Anthony Comstock Continues to F**k Us All
He's Been Dead for 108 Years
This week’s issue is dedicated (and not in the good way) to Anthony Comstock, the anti-vice crusader whose own discomfort with sex continues to ruin our lives more than a century after his death.
Anthony Comstock was born in 1844 in Connecticut. One of ten children, he grew up in a strict religious household before going off to fight in the Civil War for the Union. After the war, he moved to New York City where he was horrified by the drunken debauchery of his fellow young men. He felt it was his personal mission to save people from falling into a life of irreversible sin. (Anyone else think we might all be better off if Comstock himself had tried some drunken debauchery?)
Comstock teamed up with the local YMCA to form the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice which also included some big and still familiar names like J.P. Morgan and Samuel Colgate. They wanted the people who sold obscene materials to be prosecuted, but found that there were few laws that supported such action.
So, Mr. Comstock went to Washington and lobbied Congress to keep all things sex off the streets. He took a big collection of confiscated kink with him to get attention. The timing was perfect. Congress was reeling from a scandal in which members were caught selling political favors for a share of railroad profits. They needed something else to rile people up about, and sex, drugs, and rock and roll were just the ticket. (Yes, I know this was before rock and roll.)
At the time, the best way to regulate the flow of information was to regulate the mail and that is what An Act for the Suppression of Trade In, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use of 1873 did. (It became known as the Comstock Act and prompted states to pass similar bills, often referred to as Comstock Laws.)
The Act said:
Every obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy book, pamphlet, picture paper, letter, writing, print or other publication of an indecent character … is declared to be nonmailable matter and shall not be conveyed in the mails or delivered from any post office or by any letter carrier.
The next part said:
Every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use; and [e]very article, instrument, substance, drug medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose.
People who violated the law could be fined up to $5,000 and imprisoned for not more than five years for a first violation. Punishment was doubled for the second offense.
Comstock himself was hired by the Post Office to oversee the law. He boasted that by January of the next year his investigators had confiscated 194,000 obscene pictures and photographs; 134,000 books; 60,300 condoms (listed as rubber articles); and 5,500 sets of playing cards (presumably decorated with naked women). It wasn’t just the material, though, he went after people. By the time he died some 40 years later, he had facilitated the convictions of more than 3,600 individuals.
The Comstock Act came up directly in recent court decisions about mifepristone because parts of it are still on the books and being used to argue that sending abortion medication through the mail is illegal. It’s far more than that, however. Comstock’s anti-woman, anti-sex, anti-porn attitude is everywhere these days.
In the last few years, Republican lawmakers have gone after abortion, porn, LGBTQ books, sex education, and the trans community. Buoyed by their court wins around abortion, it seems entirely plausible that they’ll come after contraception next. If they win there, we really will be living in the Victorian Era.
I believe it’s fair to say that despite his hatred of sex (and the fact that he’s super dead), Anthony Comstock continues to f**k us all.
Mifepristone in Limbo, Comstock Act in Play
When we last left off, there were two conflicting court opinions on the future of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in a medication abortion. In one, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk had ruled not just that the plaintiffs (a random group of anti-abortion doctors) had standing to challenge the 23-year-old FDA approval of mifepristone, but agreed with them that the decades-old approval should be set aside (which would effectively take it off the market). In a separate case that asked the court to make mifepristone even easier to get, Judge Thomas Rice had ordered the FDA to do nothing to change the status of the drug while the court worked on that case. We had dueling opinions that set up higher court challenges.
What I didn’t mention last week was that Kacsmaryk’s ruling was heavily based on the Comstock Act. He cites it 29 times in his decision saying that plaintiffs have a potentially valid argument that sending abortion medication through the mail could be unlawful. Some legal scholars said his interpretation of the law ignores the history of the act, Congressional intent when it was passed, and the years of judicial decisions that chipped away at its scope. (Others said things more like “see I told you that we needed to officially get it off the books.”)
The Biden administration appealed this decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals which had jurisdiction. Neither party in the other case (which was brought by a group of liberal attorneys general against the FDA) appealed that one since doing nothing was just what they wanted.
The Fifth Circuit is known to be very conservative and anti-abortion and experts expected it to side with Kacsmaryk. It did, but with some caveats. It ruled that too much time had gone by for the plaintiffs to be able to challenge the original FDA approval of mifepristone, so the drug would stay on the market. The appeals court noted, however, that the FDA had amended its approval of the drug twice—once in 2016 to expand the use through 10 weeks of pregnancy and once in 2021 to make it easier to get through pharmacies and by mail—and said that these rule changes were not too old to challenge. Then it agreed that these rules could/should be challenged based on the Comstock Act.
Federal courts over the years have mostly ruled that the Comstock Act only applies in situations that are intended to produce illegal results. This is the basis of a recent Justice Department memo saying that mailing mifepristone does not violate the old morality law because the person doing the mailing and those handling the package have no way to know whether the end user would be using the medication unlawfully. But the Fifth Circuit disagreed and said, “the law criminalizes all ‘carriage in interstate commerce’ of any “drug, medicine, article, or thing” designed ‘for producing abortion.’”
Writing in Slate, Mark Joseph Stern suggests that this lays the groundwork for a federal abortion ban:
All means of abortion invariably go through interstate commerce. Pills must be shipped to providers, even if they are not ultimately mailed to patients. The medical instruments used in procedural abortions must travel across state lines to reach their destination. In a modern economy, it is just inevitable that something designed for abortion will go through interstate commerce. The 5th Circuit appears to think that’s all a federal crime. If it’s right, then the Comstock Act is effectively a 50-state abortion ban.
The Fifth Circuit’s decision changed the rules governing mifepristone instantly, meaning that for a little while last week the drug could not be delivered by mail and could only be considered approved through seven weeks of pregnancy. (Advocates pointed out that off-label use was still possible.)
Of course, the Biden administration appealed the decision to the Supreme Court immediately and the manufacturer of the drug also requested emergency relief from the highest court.
Justice Samuel Alito, who may feel a tiny bit guilty about the hell he unleashed on American women with his Dobbs decision (which finds its roots in laws way older than Comstock), put an administrative stay on the Fifth Circuit’s ruling for five days to give the court time to review the case.
While the stay is in place (it expires at midnight tonight), the 2021 rules governing mifepristone remain in effect. If this is confusing, that’s part of the point; the anti-abortion plaintiffs knew they’d send abortion advocates and providers scrambling more than once as this case wends its way through the courts. (By the way, I’m 99% sure Alito can’t feel guilt.)
No Fap is No Fun (Anthony Should Have Known That)
In this age of online porn in which over 130 million people visit Pornhub every day, it would be easy to think that people have moved on from Comstock’s obsession with obscene materials and embraced masturbation as the healthy release that it is. Unfortunately, that is not true for everyone. Interestingly, today’s most ardent anti-masturbators are those who fear they’ve choked the chicken a little too often.
The Reboot movement—which includes groups like NoFap—believes that men become easily addicted to pornography, and that—like with any other addiction—the only solution is to quit both porn and masturbation. The movement offers men online forums full of similarly struggling peers and paid coaches who say they have overcome the same urges. New research has found, however, that the solution causes more harm than good.
Let me start by reminding you that I don’t think porn addiction or sex addiction are real. I believe that some people who struggle with compulsivity turn to porn and sex, and that their behavior can become a problem. That said, the underlying psychological problem is the compulsivity not the sex. As one expert put it, when someone compulsively washes their hands, we don’t say they have a hand washing problem.
I also think it’s important to note that the NoFap movement overlaps a lot with the incel movement which is famous for its misogyny. (The word incel is short for involuntarily celibate and its members not-so-secretly hate the women who are not sleeping with them.) Participants in the new research study reported on what they saw on NoFap forums: 74% said they’d seen posts that were misogynistic, 49% reported bullying posts, 43% anti-LGBT posts, and 32% antisemitic posts. Moreover, 24% had seen posts instructing followers to harm or kill themselves and 21% had seen threats to hurt someone else.
The researchers also surveyed Reboot participants about “relapses.” Participants reported that their most recent relapse was followed by feeling shameful, worthless, sad, or other negative emotions. Alarmingly, 29% of the men said they felt a desire to commit suicide after their last relapse. Further analysis found “the more engaged a participant was with NoFap, the more (1) negative emotions they experienced at their most recent relapse, (2) likely they had been told to ‘harm or kill themself,’ and (3) restrictive (disapproving of casual sex) their sexuality.” The researchers liken the movement to conversion therapy for LGBTQ people in that it promotes shame and suicidal ideation.
Nicole Prause, the co-author of the study, also told me in an email that of the 256 participants who answered questions about relapses, only 20 said they’d had zero relapses. I see this as further proof that trying to make sexual desire go away—whether on an individual level or a societal level—may lead to mountains of pain and guilt, but doesn’t actually make sexual desire go away.
While a profit motive is likely behind the purveyors of the NoFap movement (apparently, you can charge people a lot of money to help them get over any addiction—even one that doesn’t exist), it’s clear that conflicted feelings about sex are what drives participants. I have always suspected that Comstock’s own guilt around sexual desire (that tingling sensation he got between his legs when he looked at the 150 tons of unseemly books he claimed to have confiscated in his life), was the driving force behind his obsession with smut.
Facebook Doesn’t Advertise Smut, But It Did, Today, to Me
As much as I’d like to think of myself as anything but cliché, Facebook has been shockingly attuned to my purchasing desires even before I give it digital clues about what I want. Facebook ads are the reason I wear Rothy’s, buy cheap glasses at Zenni, and recently got my mom the cutest plant-related present (she reads this, so I’m not saying any more than that). I am often intrigued enough to click on the ads its algorithm feeds me even if I don’t end up purchasing the product.
Today, I got this ad:
At first, I was not surprised that the platform would advertise a rose-shaped vibrator to me. I like flowers and vibrators. I’ve searched for both. In fact, last week, I visited quite a few online sex toy providers. That was for an article I was writing, but I’m not Gwyneth Paltrow who sells vibrators but won’t admit to using them. I’ve looked for myself as well.
Then I remembered, Facebook doesn’t advertise vibrators. It’s famous for not allowing ads about anything sex related. The official guidelines still say, “Ads can't: Promote products or services that focus on sexual pleasure or enhancement, such as sex toys or sexual enhancement products.” Clients and fellow sex educators have complained about this for years. I’ve even written about it before.
Yet, there it was, clear as day: an ad for a sex toy in my Facebook feed. (Yes, I clicked on it to make sure I was right. It appears to be a combination vibrator and clit sucker.)
In true Carrie Bradshaw fashion, I couldn’t help but wonder: Was Facebook’s Computer Comstock tricked by the floral shape? Did the word soul make it think religion and not sex? Did it really miss the not-at-all-subtle use of the word snatch? And, most importantly, would Anthony himself have been so easily fooled?