Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Project 2025 says 'porn' to mean 'imagined enemies of the family'

What does Roberts mean by "children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries." What is this "pornography" that Project 2025 says should be "outlawed"?

Melissa Gira Grant reminds us today in "The Real Targets of Project 2025’s War on Porn" (The New Republic):

"The prominence of pornography in Project 2025 is no mistake, of course; it’s absolutely core to the authors’ agenda for Trump. The attack on porn is inseparable from the attacks on abortion and contraception, on marriage equality and trans rights, and of course on drag queens and library books—all of which, they believe, threaten the straight, married family as the natural bedrock of society. All of these threats, to them, constitute pornography. By calling on the president to outlaw porn, they’re calling for the eradication of all these imagined enemies of the family.

Though Project 2025 does not define 'pornography,' their concern clearly extends beyond porn itself. Pornography, according to the Mandate, is responsible for the 'normalization' of non-normative gender expression and identity among young people—what the right often calls 'gender ideology.' Pornography could be anything that contributes to that purported normalization. 'Pornography,' Roberts continues, is 'manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children.' And how should it 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.' Project 2025 is not targeting 'pornography' as something that’s harmful to children per se, but rather redefining anything concerning sexuality and gender that they say is harmful to children as pornography."

Pay attention:

"Behind all this is what philosopher Judith Butler calls anti-gender ideology and movements, which is how we should understand Project 2025’s anti-pornography rhetoric. It’s a transnational movement, fueling and also fueled by the reassertion of patriarchal order, of a return to normative sex and gender roles, and of ordering the world by sex and gender hierarchies. Gender in this movement has come to be regarded as a code, as Butler has described it—for pedophilia, for the destruction of the family, 'a plot by urban elites to impose their beliefs on ‘real’ people,' a threat to civilization, a threat to masculinity. When the fight is defined that way, a fight to save not just children and families but society and civilization, nearly any crackdown can be justified."

lettered sign saying NO

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