Cushman: Rep. Pulsipher’s Porn Filter Bill Promotes Dangerous Stereotypes about Sex

Legislative+meeting+at+the+Utah+Capital+building+in+Salt+Lake+City%2C+Utah+on+Friday%2C+Feb.+23%2C+2018.+%28Photo+by+Cassandra+Palor+%7C+Daily+Utah+Chronicle%29

Legislative meeting at the Utah Capital building in Salt Lake City, Utah on Friday, Feb. 23, 2018. (Photo by Cassandra Palor | Daily Utah Chronicle)

By KC Ellen Cushman, Opinion Writer

 

Utah’s 2021 legislative session has begun, bringing with it hundreds of new bills for state lawmakers to debate and vote on. One such would-be law is Rep. Susan Pulsipher’s H.B. 72, which, if passed, would require smart devices to automatically have their pornography filters turned on. Users would have to deactivate these filters manually, rather than having to set them manually as they do now. Inhibiting Utahns’ access to pornography implies that it is somehow dangerous. Turning this bill into law would promote purity culture and problematic stereotypes about sex.

In 2016, Utah declared pornography a public health crisis, and it didn’t take long for Utah lawmakers to begin legislating against adult content. Just last year, Rep. Brady Brammer sponsored (and the legislature passed) H.B. 243, which requires adult websites to put warning labels on their content — again, as if adult content is dangerous in some way. This year’s H.B. 72 is in a similar vein, filtering adult content off of our devices the way we might filter dangerous elements out of water.

The problem with this kind of legislation is that it treats pornography and sex as if they are inherently threatening, which simply is not true. Pornography viewing habits can become a problem for some people, interfering with jobs or relationships, though whether or not porn is addictive in nature is still debated among scientists. What H.B. 72 fails to recognize is that the problem is not sex or porn itself, but that people (especially in hyper-religious cultures like ours) are not often taught to engage with those things responsibly. This kind of insinuation that pornography and sex are addictive and dangerous promotes shame and fear around sex, which can be really damaging.

What Is Purity Culture?

Utah is known for being an extremely religious state, and along with that come conservative religious values regarding sex. From what many people are taught growing up in church classes to abstinence-only education in our schools, the message is clear: sex is shameful and we should strive to embody the biblical view of purity. Utah has what many formerly religious people would call a “purity culture.” Emily Joy Allison, a former Christian and author of “#ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing,” explained purity culture as the promotion of abstinence before marriage, modest dress for women (usually in order to help men remain pure) and rigid gender and sexuality roles.

While there is nothing wrong with holding those beliefs as a personal standard, making them a standard for everyone only leads to shame — especially for women, LGBTQ+ individuals and victims of sexual assault. For an assault victim, traditional sexual values can create a stigma and shame surrounding what happened to them. For women, those conservative views often result in unfair responsibility for other people’s sexual thoughts; and they can be isolating for LGBTQ+ individuals. Remember, Utah is the second-most sexist state in the US, in large part due to women’s internalized sexism. We should strive to change that, not support laws that promote victim-blaming and other forms of misogyny.

Good Sex Education Matters

I grew up in Utah and went to school here. Rather than talking about sex openly, the way we covered other health issues, my education emphasized the failings of contraceptives, scared me away from sex with images of people with STIs and did little to help me grow into someone who could communicate about sex. Looking back, I’m sure a more comprehensive sexual education would have prepared me to articulate my feelings about sex in healthier ways.

For those struggling with a porn habit, I imagine that Utah’s hush-hush attitude toward sexual topics would only increase feelings of shame and make it harder to ask for help, as is often the case among drug addicts. If Utah legislators truly want to reduce the sex-related challenges their constituents face, including the overuse of pornography, they should do that through sex education that teaches people that consensual sex is okay — healthy, even — and that talking about it is okay too.

Comprehensive, science-based sex education has been shown to be effective at reducing STIs and unintended pregnancy. Instead of making sex taboo and dangerous, it teaches people how to engage with it responsibly. An open dialogue about sex will help Utahns much more than legislation that demonizes sex ever will — and rejecting purity culture will create a safer culture for women, victims of sexual assault and LGBTQ+ people and make it easier to have hard discussions about sexually-related problems.

 

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@kcellenc