WASHINGTON — Religiously inspired anti-porn lobby NCOSE released yesterday its annual “Dirty Dozen” list of companies it alleges are “major contributors to sexual exploitation” and encourages its followers to target.
Among the dubious assertions made by NCOSE during a presentation and ballyhooed “reveal broadcast,” the influential Beltway lobbying group claimed that Netflix “glorifies sexual violence, sexualizes children, normalizes incest, trivializes prostitution and child sex trafficking and propagates graphic sex scenes and gratuitous nudity — all in the name of entertainment.”
NCOSE, formerly known as Morality in Media, particularly condemned Netflix for failing to stigmatize sex workers to its liking, complaining that Netflix “normalizes the commercial sex industry and disrespects the victimized, prostituted women by referring to them as ‘sex workers.’ This choice of language contributes to the harmful narrative that prostitution is just a ‘normal job.’”
Besides Netflix, the anti-porn organization also included in its 2022 "Dirty Dozen" list: Twitter, Reddit, Etsy, Google, Verisign, Visa, Discord, Kik, OnlyFans, Meta — the conglomerate formerly known as Facebook — and, rather strangely, Christian summer camp Kanakuk.
NCOSE has seen its budget and spending skyrocket in the last two years due to ongoing campaigns to demonize adult content as “a public health crisis” and to harm the lives and livelihoods of sex workers by convincing payment processors to discriminate against them. In this latest move against corporations and entities that NCOSE and its highly-paid executives hope to influence or punish, the group has put forward a number of sensational allegations — akin to its statements in previous years that Sports Illustrated and Cosmopolitan magazine contained “hardcore pornography,” and to its older campaigns to sue bookstores for selling classic novels that the faith-oriented group considers “obscene” for referring to sex work.
NCOSE Targeting Companies for Failing to Stigmatize Sex Work
These are some of the allegations made by NCOSE against the companies on its 2022 hit list:
Netflix is supposedly peddling “rampant sexual objectification and glamorization of abuse. Sociologists have identified a marked increase in graphic sex scenes and gratuitous nudity permeating Netflix shows. Further, Netflix continues a trend of normalizing the sexualization of children and whitewashing the violence and exploitation in prostitution.”
Twitter, according to NCOSE, is “rampant with accounts and posts functioning as advertisements for commercial sex — including prostitution.” The platform is “being used to advertise prostituted persons and sex trafficking victims for purposes of commercial sexual exploitation, often via pornographic images or webcamming. Sometimes these tweets include offers to meet in person for 'escorting' services, and sometimes they ask users to follow and pay for nude images, videos or livestreaming.” Moreover, the group claims, “Twitter is filled with pornography that supports rape myths, normalizes adult-with-teen-themed and incest-themed exploitation and reinforces degrading racially charged sexual stereotypes.”
Reddit, the organization asserts, hosts “‘subreddits’ [with] countless sexually explicit images and videos posted without consent (image-based sexual abuse), child sexual abuse material, hardcore pornography, prostitution and the likely facilitation of sex trafficking.” NCOSE expressed dismay that “the Reddit User Agreement says nothing about sexually explicit or adult content — allowing it to flourish without any meaningful age or consent verification.”
Etsy, NCOSE claims, in “in the business of selling pornographic merchandise, image-based sexual abuse, misogynistic apparel and sex dolls — including ones resembling children and young teens. Customers complain about unwanted exposure to pornography and sexually explicit/suggestive content through recommendations, some likening this experience to ‘sexual harassment.’”
Meta, charges NCOSE, “owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp: all of which are consistently under fire as primary places for grooming, sextortion, child sexual abuse materials, sex trafficking and a host of other crimes and ills.”
Google, NCOSE laments, “continues to drive users to [porn] sites – Pornhub, OnlyFans, XVideos, xHamster, and others — that are likely hosting criminal content. These sites are often listed on the first page.”
Discord, NCOSE claims, “consistently fails to address the extensive sexually graphic, violent and exploitative content on its thousands of private and public channels.”
Visa, in NCOSE’s view, “rightly cut ties with Pornhub in 2020 after public outcry regarding the rampant sex trafficking and child sexual abuse material hosted on the pornography site. However, Visa has since reinitiated a relationship with MindGeek (Pornhub’s parent company) and other pornography websites and failed to follow the example of Mastercard in requiring that sites hosting sexually explicit material implement common sense measures to prevent and remove illegal content. Furthermore, Visa also allows transactions for brothels and prostitution websites. Visa should live up to its corporate social responsibility principles and stop buttressing the infrastructure of the exploitative commercial sex industry. Visa claims it helps power money movement globally, but that must not include powering the global economy of commercial sexual exploitation.”
Verisign, an internet infrastructure company, NCOSE alleges, “must be held accountable for their inaction and poor policies that allow child sexual abuse to flourish on the .com and .net domains which they have been entrusted with to manage.”
Kik, NCOSE rues, is a chat platform where “sexually explicit content is not only rampant, but easily accessible in the multitude of public group chats.”
OnlyFans, according to NCOSE, should not exist, period. This is what the faith-inspired lobby claims:
“OnlyFans exploded in notoriety and profit during COVID-19, as the subscription-based platform known for pornography preyed on widespread financial insecurities and capitalized on youth spending more time online. OnlyFans is set up as a potential ‘pyramid scheme’ incentivizing ‘creators’ to recruit new users — resulting in a flood on social media of false promises of fast cash and fame. Sex buyers and pimps maximize buying and selling people behind the security of a paywall. Yet survivors, whistleblowers, police and investigative journalists have uncovered child sexual abuse material, sex trafficking, rape videos and a host of other crimes, making the case clear: OnlyFans is a safe haven for exploitation.”
Finally, NCOSE is ordering its activists to target Christian summer camp Kanakuk:
“Between April-June 2021, NCOSE was contacted by three survivors of sexual abuse allegedly taking place at Kanakuk. One survivor we spoke with said that finally, at age 70, he was sharing what happened to him for the first time when he was a young counselor at the camp. Another was a dad of young boys who was abused as a ‘kamper’ while a young teen. Despite the survivors who have come forward, at least a dozen lawsuits, and the news investigations that have uncovered practices at the camp that enabled the reported abuse to fester, Kanakuk has continued to minimize the reality that they have allowed abuse to flourish.”
As FSC Director of Communications Mike Stabile pointed out today via Twitter, during the "Dirty Dozen" video reveal chat, NCOSE CEO Dawn Hawkins “gushed about a teenager who asked to show the presentation to his school, with no concern about whether this was age-appropriate for minors.”