A porn star’s suicide has received a lot of attention over what drove the adult actress to kill herself.
August Ames generated controversy within the adult entertainment world after she refused to have unprotected sex with an actor who had done gay porn. Ames’ reasoning behind that decision was that she was worried about getting a sexually-transmitted disease from the man.
That decision brought down an internet mob that hounded the bisexual porn star for her “homophobia.” The pressure proved too much for Ames, and she hung herself Tuesday night.
But one of the leaders of online harassment campaign seemed not too worried with that result.
“On Monday I called out a homophobic performer for her ignorance and uneducated bias,” tweeted porn actor Bruce Beckham. “She allegedly chose to end her own life when she was exposed to the same vitriol that gay people have been exposed to globally for decades.”
Following backlash against that comment, Beckham tried to clarify he was only trying to educate and it was too bad Ames couldn’t handle that.
“I’m sorry for her loss of life and whatever personal struggles caused her to choose to end her own life when faced with confrontation, accountability, and education,” he tweeted.
Obviously, the whole situation is sordid and appears at first sight to be mired in the bizarre internal politics of porn. However, there is a larger social trend apparent in this dark episode.
Ames was harassed for her refusal to have sex with a man whom she believed may have an STD. The porn actress had a reluctance to engage in sex with men who did gay porn over that fear. This was her preference, which in any other situation would have been respected.
Right now our society is dealing with a flood of sexual harassment allegations that in part emanate from women not having their preferences violated. Harvey Weinstein’s many accusers did not want to have any sexual contact with the disgraced producer, but they were ultimately forced to do so through intimidation.
As a society, we see that as a terrible thing. But when it comes to August Ames, her harassers felt that her sexual preferences should be overruled since they were “bigoted.”
While it hasn’t come fully to the fore yet, there is a growing tendency among social justice warriors to demand their own standards be imposed upon the private desires of all Americans.
This is a tendency particularly prevalent among the transgender community. Several trans activists have derided “genital preferences” as outright transphobia. Trans YouTuber Riley J. Dennis has argued that this “cissexism” “means prejudice or discrimination against transgender people.”
Fellow trans activist Zinnia Jones made a viral tweet thread earlier this year on the bigotry of straight men refusing to date trans women. “I don’t see a problem with telling straight guys who are exclusionary of trans women partners that they should try to work through that,” read part of Jones’ thread. “These angry declarations that they have some absolute right to not want to be with trans women are just misplaced and inappropriate.”
Unsurprisingly, Jones greeted the news of Ames’ death with this heartwarming message. “A homophobe killed herself and now people are all concerned about the bullying of homophobes?”
It’s not just trans people who demand the radical transformation of personal preferences to be more politically correct. There’s a vibrant genre of journalism dedicated to the injustice of various groups having trouble dating.
Vice published a completely serious article over the summer with the headline, “Why Can’t My Famous Gender Nonconforming Friends Get Laid?” The article’s argument was a call to arms against the personal preferences of those who want don’t want to date bearded guys in skirts.
There has also been much attention paid to Asian men and black women apparently not getting a sufficient number of right swipes on dating apps. Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” had a segment in 2016 skewering this trend as “sexual racism” and blamed our very left-wing media for brainwashing people into not being attracted to Asian men and black women.
“Fatphobia” is the preferred term thrown around for people who have a reluctance to date the morbidly obese, and sites such as HuffPost have published screeds against this common dating preference.
A social justice bedroom worry that is relevant to Ames’ suicide concerns whether individuals infected with AIDS have to disclose that fact to their partners. California just made it easier to knowingly spread the disease to your partners by reducing the maximum penalty for failing to disclose from eight years in jail to only six months.
The sponsor of the bill, Democratic state Sen. Scott Weiner, said the new legislation was the right thing to do. “The most effective way to reduce HIV infections is to destigmatize HIV,” Weiner claimed. (RELATED: California To Have Harsher Penalty For Pronoun Violations Than For Knowingly Spreading HIV)
It appears these advocates want there to be more social stigma for refusing to have sex with a person with AIDS than knowingly infecting someone with the STD. August Ames could attest to that if she were still alive.
Sexual and dating preferences are fundamentally irrational and shaped by a person’s own predilections. It’s a matter of the heart, and it’s highly unlikely social programming can overcome a person’s natural desires.
Some people like blondes, others like brunettes. Some folks like their partners short, others like ’em tall.
That’s just the way of the world.
But the Left wants the world to be a whole lot woker. You refusing to date a particular person may make you a bigot.
The Left’s vanguard wants to make dating preferences political and force you to alter your most private feelings to conform to the standards of social justice warriors.
In the past, liberals yelled at conservatives to get their politics out of the bedroom and declared people were “born this way” in terms of sexual preference.
Now, extreme leftists want to impose their politics in everyone’s bedroom and believe our sexual preferences can be molded by cyberbullying. Forget the old mantras — politics need to be in the bedroom and who you choose to invite in may determine whether you are truly woke.
Is that supposed to be progress?
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