There are few stranger bedfellows than Utah legislators and radical feminists, but both have recently become hell-bent on declaring pornography a “public health crisis.”
Utah’s governor will sign a resolution this week declaring that the state of Utah recognizes porn as an “epidemic” harming Utah’s citizens, the first of its kind in the nation.
While the resolution doesn’t impose a penalty on anyone who manages to download smut onto their home computer, it claims to address the “sexually toxic environment” by increasing efforts at “education, prevention, research and policy change at the community and societal level.”
They’re not banning porn or “outlawing masturbation,” they say (as if you could), but they’re certainly going to make you feel badly about your interest in it.
According to Utah state Sen. Todd Weiler, who championed the bill, the state is looking to treat pornography consumption the same way they say a government would treat any addiction, though the science on whether pornography has the same kind of mental hold on its users as a drug like nicotine or heroin is still developing.
Ironically, Utah, which once had the nation’s worst problem with porn, according to a 2009 study, seems to have been breaking its own habit. By last year, according to PornHub, Utah had moved from first in the nation for porn consumption to 41st. They aren’t even highly ranked among red states, and when they do watch porn, they’re disappointingly normal (compared to the rest of America, at least).
But Utah state Sen. Todd Weiler doesn’t plan on letting that reality stand in the way of his legislation. He wants the state to treat pornography consumption the same way it would treat any addiction, though the science on whether pornography has the same kind of mental hold on its users as a drug like nicotine or heroin is still developing.
Curiously, Weiler, a social conservative, got the model “public health” legislation (and the idea) from a self-identified “radical feminist” named Gail Dines, who is waging a one-woman anti-porn campaign. Dines has made it her mission to eradicate porn across the globe, hopping from country to country lecturing legislatures on how porn has hijacked female sexuality, and how the adult film industry has promulgated the subjugation of women and deserves censure. This puts her in opposition to many of her contemporaries in the feminist movement, but her classes syllabus still demonstrates a firm commitment to the basics of the feminist movement.
Last year, Dines addressed a collection of state and federal legislators at the U.S. Capitol, which Todd Weiler attended. Weiler took Dines’ model bill back to his state, faced down a wave of public criticism, put the bill forward anyway, and will claim a big win when the governor signs the bill next week. Dines, according to The Atlantic, is very enthusiastic about the bill’s success, possibly marking the first time in history that a Republican state Senator from a very red state and a Womens’ Studies professor have formed a powerhouse team to legislate personal behavior.
It’s probably not a great precedent, especially as radical feminism—and liberalism in general—further embraces censorious behavior. Utah might want to worry more about this unholy bedroom partnership than the ones its citizens download from PornHub.