... the rhetoric of child protection has anchored many conservative agendas.

<aside> 😈 It has been utilized in campaigns to intensify women’s subordinate status, reinforce hierarchical family structures, curtail gay citizenship, oppose comprehensive sex education, limit the availability of contraception, and restrict abortion, especially for young women and girls.92

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Laws and policies that are supposed to protect children have been used to deprive young people of age-appropriate and eagerly desired sexual information and services. Laws intended to protect children and young people, such as very broadly drawn child-pornography statutes, have been used to prosecute them (such as the cases where minors have been charged with breaking the law by texting nude images of themselves).

<aside> 😈 Almost anything, from promoting abstinence to banning gay marriage and adoption, can be and has been framed as promoting children’s safety and welfare.

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(P. 218)

My delight in how far we have come is often tempered by my bitterness about the feminist sex wars, particularly one of their most unfortunate legacies:

<aside> 😈 the sex wars made it difficult for feminists to form a united opposition to the reactionary sexual and gender agendas of social conservatives.

</aside>

Mimeograph machines are long gone, and tweets seem to have replaced leafleting. But the battles of the early eighties are still smoldering. Many contemporary conflicts are rooted in the disputes that overwhelmed the Barnard conference and shaped “Thinking Sex.”

<aside> 😈 Yet I continue to believe that our best political hopes for the future lie in finding common ground and building coalitions based on mutual respect and appreciation of differences, and that the best intellectual work is able to accommodate complexity, treasure nuance, and resist the temptations of dogma and oversimplification.

</aside>

(P. 223)