Can p*rn get banned?
The struggle to define what it even is
Hi horny readers! Thank you so, so much for reading the ADULT SEX ED newsletter.
New here? Adult Sex Ed comedically challenges why we think what we think about sex. I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, comedy writer, and performer. In 2018, I started a comedy show called Adult Sex Ed and launched this newsletter in 2023. Each week, I take a fun deep dive into a topic that I’ve been researching. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!
This newsletter has readers in all 50 states (with additional readers in 118 countries!). If you’re in NY or California, you might not be aware that almost half the country can no longer access Pornhub. The goal of the bans is reportedly to protect minors from accessing p*rn, but teenagers know how to use VPNs and there are plenty of other ways to watch.
Now, a Supreme Court ruling is expected in Free Speech Coalition, Inc. vs. Paxton. Here’s some background: In 2023, Texas enacted H.B. 1181, requiring commercial websites with over one-third of their content deemed “harmful to minors” to implement age-verification systems. The Free Speech Coalition, representing the adult entertainment industry, filed a lawsuit arguing that this law infringes upon First Amendment rights.
It’s not for me to tell you whether or not you should watch p*rn. And like the vast majority of people, I definitely don’t think that minors should be accessing p*rn. Certified Sexologist Sarah Ward posted a great breakdown of the ways that different people respond to p*rn here:
The Supreme Court's decision in this case doesn’t just impact that—it will have significant ramifications for online speech, privacy rights, and state efforts to regulate internet content. It will also bring into question an important age-old debate: what is p*rn and what isn’t?
I wrote about this question last year, which you can read here: What’s p*rn and what isn’t? P*rn is subjective, right? It’s notoriously hard to define. As the late Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart, said in an opinion on a 1964 p*rnography case, “I know it when I see it.”
Historically, anti-masturbation and p*rnogrpahy movements are as American as they come. The origins of sex education in America were rooted in popular preachers and reverends going on anti-masturbation speaking tours, like Reverend Sylvester Graham, who invented the graham cracker, and John Harvey Kellogg, the problematic health guru who invented Cornflakes. Different men, who both thought that bland food would prevent people from cracking one off.
Today, there are different factions of the anti-p*rn movement, which range from Conservative tiktok stars who think that watching sex scenes in movies is cheating; “No Nut November” which started in 2010 and is like Seinfeld’s “The Contest,” but aggro; all the way to hate groups that claim that p*rnography is a Jewish conspiracy. All factions of the movement link p*rn to the destruction of society. In 2023, House Speaker Mike Johnson bragged about using accountability software to make sure he nor his teenage son watches p*rn. “I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate,” he added. Ewwwww. Jesus, Mike, don’t you have adult friends?
I wrote last year’s post as reaction to Project 2025, which called for this ban on p*rn that’s now materializing today. On May 8th, Utah Sen. Mike Lee reintroduced his “Interstate Obscenity Definition Act” (IODA), which would dramatically redefine the U.S. legal definition of “obscenity” to anything which “appeals to the prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion”; “depicts, describes, or represents, an actual or simulated sexual act [...] with the objective intent to arouse, titillate, or gratify the sexual desires of a person”; and “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Basically, this means anything that someone else finds arousing. As you read in the first half of the post today, that means completely different things for different people!
On the state level Oklahoma State Senator Dusty Deevers introduced legislation that would criminalize p*rn across the board and calls for the imprisonment of content creators. I noticed that someone subscribed Senator Deevers to this newsletter in January, so..hi! Historically, the pushback against p*rn hasn’t only been right wing—In the 1970s, an anti-p*rn movement pushed by the organization Women Against Pornography (abbreviated as WAP, no joke) divided feminists.
Of course p*rn should be interrogated, regulated (for safety and to make sure that minors can’t watch it or be exploited). We can look into addiction, as we do any compulsive behaviors, and also how p*rn is affecting pleasure. You may be in the camp of people who believes that it’s destructive to society. But there are so many questions that are hard to answer: What counts as p*rn? Does this include books, films, newsletters like this one? It’s unclear. According to most public statistics, 69% of American men and 40% of American women use online porn annually. If creating and consuming p*rn is criminalized one thing’s for sure—most people I know are going to jail.
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