A prominent anti-porn activist group has renewed its crusade against a Teen Vogue article advising youngsters how to have anal sex, unsuccessful for over a year. The article remains online, and the group remains outraged.
The organization ‘Enough is Enough’, founded by Donna Rice Hughes - herself infamous for allegedly having an affair with presidential candidate Gary Hart in 1987 - bills itself as “making the internet safer for children and families.” Just last week, coffee chain Starbucks caved to pressure from EIE and like-minded groups and banned porn on its in-store WiFi networks.
Fresh from that victory, the organization announced on Wednesday that it wants concerned parents to sign its “say no to Teen Vogue” petition, demanding that the hip teen mag pull an article teaching readers the ins and outs (ooh err) of anal sex.
“EIE's work is not done until this article, which represents a blatant disregard for the innocence and well-being of our children, is removed and TeenVogue.com is held accountable for exploiting the dignity and innocence of our youth,” reads a statement from Enough is Enough.
The offending article reads like a slightly more hip sex-ed lesson and is a far cry from hardcore pornography. Save for an achingly politically correct insistence on terms like ‘vagina owner’ and ‘prostate owner,’ the article is fairly down-to-earth, and stresses consent, lube, and cleanup. Writer Gigi Engle bills herself as a “certified sex coach,” and her Twitter feed is a non-stop stream of masturbatory advice and sex positivity.
All things that Hughes evidently hates. While the Starbucks battle put her name in the news, Ms. Hughes has been fighting Engle’s anal article for over a year.
The article was originally published in 2017, and a petition from EIE to shut it down gathered some 30,000 signatures. Content Editor Philip Picardi sent a blunt and to-the-point reply: a picture of himself kissing a man, middle finger held in the air.
The article remained online.
Teen Vogue did edit the article this May, as the previous iteration made no mention of protection. Hughes had lambasted the mag for failing to tell teens that anal sex places them at increased risk of HIV transmission, but renewed her attack on the mag regardless of the edits.
She fell back on the same line of attack on Wednesday:
“We are not going to sit by idly while TeenVogue.com continues to encourage its young readers to engage in the ‘the highest risk sexual behavior for HIV transmission’ according to the Center for Disease Control. Hands off our kids!” she stated.
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