The extremist anti-porn lobby group – National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) – is stepping up its anti-fap efforts by pressurizing the CEOs of credit card companies to ban financial transactions linked to the adult industry. This would leave not only porn sites unable to make an income, but also webcam performers. In fact, it’s unclear exactly where the ‘dirty money’ boundaries would lie, as the same organization, which has its roots as a fundamentalist Christian organization, has a history even of denouncing bikini covers on Sports Illustrated as pornographic, with even the decision last year by the magazine to publish a front cover featuring a model wearing a hijab not enough to placate them.
“To say we are used to Sports Illustrated’s (SI) raw sexual exploitation and pornification of women is sad but true. But SI’s exploitation of the hijab and burkini to feign cultural relevancy shows just how far it will go to sanitize its actions,” said Dawn Hawkins, Executive Director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “With its 2019 Swimsuit Issue, SI sinks to a new low in its crass exploitation of cultural diversity.”
Hawkins continued, “This year SI shrewdly peddles the idea that featuring a model lounging seductively on a beach while clothed modestly in a hijab and burkini is a celebration of diversity and women’s empowerment. Clothing a SI swimsuit model is, indeed, a novel and welcome development, but what is not, is SI’s phony brand of female empowerment. As per usual, SI’s reductionist version of ‘female empowerment’ perpetuates the message that women exist as mere props for male sexual fantasies.”
The NCOSE appears to be something of a nightmarish organization that represents the ultimate meeting of radical feminism and American religious puritanism. But its power to bring about ‘change’ – change that would restrict the lives of thousands of female performers and the millions of men who pay for their services in some form – can’t be written off, especially in the USA. In today’s world, all it takes is a few thousand hardcore crazies signing a petition under multiple names, together with throwing in emotive incendiary language such as ‘child abuse’ and ‘sex trafficking’, and men – no matter how rich or powerful – will buckle instantly and fall down on their knees praying for forgiveness (and the end of shaming viral retweets).
