While in recent years there have been some moves toward mainstreaming and decriminalizing prostitution and other forms of “sex work,” growing numbers of young women have been working to publicize the prevalence of rape on college campuses and the tendency of university administrators to go easy on the perpetrators. In terms of moral libertarianism, that sounds like a draw, with the former its latest advance and the latter a call to police its boundaries under Title IX.
But the discontent goes deeper. In Jessica Valenti’s powerful and disturbing new memoir (excerpted here) and a recent Washington Post symposium on porn, one senses a broader dissatisfaction with the behavior of men in a world lacking norms of sexual restraint — and therefore an impatience with the social and interpersonal costs of unlimited moral libertarianism.
One distinctly un-libertarian response, favored by some participants in the symposium, would be to classify pornography (or at least some forms or uses of it) as a threat to public health. That would place the Department of Health and Human Services (or whichever government agency sought to oversee such regulations) on a collision course with established First Amendment law. The resulting debate would be well worth watching.
But I’m more intrigued by hints of an even more radical response.
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