“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” ― H.L. Mencken
This is not a diary about sex. It is a diary about personal freedom and what that means to conservatives. First a little background. In May 2021, Demi Lovato, multiple award-winning singer came out as non-binary and henceforth would go by the pronouns they/them. Good for them. And it is nobody else’s concern. Fast forward to September. Black, gay, British reality-TV star, Vas J Morgan posted to Instagram a celebration of sex and sexuality. “Be a slut. Show your body. Get naked. Have all the safe, different, consensual sex you want. Be Kinky. Masturbate. Make/watch porn. Make money,” it read, adding, “Just a reminder that being sexual is okay.” (Note ‘safe’ and ‘consensual’)
The post was shared by Lovato. Predictably, this quickly stirred the Victorian moralists in conservative media. Leading the charge was Megyn Kelly, who on her eponymous podcast, ‘The Megyn Kelly Show’ remonstrated with David Rubin about it. Rubin is an interesting character. He is a gay conservative commentator, funded by conservative interests. However, he calls himself a ‘classical liberal’ and a libertarian and embraces many Democratic positions including same-sex marriage, criminal justice reform, marijuana legalization, a social safety net, and public schooling — and abortion rights with a few caveats. On the other hand, he said he voted for Trump in 2020. So he is not someone who who holds himself to the strictures of binary politics.
Kelly made her feelings on Morgan’s post clear by sharing that the advice she gives to her friends’ daughters before they head to college is, “Don’t be a slut.”
“Don’t give it up so easily, you know, when you’re in a loving relationship, you go for it girl. But don’t give it up so easily because it leads you to feel bad about yourself and you’re not going to find the thing you’re looking for and I don’t think that women are built that way,”
Consider this. Nowhere does the post mention anything about gender. It was written by a gay man and shared by a non-binary person. It is general advice and non-gender cheer-leading. But let say some puritanical blue nose assumes that ‘be a slut’ means it was directed only at women. Kelly presumes that women are monolithic in their desires, aims and feelings. How does she know what causes people to feel bad about themselves? Either she has had personal experiences she regrets and assumes, ergo, all other women will. Or she hasn’t and is just guessing that’s how all women will feel. Neither of which is a good look.
And how does she know what each individual woman is looking for? And what does she mean “women are[n’t] built that way”?
If I were to find people who check the all the same demographic boxes as I do, I know that we wouldn’t all be built the same way. Hell, many of ‘my kind’ voted for Trump, which is beyond my imagining.
Leaving aside the moral tut-tutting — which seems hypocritical coming from the alumna of a network that placed as much emphasis on physical measurements, as it did IQ, when hiring its female on-air talent, not to mention its multi-million dollar sexual abuse addiction — we run into conservative hypocrisy on individual freedom and personal liberty.
To a conservative, every American is at liberty to infect other Americans by claiming the freedom to remain un-vaccinated and unmasked. ‘Personal liberty’ zealots leave America awash in guns, with a glittering homicide rate to match. ‘Freedom to choose’ warriors deny women the right to make reproductive choices. And they attempt to interfere in individual freedom by promoting abstinence-only sex-ed, resulting in sky-rocketing STD rates and unwanted pregnancies — which in turn increases abortions, which they are supposedly against.
In conservative America, it is OK to yell at school boards. Demand that American history be whitewashed, bowdlerized, expurgated, and reduced to fiction. Deny science. Swear in front of small kids. Threaten to assassinate the Vice-President. Storm the Capitol. Restrict the vote and steal elections. And let pro-athletes have opinions only if they conform to conservative orthodoxy. While at the same time demand that people do not enjoy the sexual freedoms so many conservative politicians and religious leaders exercise behind their wives’ backs. Or in the case of Becki Falwell, in front of her husband.
Conservatives are obsessed with sex. Historically, and perhaps even more currently, it has been a major source of angst in monotheism. No doubt someone has calculated the percent of holy texts devoted to the subject — which I suspect is quite large. But the finger of blame does not point equally. Among the less advanced cultures, like fundamentalist Islam and American conservatism, women have been getting all the blame and punishment for sexual sinning.
It’s time for conservatives to embrace that individual liberty is decided by the individual — including women — and not decided for them (which would defeat the purpose). Or if they want to be honest they should make common cause with the Saudis, and lobby for a Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, or adopt the Iranian Guidance Patrol (aka ‘Fashion Police’ in Iran). Nothing like jack-booted thugs rounding up ‘Jezebels’ (aka ‘women’) for showing too much skin to warm the flinty soul of a liberty-denying moralist.