MiM Rebrands as National Center on Sexual Exploitation

LOS ANGELES—When a 50-year-old nationally known organization that has always been dependent upon the quality and consistency of its brand for its fundraising, membership drives, lobbying efforts and, well, everything, changes its name, it's got to be for a good reason. And when the organization is focused on a controversial cultural issue—in this case, the spread of pornography—a name change usually denotes a significant change in strategy. That certainly appears to be the case with Morality in Media and its sister organization, PornHarms.org, which changed their names to the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCSE) sometime in the middle of last month, at about the same time the group issued its annual "Dirty Dozen" list of the most egregious facilitators of pornography in America. At least that is what and who the group's "Dirty Dozen" list used to target. This year, however, and consistent with its new name, the group put together a list of "businesses and organizations... targeted for their contributions to sexual exploitation in the United States." On its new and not quite completed website, endsexualexploitation.org, the organization says that it "changed its name from Morality In Media to the National Center on Sexual Exploitation early in 2015 to better describe the organization’s scope and mission, which is to expose the seamless connection between all forms of sexual exploitation." Its current stated mission is "Opposing sexual exploitation. Defending human dignity." However, it still does name its old nemesis in its Vision statement, which proclaims, "All individuals have a right to be free from the effects of pornography and all other forms of sexual exploitation." That's actually a rather non-controversial vision, since it implies that people also have a right to engage the sensual effects of pornography. Areas of concentration for the group are now listed as: * Pornography * Sex Trafficking of adults and children * Sexualization of Children * Sexual Assault and Violence * Child Pornography * Child Sexual Abuse * Prostitution * Violence Against Women * Sexual Addictions and Compulsivity * Sexually Oriented Businesses * Sexual Coercion Obviously, the brain trust behind Morality in Media—or perhaps its financial/political backers—felt that keeping "morality" in the name had become a cultural albatross of sorts, tarring the group as old-fashioned fuddy-duddies wagging their fingers at the young 'uns rather than grabbing them by the short and curlies with an argument that puts the fear of God into them. Morality is a vague term also, and increasingly subjective in our multi-cultural and global society. "Exploitation" is much more active, and like "trafficked," it removes from the alleged victim any recognition of his/her own volition. As well, the name change strongly suggests that the group feels that it needs to expand its mission beyond the fight against pornography to the wider war against sexual exploitation in all its vicarious and vicious varieties, which is what the group actually confirms on the site when it talks about exposing "the seamless connection between all forms of sexual exploitation." Italics are added to emphasize the new strategy, which is to make new, more "scientific" arguments that tie all of the above activities together into one seamless conspiracy of sin. But of course, what it's really saying is that there's a direct connection between regular porn, child porn, sex trafficking and rape ("sexual coercion"). Also note the similarity between the group's new name and The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, also a private, non-profit organiztion, although one established by Congress in 1984. Similar to recent moves by the American Family Association to become a BFF of the Republican National Committee—whose doofus chairman Reince Preibus was already in the sack with the notoriously obvious hate group before being forced to bail on his new paramour—the new more official-sounding National Center on Sexual Exploitation probably wants the same thing from a Congress it rightly believes is more amenable to its ideas. Unfortunately for the group, however, its ideas have not evolved along with the name, and remain fixated on exactly the same obsessions that have bedeviled these people for years, and which they express in ways that still put average people off. Proof that that is found in an article published today on FoxNews.com by Dawn Hawkins, the new (or is it continuing) executive director of NCSE, who makes the now hoary argument that (yawn) the upcoming Hollywood feature based on novelist E. L. James' 50 Shades of Grey "will serve only to glamorize sexual violence [yawn] and romanticize domestic abuse." Read it here if you like. It's a complete rehash of previous complaints about sex behavior that doesn't conform to their teeny little conception of sex, replete with claims of abuse and violence on a scale that they simply cannot prove. Likewise, they cannot make the sorts of "seamless" causal connections they claim to be able to, but of course that has not, and will not ever, stop them from redoubling their efforts with slicker marketing and a consistent ratcheting up of their lies as the newly branded National Center on Sexual Violence.   Just don't call it the National Center for Sexual Violence.