So, it looks like George W. Bush has found one more way to alienate our generation. In addition to waging his war on our recreational drugs and sending our peers to get their kneecaps blown off while fighting his war in Iraq, he’s now moving his battleground into your dorm room—waging a war on porn.
In a September 20 article in the Washington Post, Barton Gellman reported that the Bush administration has begun to recruit the FBI for its mission to rid the Internet of its dirty underbelly.
Government attacks on smut are nothing new, and indeed, there’s been a long-standing push to stamp out things like Internet kiddie porn—but there’s a catch to these new rounds of the Bush administration’s crusade.
“The new squad will divert eight agents, a supervisor, and assorted support staff to gather evidence against ‘manufacturers and purveyors’ of pornography,” Gellman wrote of the FBI task force being assembled. “Not the kind exploiting children, but the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults.”
Yep. You read that right.
Bush and Co. aren’t looking to shut down the kind of shit you’d see in 8mm or the types of things Catholic priests like to look at behind closed doors, they’re trying to get rid of good old fashioned, 100 percent pure American pornography.
Jenna Jameson look out.
So, what does this mean for the average connoisseur of digital boobies? Well, though the skin industry has yet to feel the legal effects of the crackdown, it has already begun to deal with the censorship issues.
In this week’s cover story—starting on page 6—Jacob Drum takes a look at the underground sensation of the Suicide Girls, an Internet site that started up by offering nude pictorials of empowered, “punk rock” women, which has grown into an industry of subculture porn.
In an interview with the site’s founder, Missy Suicide, Jacob had a chance to discuss the ramifications of the administration’s new crusade on her company.
“Missy decided to preemptively remove certain photo sets from the site that she believes would be the easiest targets for prosecution,” he writes. “Mostly those depicting graphic depictions of S&M or simulated violence.”
That doesn’t sound like such a big deal at first, but just take a moment to consider what her act of self-censorship really means.
Will other Internet sites begin taking down content and closing up shop in fear of a bunch of Big Brother-esque federal agents sitting around in a room all day watching consenting adults have sex? Will the government begin actively prosecuting what was once considered legal porn just because they deem it too extreme? What will happen to the adult entertainment industry if these things begin to happen?
It’s important to take a step back and look at the bigger picture when you’re dealing with a “morally sensative” issue like pornography. Consider this: just because you may find it morally reprehensible to watch two consenting adults whipping each other with spiked chains doesn’t mean that it’s wrong for the guy down the hall to get his jollies from doing so.
Are we willing to trade our ability to choose to view what we want—assuming that no one was harmed in the act of the porn’s creation—so that we can stop others from watching what we think is disgusting?
I would hope your answer to that question is “no.”
So, the next time you’re searching DC++ for your post-Chem 101 porn fix, ask yourself if your government is really acting in your best interests.
It’s just a thought, kids.
Keep Whackin’,
Christopher Ahearn
Editor in Chief
