While I try to avoid getting political on this website, some things you just cannot stay silent about. I’m sure you’ve been seeing a lot about Project 2025 going around right now.
If you don’t know anything about it, I’d do some reading up on it. And if you’re brave enough, you can go to the website where the actual like 900 page book is hosted to actually read it. And I would recommend you sometimes do when people mention parts of it. There is a lot of misinformation out there and misinterpreting of the words, sometimes to make parts seem way worse than it is and then to make other bits seem better.
But the part that I want to focus on today is the bit wanting to ban pornography. Now I’m not going to be focusing on actual pornography – such as the videos with live actors and adults and the dangerous world that can lead into with illegal actions.
I’m talking more about smut writing today and the larger impact that this will have on the reading community.
Pornography by definition is “printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.” And smut books have just that.
So what did Project 2025 say?
“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
There’s a few bits in here that should really worry you. Let me just call it out for you.
“The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
Just read that a few times and digest it.
Now while we don’t know what this is going to look like in action, the broad wording allows for very broad interpretations. And until you are told otherwise (and even then), you assume that very broad interpretation. That’s usually how it works out. So do you know what this could mean? This could mean:
- Authors could be imprisoned because they wrote it (who knows if it is going forward or retroactively)
- Publishing houses could get fined or employees and leaders in those places could go to jail
- Teachers who have books with adult themes or sex ex books could be registered as a sex offender
- Librarians who have smut books in their library could be registered a sex offender
- Book store owners and staff could be jailed
- Sites that hose their information could be banned – if you have book excerpts
- Fanfiction sites would be removed
The list just goes on and on.
And you may be saying to yourself, this would never happen. This is too extreme and would never happen like that. Sure, it probably won’t happen over night but it most certainly can happen. It is just a matter of time. We saw how fast other rulings went into effect and how fast it caused damage.
They said the same thing about what Hitler did and tried to do. If we fail to learn from history it will repeat itself.
Now I’m not telling you who to vote for at all because living in the United States of America we have something that so many other countries don’t – the freedom to choose and vote for who we want. But certain people in this election may try to change that.
And for those of you interested in not voting because you don’t like the other guy, just remember, every person that does not vote is technically skewing the numbers which gives the other guy a chance.
We are voting between freedom and not freedom. And only one of those options will allow you to speak out if you don’t like what the leadership is doing. The other option will restrict your freedom, remove your free speech and begin to crack down.
This is exactly the kind of things that George Orwell was writing about in 1984 and in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.. We are seeing the beginnings of it and if you can’t see it then you need to take a good hard look around. This should absolutely terrify you.
They’ve already begun to come for our books by banning them. This is just the next step.
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