How to incite a moral panic about sex

The experts, with the media's help, sow uncertainty and fear in the general population with statements such as: "sexualized images of women have far-reaching negative consequences for both men and women".

Or: "Such images also have been shown to increase rates of body dissatisfaction and/or eating disorders among men, women and girls; and they have even been shown to decrease sexual satisfaction among both men and women".

These statements are in the reports of the Rolling Stone study. And yet, not one of the APA's definitions of "sexualized" can be applied to the magazine's covers.

The panic is underway. Anybody who speaks out against it is immediately labeled anti-feminist trash with a male organ in her head. (I speak of what I know.) Any woman who claims she likes being sexy is told she doesn't know what she's talking about because the patriarchy has her brainwashed into thinking she knows what's sexy, when in reality sexy is only what they like and what they like always involves her humiliation and sexualization.

We need more sexy images, not less.

As the moral guardians who monitor our public expressions of sexuality never, ever offer what they consider to be an acceptable image of female sexual desire, I can only conclude they don't have one. From their determination to pathologize the sexy, I understand them to be saying that female sexual desire has no business being publicly represented at all. Female, sexual, and available are not words that should be used in the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence unless you're one of the moral bourgeoisie, hand wringing about the undermining social catastrophe of what you consider to be hyper-sexualized images of good for nothing but fornicating sluts and molls.

I hope the moral campaigners don't use lipstick when they go out, because that's deliberately highlighting a significant female erogenous zone. If parting your lips is sexualized behaviour, what in god's name must painting them be?

If anything, we need more sexy images of women, not less. That is, we need a much greater variety in the public expression of female sexiness. The scene is currently dominated by a particular style that doesn't appeal to everyone. Sexiness a rich and diverse aesthetic. The answer isn't to suppress it through inciting fear and shame and moral panic, but to encourage a broadening of vision that encompasses more complex images of sexiness without pathologizing any of them.