Whenever romance readers rail against the line between romance and porn becoming blurred, I want to ask: how do you define porn? Because in these conversations over and over again, I see people not only acting like their definition is correct, but that everyone else is already using their definition.

I promise, whatever your line is, there are people on either side of you just as convinced that their line is correct. And this includes people who would deem any book about queer people as pornographic.

When I was researching and writing Reformed Rakes’ episode about obscenity law, consistently, underneath the litigation and the court record, when there were attempts to censor sexual material, the motivating force was to suppress political content that challenges the status quo.

The Little Review published a serial edition of Ulysses, starting in 1919. The Little Review was edited by two lesbians, Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap. The magazine published political and literary works and supported anarchist Emma Goldman, worker’s rights and gay rights. Anderson was the first Lesbian to publish an op-ed about gay rights. In 1915!

During the trial the led to the book’s banning, the judge initially refused to have the “obscene” passages read in front of Anderson (who was 35 at the time). When the defense attorney objected, pointing out that she had been the one to publish the book, the judge replied “I am sure she didn’t know the significance of what she was publishing,”

Attacking Ulysses was a means to an end. By stirring up anxiety about sex in written literature, reactionaries can draft an army of people who think they are well-meaning, advocates of literary standards to do the on the ground hand-wringing work for them.