I grew up in this and we weren't allowed any books but the Bible, the Lexicon, and any encyclopedias that didn't have the word "sex" in them.
Which makes me wonder about how happy all of those male abusers were when Lot's daughters had sex with him. Avoiding the men's laps in church was exhausting for the little kids, both male and female. As children, we often talked about which men were the most dangerous and would warn and look out for the youngest ones.
Women and newborns died in agony at home giving birth because going to a doctor was to doubt God, and the untrained midwives who hadn't spent one minute in basic health class, were helpless in the face of the mildest problem.
Our church in Indiana is why laws were made in the 1980s to make withhold medical care for children illegal, although Republicans have been passing bills that have eroded those laws into toilet paper.
Facing what is almost a certain Mike Braun government, many of us will be selling family properties and moving out of the state where we've built our entire lives and raised our families away from the threat of reliving that horribly abusive childhood as adults.
Thank you for the work that you are doing.
Democrat leadership needs to learn this coded language that we grew up with before it's too late.
I'm sorry we share a similar experience. While I was never sexually abused by an adult in the church, I know people who were. And of course, church and school boys felt me up against my will more than once and I never told anyone because I'd be blamed for it.
We're on track to exit our red state, too. I've lived in South Carolina for 51 years. Thankfully, I realized I didn't belong here a long time ago. My friends are scattered all over. I won't leave much behind. But it isn't easy to start again. I wish you and your family much peace and patience on your journey.
I've been trying to get Democratic leadership to take this seriously, but they seem happy to use what they want and ignore aspects like this. Maybe that's what their focus grouping tells them. I've never understood how they operate. I only know I won't be given a seat at the table.
And it isn't only them. I asked someone who had connections to John Oliver to pitch them the idea of doing a whole segment on CN views of porn, because he'd knock that out of the park AND make it relatable. But crickets.
I can't change decades of Democratic complacency. I can't force them to take this seriously if they choose not to. I can only put it here and hope it bubbles up, just like my shrieking about P2025 and calling it Christo-fascist did.
So I’m digressing from the topic of porn here, but The Atlantic profile of Stuckey is a prime example of the kind of infuriating article that seems to be spreading like a virulent rash through legacy media. The profiles don’t exactly champion the female footsoldiers of the patriarchy, often the tone is bemused, but they normalize them and mock those of us who find them dangerous. They allow these women to play the victim as though we are attacking them for their beliefs or the way they live their lives rather than the fact that they’re trying to impose their beliefs on all of us. The Atlantic article actually says Stuckey is “feminine” not “feminist” as though those things are in opposition and she is supporting women rather than endangering us. Too many writers who rightly condemn racism still treat sexism with sympathy when it’s dressed up as religious faith.
You're not digressing at all. I chose to frame this around her porn statement, but my overall point is the same as yours. This is precisely the kind of "journalism" we should be vociferously calling out and condemning. It normalizes these people and their worldview.
A serious journalist should have asked her to define what was pornographic about Colleen Hoover's books? Why is Taylor Swift promoting witchcraft? Give examples please. Make her defend these weird statements instead of letting them pass and printing them verbatim.
I'm sick and tired of having trad wives and these kinds of women forced on me everywhere. I don't begrudge them their opinions or their success or their ability to have a career while telling themselves they fit the "godly" mold, but I don't ever want their beliefs to be considered normal or acceptable. They're fringe and weird and oppressive.
Movies and books are pretty easy to censor as both are produced by movie studios and publishing companies. The exception being authors who self-publish Kindle E-books directly with Amazon.
Movies have been censored by the government since 1896. One film was called The Kiss by Thomas Edison. In 1907, Chicago passed the first censorship law in the United States. For decades individual cities and states, outlawed a variety of films due to sexual content. Violence was added as the censorship target in the 1940s.
Early censorship laws were operated by local communities and without consistency production companies started to participate in organizations which would actually have offices on the studio lots. Television brought whole new issues as the “dirty” scenes were beaming into peoples homes.
Many famous movies were challenged for unacceptable content. The African Queen, Bonnie and Clyde, Casablanca, A Street Car Named Desire, Psycho and a personal favorite the Marx Brothers’ Monkey Business. Mae West and her racy dialog for the 30s was always on the chopping block.
We have censoring of books now but nothing particularly aimed at adults. Records had labels on the covers warning us about explicit content. (a lot of rappers in the 90s.)
The Supreme Court has heard several cases concerning censorship and the First Amendment. When it came to pornography, no legal standard was set. The Court decided communities “would know it when they saw it”.
Colleen Hoover is a great writer and has received awards from Goodreads for years. The year my husband died, I didn’t feel like doing anything but read the wonderfully smutty romance novels. Some were good, some made me bawl through most of the book, some were funny. I read 260 books that year and discovered some talented women authors. Only a few men in that category and boy those are really different.
Don't think Amazon wouldn't censor anything. They already do in the way they force authors into Kindle Unlimited or into participation in their pay-per-click author advertising programs to get their books seen. My books are effectively censored now because I refuse to participate in those programs because 1. They are not transparent; 2. They only make money for Amazon; 3. I ended up PAYING AMAZON more money than I made on most books sales for participating in the author advertising program.
I could write a long long long long rant about Amazon and how much I hate them and their dastardly leader, but I'll spare everyone that experience today.
But your other observations are spot on as always, Sharon. Movie ratings are a form of censorship. So are "parental controls," which could be expanded to include anything a nefarious government wanted to censor.
The Supreme Court's "know it when they see it" definition plays into the Christian Nationalist handbook. Because THEY will define what porn is, and it won't be things any of us would call pornography.
I’m wondering if they have a detailed plan for how to accomplish this pornography ban.
It just doesn’t make sense. What they consider porn is so woven into every aspect of our lives and society from books, movies, music and art to clothing speech and our very lifestyles and bedrooms. Maybe no one covers the porn ban because it seems virtually impossible to enforce and makes us sound like chicken littles.
Maybe it’s to be used as that extra tool in tool kit to come after their enemies since every single citizen will have something they deem porn in their homes. It’s like in Russia where they jail foreigners for 15 years for a joint or a vape. Folks on the right better wake up and smell the coffee because these people will come after them or people they love too.
I'm writing about this tomorrow. I intentionally made this piece unserious because I needed to feel lighter, but that approach may not help its overall point: They fully intend to ban everything they deem to be porn. They are serious. Whatever they call sexual immortality must be rooted out of society for 1. God to stop judging America; and/or 2. Jesus to return.
How does Allie Beth Stucky know it is porn unless she read the book, or watched the movie? So I am guessing she is doing a lot of smut reading and viewing in the name of identifying porn. Yes, I am scratching my head as this does not make sense for two reasons: clearly she likes porn (or what she considers porn) , she does not have anything else to do in life that makes her feel purposeful in a positive way. If I wasn’t reading about library and school books being banned i could laugh at how absurd her life is. But given the level of seriousness with which Stuckey et al attack literature, I am angered and disgusted by the hypocrisy of “christian” nationalists. They want government out of their lives, except for a woman’s right to choose, books in school, property ownership(see DeSantis in FL), and assault rifles are ok to own and use domestically…. No one who can read would say that God wants us to judge others. So maybe that is the first problem she should look at before judging me for what book I choose to give my child.
I think it's more insidious. She probably picked up a Colleen Hoover book at some point and put it down because it made her have lustful thoughts that weren't godly, and she isn't supposed to put that sort of thing in her mind. I doubt she thought about Colleen Hoover again until this book was made into a movie, and suddenly both are everywhere. How convenient to name drop a timely name into a mainstream interview and be able to call it porn without pushback. (Because yes, these people really are this ruthless. They really do pay attention to everything for opportunities to weaponize.)
They want to be the government, because then the government can run all of our lives. As long as they're the government, they are God's avengers. They don't understand how quickly that can be turned on them.
You may be right- they really do believe that God is punitive and ob their side- God’s Avengers. It is the stuff of fiction, fantasy brought to life in a very unbalanced way.
This is so weird. I'm reading my e-mails, including your SubStack, and see a new message from Audible, that new titles are available from Colleen Hoover, whom I have never read or, more honestly, never have heard of. I have been listening to some series, in the TWEEN/Young Adult, categories which are a bit race-y, but nothing the internet compares to. I admit I like series, unfortunately, one was Harry Potter, that aren't difficult to follow, have a shape shifting witch, vampire, goblins, wolves, sirens, etc. themes. Little did I know that they are better than many fiction reads for adults, but come with that natural normal, sexy vibe, that again, is nothing like the internet can provide ANYONE. I just thought it was odd as I'm thinking who's in my e-mail or knows I like Jennifer L. Armentrout, Sophie Lark, Rebecca Yarros, Laura Thalassa, and Sarah J. Maas, etc. I'll have to check this one out. No, I feel no weirdness, even at my age, having read everything, from Tolstoy to Vonnegut to these books that I read, or listen, for sometimes brainless noise or fun, and don't consider them pornographic. So, off subject of your purpose, here, thanks for reading if anyone does!!! DAY #2 DNC!!!
Depending on what email service you use and what you've enabled, the internet cookies and scrapes everything you do. I use DuckDuckGo as my search engine, as crappy as it is, because nobody can track me. I love being in Europe because their privacy laws are so much better, but when I'm in the US, I have to be a lot more diligent about using my blockers and filters. Still, many websites simply say, "I'm not going to function if you don't give us these permissions."
So that's probably how you got such an email. Her book "It Ends With Us" has been made into a movie starring Blake Lively, so it's popular again.
Genres exist for people to eat from the buffet. I used to read a lot of critically acclaimed literary novels, but during the pandemic, I really wanted to escape. I wanted to feel good and positive and hopeful, so I started reading romances while I was quarantined for a week in Iceland. I never stopped.
It isn't a romance, but you might like The Ten Thousand Doors of January if you haven't read it. One of my best pandemic reads with doors to other worlds and magic. I think I read that book in a day or two.
I don't give book recs often, because almost every public book rec is some kind of PR thing now. My cousin and I have a very colorful book rec text stream that ebbs and flows. Ha.
Thanks for this. I’m a bit behind on technology but sure glad I didn’t grow up in the tech age!! If Trump cheats to a win I’m gonna reach out for a room to rent from you!! HAHA!
Absolutely everything makes 12 year old boys think of sex. (Also teen boys, and a large percentage of grown men. ) If that's their measure of pornography, it applies to literally everything.
Given that I am racing to finish a truly smutty romance about an English lord with 2 wives who uses his family seat for sex parties to the great horror of his children, AND the current installment is about a female vicar who falls in love with the black sheep who left the town a decade before to escape his abusive dad, only to become the hottest male prostitute in Monaco…and when she decides she absolutely cannot wait until marriage for him to sample the entire carnal buffet…multiple highly descriptive times…I think Colleen Hoover will be a tad underwhelming. 😂 But I shall do my best to make this very important point.
I think I’m the kind of woman they’d force into a nunnery. Since women have stopped being nuns at a much higher percentage than men have stopped being priests. The Catholic Church has suffered because it no longer has a captive team of women to do all their community service projects while the priests do…whatever it is they do.
They do think sex = pornography unless it is deployed as they define it. Sex-adjacent things are also sex, which are also pornography for the same reason. They're too exhausted to have sex, except those who flout the rules because they know the rules don't really apply to them unless they get caught.
A couple of my regular readers have been around my work since its inauspicious beginning. They could explain better than I why this topic is so "on brand" for me as a long-term arc. :) But I won't make you bleach your brain again today, David. :) Tomorrow's newsletter is more in line with my established voice in this space.
I was surprised you were not the guest. However, I do not believe that people can just say they are something and makes it so. I have heard White Christian Nationalists say things like, "Jesus was too woke, I can't follow him." This from someone who followed governor DeSantis. How is not wanting to follow the teachings of Christ and not believing in Jesus' values being a Christian? I think she is really knowledgeable, but differently from you. I would have liked you both together. I think you could add a lot and should contact Red, Wine and Blue and offer to be a guest.
Red Wine and Blue knows all about me from Network NOVA. Some of them follow this work. So it wouldn't have been a stretch for someone in that group to propose me. I even had a discussion with one of them, right here in a comment, about how much it chaps me that Heather Cox Richardson got to be their P2025 expert, even though I'd been bugging her about it for months every conceivable way I could find to do so without acknowledgement. This is what ultimately makes people who have things to offer, things that might really be transformative but they commit the crimes of having ambition and wanting credit for their work, to say, "Fuck it. You don't want to use me? I'll go do something else with my life." This gets relabeled as "burnout," and everyone moves on and nothing changes.
I'm not trying to be sour grapes. I'm glad more people are talking about this subject from this angle. But it is irritating to kill myself for months to make a point and then watch others be crowned the "experts." Especially by groups that know about this work. I'll reach out to Red Wine and Blue just like I reached out to Democrats Abroad after you found this work. But most readers don't see how many times I make offers to these groups behind the scenes, and I never hear a word. Never heard from Dems Abroad, for example. (I don't talk about this much, because readers don't need to be bothered with how many times I'm ignored or told no, you can't have a seat at the table. That's my problem. Or my cross to bear, to use Christian imagery. Ha.)
This is one reason people on the right hate "experts." The gatekeepers on the left are very picky about who they will let be "experts," no matter how many times we prove we are. I'm not saying Democrats should let anyone be an expert. But I've proven my chops, and I should be too busy to know what to do with myself right now being an expert for them, and I'm not. That's their failing, not mine.
Want to share this discussion of Christian Nationalism on Red, Wine and Blue, with Kyle Spencer who spent 5 years living among White Christian Nationalists, and she is saying that she does not consider them Christian. I have to say that I would agree.
I would disagree with her in that I don't think I have a right to comment on the sincerity of another person's faith. I have no idea whose faith is "right," if any of them are. I can say how what they do doesn't align with how Jesus lived or the example he set, and I do that often. But I also understand how they cherry-pick the Bible to draw the conclusions they do.
I would've loved to have been asked to do that Red Wine and Blue.
Interesting exchange. Obviously, this literature appeals to a very different demographic from mine (77-year-old male). But it piqued my interest enough to notice Arwa Mahdawi's latest piece in the Guardian:
Commercialism is another aspect that should be looked at. The same with Barbie, which was co-produced by Mattel Films. I admit that I lasted all of 15 minutes with that film, but reviewing the Wikipedia page, I see that Mattel figures positively in the actual movie as well.
The best Colleen Hoover is Confessions. I would underline the title, but fancy formatting is not available. There is also a TV mini-series which is very faithful to the book. I’ve read most if not all her books and enjoyed them. It Ends with Us is my least favorite. All of them have strong and important themes. I know people of all ages read them, but I would recommend them to YA readers without hesitation. Pardon my pejorative language, the CN “influencer” is a dumba$$. She apparently missed the protagonists’ suffering and the universal themes while honing in on the tasteful sexuality seen. She probably only read the sex scene someone else pointed out to her, just as some so-called christians only know the bible through a concordance.
I thought It Ends With Us needed stronger trigger warnings, especially for the movie. Blake Lively is being blamed for the tone-deaf movie marketing, though I don't know who decided to market it as anything other than a very frank and realistic portrayal of domestic abuse. As a creator myself, I know how often blame shifts and how those who control the money often make those calls and leave the names to sell them...and to own whether they land or fail. :)
Some of the things that were left out from the book would've definitely helped the movie (but I'm someone who prefers books over movies 99% of the time.) Movies don't leave enough time for character building, which is why series streaming has become satisfying for both creators and viewers in recent years. I think this story would've been better told as a series, especially since the sequel follows the first love relationship (that the movie shortchanged.)
On Friday, I will circle back to why the CN "influencer" and other CNs would call this story "porn." I'm laying the groundwork this week by educating readers about the sources of these mental gymnastics. I hope that will be more memorable and useful than simply showing people the line they'd draw and cry "Porn!"
Nobody needs to be fancy here, Shelly. I can't even be bothered to comb my hair half the time when I make a video. :) I'm grateful you chose to support this space.
I grew up in this and we weren't allowed any books but the Bible, the Lexicon, and any encyclopedias that didn't have the word "sex" in them.
Which makes me wonder about how happy all of those male abusers were when Lot's daughters had sex with him. Avoiding the men's laps in church was exhausting for the little kids, both male and female. As children, we often talked about which men were the most dangerous and would warn and look out for the youngest ones.
Women and newborns died in agony at home giving birth because going to a doctor was to doubt God, and the untrained midwives who hadn't spent one minute in basic health class, were helpless in the face of the mildest problem.
Our church in Indiana is why laws were made in the 1980s to make withhold medical care for children illegal, although Republicans have been passing bills that have eroded those laws into toilet paper.
Facing what is almost a certain Mike Braun government, many of us will be selling family properties and moving out of the state where we've built our entire lives and raised our families away from the threat of reliving that horribly abusive childhood as adults.
Thank you for the work that you are doing.
Democrat leadership needs to learn this coded language that we grew up with before it's too late.
I'm sorry we share a similar experience. While I was never sexually abused by an adult in the church, I know people who were. And of course, church and school boys felt me up against my will more than once and I never told anyone because I'd be blamed for it.
We're on track to exit our red state, too. I've lived in South Carolina for 51 years. Thankfully, I realized I didn't belong here a long time ago. My friends are scattered all over. I won't leave much behind. But it isn't easy to start again. I wish you and your family much peace and patience on your journey.
I've been trying to get Democratic leadership to take this seriously, but they seem happy to use what they want and ignore aspects like this. Maybe that's what their focus grouping tells them. I've never understood how they operate. I only know I won't be given a seat at the table.
And it isn't only them. I asked someone who had connections to John Oliver to pitch them the idea of doing a whole segment on CN views of porn, because he'd knock that out of the park AND make it relatable. But crickets.
I can't change decades of Democratic complacency. I can't force them to take this seriously if they choose not to. I can only put it here and hope it bubbles up, just like my shrieking about P2025 and calling it Christo-fascist did.
So I’m digressing from the topic of porn here, but The Atlantic profile of Stuckey is a prime example of the kind of infuriating article that seems to be spreading like a virulent rash through legacy media. The profiles don’t exactly champion the female footsoldiers of the patriarchy, often the tone is bemused, but they normalize them and mock those of us who find them dangerous. They allow these women to play the victim as though we are attacking them for their beliefs or the way they live their lives rather than the fact that they’re trying to impose their beliefs on all of us. The Atlantic article actually says Stuckey is “feminine” not “feminist” as though those things are in opposition and she is supporting women rather than endangering us. Too many writers who rightly condemn racism still treat sexism with sympathy when it’s dressed up as religious faith.
You're not digressing at all. I chose to frame this around her porn statement, but my overall point is the same as yours. This is precisely the kind of "journalism" we should be vociferously calling out and condemning. It normalizes these people and their worldview.
A serious journalist should have asked her to define what was pornographic about Colleen Hoover's books? Why is Taylor Swift promoting witchcraft? Give examples please. Make her defend these weird statements instead of letting them pass and printing them verbatim.
I'm sick and tired of having trad wives and these kinds of women forced on me everywhere. I don't begrudge them their opinions or their success or their ability to have a career while telling themselves they fit the "godly" mold, but I don't ever want their beliefs to be considered normal or acceptable. They're fringe and weird and oppressive.
I also wrote a bit about how Christian Nationalists define the word "feminine." It is embedded in Genesis 3:16. She's using it in that context. Here's that newsletter: https://project2025istheocracy.substack.com/p/how-christian-nationalism-breeds?utm_source=publication-search
Movies and books are pretty easy to censor as both are produced by movie studios and publishing companies. The exception being authors who self-publish Kindle E-books directly with Amazon.
Movies have been censored by the government since 1896. One film was called The Kiss by Thomas Edison. In 1907, Chicago passed the first censorship law in the United States. For decades individual cities and states, outlawed a variety of films due to sexual content. Violence was added as the censorship target in the 1940s.
Early censorship laws were operated by local communities and without consistency production companies started to participate in organizations which would actually have offices on the studio lots. Television brought whole new issues as the “dirty” scenes were beaming into peoples homes.
Many famous movies were challenged for unacceptable content. The African Queen, Bonnie and Clyde, Casablanca, A Street Car Named Desire, Psycho and a personal favorite the Marx Brothers’ Monkey Business. Mae West and her racy dialog for the 30s was always on the chopping block.
We have censoring of books now but nothing particularly aimed at adults. Records had labels on the covers warning us about explicit content. (a lot of rappers in the 90s.)
The Supreme Court has heard several cases concerning censorship and the First Amendment. When it came to pornography, no legal standard was set. The Court decided communities “would know it when they saw it”.
Colleen Hoover is a great writer and has received awards from Goodreads for years. The year my husband died, I didn’t feel like doing anything but read the wonderfully smutty romance novels. Some were good, some made me bawl through most of the book, some were funny. I read 260 books that year and discovered some talented women authors. Only a few men in that category and boy those are really different.
Don't think Amazon wouldn't censor anything. They already do in the way they force authors into Kindle Unlimited or into participation in their pay-per-click author advertising programs to get their books seen. My books are effectively censored now because I refuse to participate in those programs because 1. They are not transparent; 2. They only make money for Amazon; 3. I ended up PAYING AMAZON more money than I made on most books sales for participating in the author advertising program.
I could write a long long long long rant about Amazon and how much I hate them and their dastardly leader, but I'll spare everyone that experience today.
But your other observations are spot on as always, Sharon. Movie ratings are a form of censorship. So are "parental controls," which could be expanded to include anything a nefarious government wanted to censor.
The Supreme Court's "know it when they see it" definition plays into the Christian Nationalist handbook. Because THEY will define what porn is, and it won't be things any of us would call pornography.
I’m wondering if they have a detailed plan for how to accomplish this pornography ban.
It just doesn’t make sense. What they consider porn is so woven into every aspect of our lives and society from books, movies, music and art to clothing speech and our very lifestyles and bedrooms. Maybe no one covers the porn ban because it seems virtually impossible to enforce and makes us sound like chicken littles.
Maybe it’s to be used as that extra tool in tool kit to come after their enemies since every single citizen will have something they deem porn in their homes. It’s like in Russia where they jail foreigners for 15 years for a joint or a vape. Folks on the right better wake up and smell the coffee because these people will come after them or people they love too.
I'm writing about this tomorrow. I intentionally made this piece unserious because I needed to feel lighter, but that approach may not help its overall point: They fully intend to ban everything they deem to be porn. They are serious. Whatever they call sexual immortality must be rooted out of society for 1. God to stop judging America; and/or 2. Jesus to return.
🤦♀️. That all I can same about “their” god. Tomorrow should be interesting.
How does Allie Beth Stucky know it is porn unless she read the book, or watched the movie? So I am guessing she is doing a lot of smut reading and viewing in the name of identifying porn. Yes, I am scratching my head as this does not make sense for two reasons: clearly she likes porn (or what she considers porn) , she does not have anything else to do in life that makes her feel purposeful in a positive way. If I wasn’t reading about library and school books being banned i could laugh at how absurd her life is. But given the level of seriousness with which Stuckey et al attack literature, I am angered and disgusted by the hypocrisy of “christian” nationalists. They want government out of their lives, except for a woman’s right to choose, books in school, property ownership(see DeSantis in FL), and assault rifles are ok to own and use domestically…. No one who can read would say that God wants us to judge others. So maybe that is the first problem she should look at before judging me for what book I choose to give my child.
I think it's more insidious. She probably picked up a Colleen Hoover book at some point and put it down because it made her have lustful thoughts that weren't godly, and she isn't supposed to put that sort of thing in her mind. I doubt she thought about Colleen Hoover again until this book was made into a movie, and suddenly both are everywhere. How convenient to name drop a timely name into a mainstream interview and be able to call it porn without pushback. (Because yes, these people really are this ruthless. They really do pay attention to everything for opportunities to weaponize.)
They want to be the government, because then the government can run all of our lives. As long as they're the government, they are God's avengers. They don't understand how quickly that can be turned on them.
You may be right- they really do believe that God is punitive and ob their side- God’s Avengers. It is the stuff of fiction, fantasy brought to life in a very unbalanced way.
This is so weird. I'm reading my e-mails, including your SubStack, and see a new message from Audible, that new titles are available from Colleen Hoover, whom I have never read or, more honestly, never have heard of. I have been listening to some series, in the TWEEN/Young Adult, categories which are a bit race-y, but nothing the internet compares to. I admit I like series, unfortunately, one was Harry Potter, that aren't difficult to follow, have a shape shifting witch, vampire, goblins, wolves, sirens, etc. themes. Little did I know that they are better than many fiction reads for adults, but come with that natural normal, sexy vibe, that again, is nothing like the internet can provide ANYONE. I just thought it was odd as I'm thinking who's in my e-mail or knows I like Jennifer L. Armentrout, Sophie Lark, Rebecca Yarros, Laura Thalassa, and Sarah J. Maas, etc. I'll have to check this one out. No, I feel no weirdness, even at my age, having read everything, from Tolstoy to Vonnegut to these books that I read, or listen, for sometimes brainless noise or fun, and don't consider them pornographic. So, off subject of your purpose, here, thanks for reading if anyone does!!! DAY #2 DNC!!!
Depending on what email service you use and what you've enabled, the internet cookies and scrapes everything you do. I use DuckDuckGo as my search engine, as crappy as it is, because nobody can track me. I love being in Europe because their privacy laws are so much better, but when I'm in the US, I have to be a lot more diligent about using my blockers and filters. Still, many websites simply say, "I'm not going to function if you don't give us these permissions."
So that's probably how you got such an email. Her book "It Ends With Us" has been made into a movie starring Blake Lively, so it's popular again.
Genres exist for people to eat from the buffet. I used to read a lot of critically acclaimed literary novels, but during the pandemic, I really wanted to escape. I wanted to feel good and positive and hopeful, so I started reading romances while I was quarantined for a week in Iceland. I never stopped.
It isn't a romance, but you might like The Ten Thousand Doors of January if you haven't read it. One of my best pandemic reads with doors to other worlds and magic. I think I read that book in a day or two.
And P.S. thank you for the book suggestions. I always need good advice on both important reads and ones to get me away from those important things!
I don't give book recs often, because almost every public book rec is some kind of PR thing now. My cousin and I have a very colorful book rec text stream that ebbs and flows. Ha.
Thanks for this. I’m a bit behind on technology but sure glad I didn’t grow up in the tech age!! If Trump cheats to a win I’m gonna reach out for a room to rent from you!! HAHA!
Absolutely everything makes 12 year old boys think of sex. (Also teen boys, and a large percentage of grown men. ) If that's their measure of pornography, it applies to literally everything.
That's my point. Everything is porn to them.
You are a true patriot Detective Watkins......I look forward to the findings from your investigation of the book and movie. 🤣
Looking forward to new sex positions to try........how scandalous.
Im post menopausal, so me having sex is already borderline illegal to the fascists. I'm only allowed to babysit they say.
Given that I am racing to finish a truly smutty romance about an English lord with 2 wives who uses his family seat for sex parties to the great horror of his children, AND the current installment is about a female vicar who falls in love with the black sheep who left the town a decade before to escape his abusive dad, only to become the hottest male prostitute in Monaco…and when she decides she absolutely cannot wait until marriage for him to sample the entire carnal buffet…multiple highly descriptive times…I think Colleen Hoover will be a tad underwhelming. 😂 But I shall do my best to make this very important point.
I think I’m the kind of woman they’d force into a nunnery. Since women have stopped being nuns at a much higher percentage than men have stopped being priests. The Catholic Church has suffered because it no longer has a captive team of women to do all their community service projects while the priests do…whatever it is they do.
I think they think everything is pornography. I can’t imagine how they have intercourse. jd and his trainer
don-old should go find some couches. Don-old and the magats accuse democrats of everything they are guilty of already doing.
They do think sex = pornography unless it is deployed as they define it. Sex-adjacent things are also sex, which are also pornography for the same reason. They're too exhausted to have sex, except those who flout the rules because they know the rules don't really apply to them unless they get caught.
"Apologies to my male readers. I forgive you for covering eyes and ears while screeching PLEASE STOP."
Thanks, I appreciate the concern! (and I'm recovering quite well, actually!)
A couple of my regular readers have been around my work since its inauspicious beginning. They could explain better than I why this topic is so "on brand" for me as a long-term arc. :) But I won't make you bleach your brain again today, David. :) Tomorrow's newsletter is more in line with my established voice in this space.
I was surprised you were not the guest. However, I do not believe that people can just say they are something and makes it so. I have heard White Christian Nationalists say things like, "Jesus was too woke, I can't follow him." This from someone who followed governor DeSantis. How is not wanting to follow the teachings of Christ and not believing in Jesus' values being a Christian? I think she is really knowledgeable, but differently from you. I would have liked you both together. I think you could add a lot and should contact Red, Wine and Blue and offer to be a guest.
Red Wine and Blue knows all about me from Network NOVA. Some of them follow this work. So it wouldn't have been a stretch for someone in that group to propose me. I even had a discussion with one of them, right here in a comment, about how much it chaps me that Heather Cox Richardson got to be their P2025 expert, even though I'd been bugging her about it for months every conceivable way I could find to do so without acknowledgement. This is what ultimately makes people who have things to offer, things that might really be transformative but they commit the crimes of having ambition and wanting credit for their work, to say, "Fuck it. You don't want to use me? I'll go do something else with my life." This gets relabeled as "burnout," and everyone moves on and nothing changes.
I'm not trying to be sour grapes. I'm glad more people are talking about this subject from this angle. But it is irritating to kill myself for months to make a point and then watch others be crowned the "experts." Especially by groups that know about this work. I'll reach out to Red Wine and Blue just like I reached out to Democrats Abroad after you found this work. But most readers don't see how many times I make offers to these groups behind the scenes, and I never hear a word. Never heard from Dems Abroad, for example. (I don't talk about this much, because readers don't need to be bothered with how many times I'm ignored or told no, you can't have a seat at the table. That's my problem. Or my cross to bear, to use Christian imagery. Ha.)
This is one reason people on the right hate "experts." The gatekeepers on the left are very picky about who they will let be "experts," no matter how many times we prove we are. I'm not saying Democrats should let anyone be an expert. But I've proven my chops, and I should be too busy to know what to do with myself right now being an expert for them, and I'm not. That's their failing, not mine.
Want to share this discussion of Christian Nationalism on Red, Wine and Blue, with Kyle Spencer who spent 5 years living among White Christian Nationalists, and she is saying that she does not consider them Christian. I have to say that I would agree.
https://youtu.be/CC_cTCIlJ7c?si=IGYkeYZPkIKZk-0g
Because I am in an EU country, I could not see it so I was grateful that they sent me a video.
I would disagree with her in that I don't think I have a right to comment on the sincerity of another person's faith. I have no idea whose faith is "right," if any of them are. I can say how what they do doesn't align with how Jesus lived or the example he set, and I do that often. But I also understand how they cherry-pick the Bible to draw the conclusions they do.
I would've loved to have been asked to do that Red Wine and Blue.
Interesting exchange. Obviously, this literature appeals to a very different demographic from mine (77-year-old male). But it piqued my interest enough to notice Arwa Mahdawi's latest piece in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/20/blake-lively-it-ends-with-us-colleen-hoover
Commercialism is another aspect that should be looked at. The same with Barbie, which was co-produced by Mattel Films. I admit that I lasted all of 15 minutes with that film, but reviewing the Wikipedia page, I see that Mattel figures positively in the actual movie as well.
Thanks for sending that article. I haven't had time to look at The Guardian today.
In tomorrow's newsletter, I make a connection to this commercialism. It's no coincidence that Stuckey name-checked Hoover in this interview.
The best Colleen Hoover is Confessions. I would underline the title, but fancy formatting is not available. There is also a TV mini-series which is very faithful to the book. I’ve read most if not all her books and enjoyed them. It Ends with Us is my least favorite. All of them have strong and important themes. I know people of all ages read them, but I would recommend them to YA readers without hesitation. Pardon my pejorative language, the CN “influencer” is a dumba$$. She apparently missed the protagonists’ suffering and the universal themes while honing in on the tasteful sexuality seen. She probably only read the sex scene someone else pointed out to her, just as some so-called christians only know the bible through a concordance.
I thought It Ends With Us needed stronger trigger warnings, especially for the movie. Blake Lively is being blamed for the tone-deaf movie marketing, though I don't know who decided to market it as anything other than a very frank and realistic portrayal of domestic abuse. As a creator myself, I know how often blame shifts and how those who control the money often make those calls and leave the names to sell them...and to own whether they land or fail. :)
Some of the things that were left out from the book would've definitely helped the movie (but I'm someone who prefers books over movies 99% of the time.) Movies don't leave enough time for character building, which is why series streaming has become satisfying for both creators and viewers in recent years. I think this story would've been better told as a series, especially since the sequel follows the first love relationship (that the movie shortchanged.)
On Friday, I will circle back to why the CN "influencer" and other CNs would call this story "porn." I'm laying the groundwork this week by educating readers about the sources of these mental gymnastics. I hope that will be more memorable and useful than simply showing people the line they'd draw and cry "Porn!"
Nobody needs to be fancy here, Shelly. I can't even be bothered to comb my hair half the time when I make a video. :) I'm grateful you chose to support this space.