on campus. They basically use bait and switch tactics to get people in the seats and once they’re there they start in on them by telling them how bad and evil and sick and twisted they probably are.

And how do they know? Well the survey, duh. As a social scientist the survey offends on many levels. The utter lack of anything resembling survey methodology is almost laughable but nearly all the questions are double barreled (romance novels AND porno mags AND websites AND chat rooms! Oh my!) when they’re not downright hilarious (ha ha sex WITH whips? Like I’m fucking a whip?) and the ‘results’ page, where you add up the number of YES answers basically tells you that you’re a sex addict even if you answered NO to everything.

The variety of sites are also amusing for the almost perfunctory nod they give to feminist concerns about porn (the legacy of Dworkin and MacKinnon perhaps) by at least mentioning body image and the exploitative nature of the industry. But this gets dropped in the ’survey’ and in the deeper pages where the emphasis is almost squarely on the corrupting effect sexuality has on people’s lives.

The account seems to be that the pornography industry is so powerful that they define people’s sexual norms and that the enemy that must be fought is the porn industry to keep people from losing their jobs and their families. But you know what? The enemy isn’t porn. Even if some type of mass media had a magic bullet that allowed them to make us think exactly what they wanted us to think (and porn is just another form of mass media) that wouldn’t be the problem. The problem is that people are taught to be ashamed of their sexuality, of their bodies and of other people’s bodies. We’re taught that sexual desire is wrong and corrupting. We’re taught that the ideal is to be a being who can avoid all thoughts and influences of sex, especially if you are a woman, and that having these thoughts is a sign of weakness and sin.

This is why people hide and ruin their lives and the lives of others. Not because of some abstract idea of ’sin’ or ‘evil’ but because their friends and neighbors are judgmental assholes who go to snake oil sales pitches like Porn Nation and believe it’s their job to be the morality police on their neighbors. To watch for signs of desire and presumed deviancy and then to pounce and judge them, make them feel bad.

It’d be a far better world if we could just get over our ancient hangups about morality and stopped judging consenting adults for doing what they’ve consented to do.

ADDED BONUS:

I’ve been having fun fucking up any potential survey data they are collecting from the sex survey. You can take it as many times as you want as long as you clear the cookie from your cache after taking it. Good luck!