The War on Porn: Cancel Culture on Steroids
The recent decision by OnlyFans—one of the world’s biggest adult industry brands—to stop selling sexually explicit content took everyone by surprise. Social media reacted with amusement, many people suggesting (quite accurately) that this would be akin to KFC giving up chicken. OnlyFans cited pressure from Visa and
The Ugly History of Rape Panics
The abduction and murder of Sarah Everard in London on March 3rd created a wave of outrage and protest. It is easy to understand why a crime like this would generate reflexive disgust, but less straightforward to explain why society chooses to focus so intently on a small minority of
The Moral Panic over 'Sexualisation'
When I was running a streaming adult movie site in 2007, two business threats appeared almost simultaneously—one from the market and the other from the state. The first was the arrival on the scene of YouPorn and a plethora of similar “tube” sites, which provided free streaming content. Within
The Price of Sex
Working as a photographer for a charity a few years back, I was travelling through Malawi and stopped overnight in a mining town. It was a Wednesday, and I headed out to a bar. Other than a woman serving, everyone else there was male. Some were playing pool. Some were
There is No ‘Gay Gene,’ but Sexuality is Affected by Many Genes of Small Effect
The authors of an international research project into the genetics of same-sex behaviour recently reported their findings, and created a minor media stir. The international team of researchers looked at DNA markers and data from surveys of sexual behaviour completed by over 400,000 UK Biobank participants, as well as
Last Days at Hot Slit—A Review
A review of Last Days at Hot Slit—The Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin edited by Johanna Fateman and Amy Scholder. (Semiotext(e), March 2019) 408 pages. In my 2016 book Porn Panic!, I traced today’s anti-free speech, identity-preoccupied Left back to its roots in the pro-censorship, anti-sex feminism
