
Pornography & Fascism
On February 6, 2025 by beelzerogOriginally posted on Tumblr on February 6, 2025

(from my quote repost on bsky) It is also the language of control (so: fascism). The term ‘pornography’ did not enter the English language until 1842, as advances in printing made erotic works more easily available to the masses. This cause a stir among the upper classes that it would cause the lower classes to become degenerate. Upper classes, with their breeding & educations, could be expected to remain morally upright in the face of inflamed passions. The lower class could not & without them dutifully fulfilling their roles, the Empire would collapse. Hence they passed the Obscene Publications Act of 1857.
Until that point, erotica was the privilege of the upper classes. They could afford to pay for the paintings, sculptures, & handcrafted books. The printing press threw a monkey wrench into that. Much as Internet threw a monkey wrench into the stopgates of society before it. Pre-internet (when I grew up), if you wanted to watch a porn movie, you had to walk into a theater (which VCRs were just starting toupend). To see photos, you had to buy a magazine, either from a stand or have it delivered. Someone SAW, Someone KNEW, so shame kept a lot of people away.
The Internet changed all that. You would watch as much as you want, & no one had to know. Local blue laws were meaningless. You could even be a star in your own movies & the neighbors would have no clue unless they went to those same sites, & were they going to admit that? This, of course, flies in the face of everything the “Moral Majority” taught. That unfettered sexuality would led to debauchery & death. Imaging their surprise when sexual assaults kept going down between 1990 to now. That’s not how that’s supposed to work! But the release of sexual frustration & exploration of sexual flavors turns out to be good for us.
So what do they do? They start amping up the lies, with a new gloss of paint via the language of addiction & some misnamed brain scans. They take advantage of the changing landscape of sexual relations that seems to be frustrating young men. Telling them that masturbation & porn is the reason they have had problems succeeding. That women need to get off OnlyFans & back into the kitchen. The new fetishization of the TradWife (an update of the Victorian ideal housewife who lived only for her children & her husband). Fascist movements frequently recruit from young men who feel sexually frustrated & societally unfulfilled, especially if they grew up being told “just do these things & you’ll have that wife, that house, that job” (which is usually a lie, but that’s a whole other rant). Best to also keep them sexually frustrated, so they are more bitter & more angry. Then they are more violent & more useful to the cause.
Anti-porn, indeed, anti-sex, is the playbook of any group looking to control society with an iron fist, especially Fascism. Which is why we need comprehensive sex & media education, & protect the porn!
