A COMMENT ASSERTS that banning de Sade would ensure that de Sade was read more widely than now. It's an old line, that banning something makes it far more desired but I wonder if that's ever really been tested or if, as it seems to me, that's just a self-serving bit of scribbling, publishing, show-biz lore. Something I first remember seeing on "Car 54 Where Are You" when I was still young and stupid enough to take it as true.
I have no doubt that it was true that a legal ban on something is far from a guarantee that what is banned won't be illegally or foreignly produced and won't be sold and won't be bought at an inflated price- whenever there's a possibility of making money from producing and selling the most dangerous things, you can bet there are those who will not only make it available but will whip up demand for it. Corrupt governments will not only permit that they will participate in doing it, especially if it's for export to another country. That's the sad story of the failure of the well-intentioned but doomed experiment with the prohibition of alcohol in the United States. But, as can be seen in the opioid epidemic, the illegalized part of it, such a problem is bound to come with any attempt to ban even the most dangerous of drugs that can't be used "safely." But I think that example is a good one to consider. The psychiatric industry here, in league with their partners, the drug industry intentionally and TV and raidio set the worst of that off WITH THE AID OF THE CORRUPTED GOVERNMENT. The opioid epidemic is a complication set off by the right-wing push to deregulate in the style of Milton Friedman. He's and the capitalism of the Reagan period is the grandfather of that. And of the ACLU aided permission of the Supreme Court for them to push drugs directly to the public, inventing an "epidemic of untreated pain," as seen on so many daytime talk shows of the period.
But I wonder why no one asks what would seem to be a common sense insight, if making something legal doesn't actually have the effect of making a demand for it ever grater and a determination to get it go up. The illegal side of the opioid epidemic was, in fact, set off by making legalized opioids more available more widely and the direct advertisement of them to patients as well as doctors was certainly the major catalyst of creating a demand.
Maybe the reason that the common sense speculation is because those who spread that bit of common received "wisdom" don't want to give away their motives in pushing their profitable line. I see no evidence from Russia that their various gangster-dictatorial governments making alcohol freely available to their miserable People has resulted in a lower rate of drinking, drinking to excess and alcoholism, and with that part of the control that the gangsters exercise over that tragic country. When the Nazis invaded Poland they made alcohol far more available as a part of their campaign to destroy the Polish People. Along with degraded entertainment and pornography, by the way. On the other hand, making Bibles a forbidden possession and religious services illegal, killing clergy and lay members, burning and dynamiting and converting churches, etc. had a remarkably successful result in making religious belief far less common. Interestingly, the introduction of TV and screen based entertainment has had a remarkably similar result, especially among those "white evangelicals" who are so addicted to TV idols that they don't seem to be able to distinguish between an on-screen bible thumper and Donald Trump. Only they find Donald Trump and his hate-spiel far more enticing than the Gospel. As could be seen in Iowa earlier this week.
Making something hard to get might make SOME people want it more, though I doubt even that's ever been reliably measured. Making something hard to get might, actually, discourage even those who think they might want it from going to the bother and, no doubt, expense of getting it. I think if Donald Trump hadn't been so widely available on screen, on radio, etc. and had been relegated to exposure only in print, he'd never have been more than a racist, raping, real-estate gangster and would probably have been permitted to get away with it by the legal industry and the courts. If the "Apprentice" franchise had never been made widely available, he'd have probably died the same thug he was instead of a danger to democracy and the world. Hate porn, as popularized since the late 1970s in the media free to tell and spread any lie by the libertarian notions of "free speech-free press" are what brought us to where we are now. Banning the worst of it under broadcasting codes and community service requirements and the Fairness Doctrine that Reagan and his ilk got rid of didn't make things better, they produced Trump. Before then several such contenders were either prevented from achieving national power and the first most criminal president in living memory, Nixon, who benefited from the earliest years of that Supreme Court folly, was forced from office by the media under those anti-libertarian restrictions. Availability of lies and false witness in the freest "press" in our history is what brought us Trump and will bring us as bad if not worse. I used to think that just allowing public officials to sue when they are slandered and libeled would take care of the problem but I think there has to be a positive requirement to make the media tell the truth to prevent that.
Back to the comparison of banning substances. While I have been in favor of the decriminalization of the least dangerous of recreational drugs pretty much my entire adult life, I was never stupid enough to believe that their decriminalization would make the use of them less common. Since marijuana's decriminalization I've known lots of people who have tried it or use it occasionally who never used it when it was illegal. While the decriminalization of such things as a practical matter makes sense, that it became an iconic cause of the "new left," some of whom made its use a de facto virtue was just evidence that the "new left" were a bunch of callow idiots. Which served the Republican-right far more than it did the "new left."
My biggest reason for favoring their decriminalization, things like marijuana and other things that are measurably less dangerous, such as psilocybin mushrooms, than even many legal substances is as an alternative to the most measurably dangerous of substances. Alcohol, any number of the prescription pills pushed by psychiatry, etc. An elderly relative of mine had been prescribed benzodiazepine drugs* by her doctor and she became dangerously addicted to them. I have had a number of alcoholics in my family and have known most of my life that alcohol, freely and widely available, was one of the most dangerous drugs there is. You don't have to be an alcoholic for it to have dangerous, even fatal results. Casual drinking by non-alcoholics results in deaths and disabilities and blighted lives. I doubt anyone's an alcoholic the first drink they take, no matter what anyone says. I think if it could be measured ot would be found that making alcohol not only more available in more abundance but, even more so, its promotion in the media and through direct advertisement has made things much worse. The level of alcohol use among young people is certainly far higher than I remember when I was a teenager and in college when, around here, oretty much everything but beer was sold in state stores and the age to buy was 21. Use was hardly low then but it's far worse now. Clearly availability hasn't led to anything like a decrease it its use.
The idea that banning a book is going to make it more read seems, first, to be rather quaint to me. As if you can get most people my age (early senescence) or younger to read words on a page instead of looking at images or movies. I would bet that readership of the classics of banned literature available online, for free wouldn't result in a reading rate much higher than making the classics of never banned books available in the same way. The idea that text is going to be widely read if it is freely available is ridiculous. Even that flagship case, the overturning of the banning of James Joyce's Ulysses, is an elite cause of a bygone age. I doubt that other than the ending, hardly pornographic monologue of Molly Bloom, what got it banned, I doubt most of the "readers" of it have ever actually read the rest of it through. I doubt even those who may have read the supidly celebrated, once "banned" books such as Last Exit to Brooklyn read all of them, concentrating on the snuff-porn scene of the gang rape of Tra-la-la and ignored most of the rest of its dismal tediousness. Its short-term suppression may have led to some people buying it who may never have read it otherwise, but that's more attributable to the publicity and advertising effect of it being discussed than the actual banning of it. The celebrated idols of "First Amendment" envelope pushing are generally stupid and tedious. I have read Ulysses and have come to the conclusion that it is a somewhat minor work of fiction, far more talked about than read. I know two people in their mid-20s who made a pact to read it, more of an endurance stunt than an act of literary appreciation. I think Joyce is one of the more overrated authors of the 20th century. If Ulysses had remained unavailable I doubt its absence would have damaged the world in any way. I can think of some rather bad pieces of music from the 1950s and 60s that would probably not have been composed and probably hundreds, at least, of stupid critical works. It was otherwise innocuous.
I can't say the same about the presence of sadistic porn, of snuff porn, of porn in general. Sadistic porn serves as a how-to manual for sadists and rapists and murderers. Those are always a part of its audience no matter how many others never will act on what they see. And to attract a habituated population, the porn has to always ramp up the violence and killing depicted and acted. It's like cabloid TV and Trumpism. Porn's popularization of promiscuous anal sex among gay men certainly had a horrific result in the AIDS pandemic. Before it became the predominant theme of gay porn anal sex had been less common than it became. Promiscuity, also encouraged in gay porn of the 1960s and 70s, made gay populations as susceptible to infection as prostitutes, truck drivers and airline workers. As I'll always point out, every gay man I knew in New York City in the 1970s died of AIDs, every case I know of was attributable to anal sex practiced promiscuously. That's something younger LGBTQ+ People don't like to hear but it is a hard fact of reality. There's no political ideology to it, it's real life.
I don't think the legal suppression of online and recorded snuff porn should be anything like putting consumers in prison - that hyperbolic idea is what's always resorted to by the defenders of porn - and I'd never expect such a ban to wipe it out entirely anymore than I'd think making murder illegal has ended murders.** And, given the subject matter of snuff porn, those are not entirely or even largely unrelated.
To claim the idea that looking at (and, no doubt masturbating to) sadistic and homicidal porn is innocuous is one of the stupidest parts of that idiotic common received "civil liberties" lore about pornography. I would bet you that if forced to admit their true feelings, no would-be civil libertarian would be comfortable with having a son-in-law or brother-in-law who imbibed a steady diet of sadistic porn and I would bet if they had one, their daughter or sister would suffer the effects of it. I'd ask how many of them would be comfortable with having someone who was viewer of sadistic pornography babysit their child, expecting the same answers when I make such abstractions personal to them, either a refusal to give an answer or, in very rare cases when they will give one, a lie. If it they really believed it was innocuous they would have no such qualms, not until their kid grew up and told them what really happened while they were away. I'm always in favor of going after the more powerful party in a crime, the buyers in prostitution, the peddlers of dangerous drugs, the suppliers in porn. That the media claim that the consumption of porn has no effect on the behavior of those who consume it is best seen to be a lie by how the media - and the all-important ad industry - sells literally everything with sex, expecting and depending on the sexual images to influence the behavior of those who see those ads, is all the proof anyone needs to know they are lying when they push such claims. The media is about as dishonest as the legal industry is, and watching the antics around the Trump world of legal engagement, I've become entirely distrustful of all of it. Though I can say that looking into the real character of the ACLU and other "civil liberties" lawyering gave that distrust a head start.
I am an LGBTQ+ man, I know that when it comes to talking about bans on content and behavior, those can be be dangerous. I'm sure any law against violent porn would be used by sleazy police and prosecutors against LGBTQ+ literature, but the abuse of a law isn't in itself a reason for there not to be a law. **** I'm in favor of the decriminalization of sex among freely consenting adults. But I'm also aware of the dangers that making "adult consent" the be all and end all of judging what People want to do and to photograph and record and sell. As soon as commerce comes into it, that changes things. That makes it a legitimate thing for the government to have an interest in it. The law being so stupid it cannot reliably distinguish between coercion and real consent in some rare cases permits judges and "justices" to pretend they can't in other cases. It's a lot like them pretending they can't possibly tell plain truth from bald lies, when it suits them. It's striking, given the original topic I raised here was the Epstein scandals, that we now have at least some kind of plurality agreement that children under a certain age cannot be held to give consent to having sex, though, as I pointed out, that's not a universal consensus and, I'd argue, given the activity in question, if it's even a majority opinion. But I don't think just that someone can get someone to consent to having something done to them is a reliable means of determining if it should be legal. I doubt that a lot of "freely consented to" behavior is actually freely consented to, certainly not among even many who are older than the legal ages of consent. When it's a matter of payment a lot of that is about as freely consented to as being put at risk of industrial accidents or breathing in asbestos or silica or getting addicted to tobacco or alcohol or opiates. The dangers to those who are used and abused by the porn industry are many and life thwarting and not infrequently life ending. I doubt there are many if any who are coerced or talked into having various forms of sex in it who don't suffer some damage from it, the number of suicides among people who worked in porn is an indictaion of that, as is the frequency of HIV, hepatitis and other diseases. I've asked here before questions similar to the ones above about having your loved ones in close proximity to a fan of S&M, B&D and snuff porn and only had one positive resopndant who I knew was lying about it (he lies like a Trumper).
* I occasionally used marijuana for a few years in my early adulthood, then I realized I really didn't like it. Last year, when a relative gave me a homemade, home grown, THC laden chocolate I tried it out of curiosity and found I still didn't like it. I liked alcohol too much and twice, starting when I was 24, gave it up for long periods before I finally gave it up seeing what it resulted in too directly to pretend anymore.
** That was despite the clear warnings given in the drug-store handouts that they shouldn't be prescribed to elderly People because of their high potential to develop addiction to them. The doctor angrily refused to write a prescription for medical marijuana when we convinced our loved one it would probably be less dangerous for her. I had an argument with the doctor when she wanted to give our relative another benzodiazepine drug for anxiety, most of the worst of which was a result of taking them and becoming addicted to them. Clearly, their availability is related to their use by those who not only wouldn't otherwise use them but shouldn't have been prescribed them.
*** Making the murder of People of Color by police and white supremacists legal on a de facto basis certainly hasn't reduced the number of People of Color murdered by police or white supremacists. The tacit permission of men to murder Women is and has been at epidemic levels for the entirety of history even when it's officially illegal. The resultant terror felt by Women is so much a part of cultures that they don't even seem to realize it. It and its preceding terror-violence is an endemic feature of porn. The predominant theme of porn is the use of a person identified as weaker by a dominating male. It is all a school of the promotion and practice of inequality by the privileged.
**** If someone proposed that sadism and bondage ever be added to the LGBTQ+ coalition, I wouldn't go along with that. I'm in favor of equal rights, not unequal use and harm and destruction. The day they add those to the acronym, I'm as out of it as as I would be if they proposed including child rapists - another dominant theme of porn, a ubiquitous parallel stream of culture to its opposition, as I mentioned the other day.
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