Sex, Drugs, Rock, and Law (Essay Sample)

Sex, Drugs, Rock, and Law Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation Course Code and Name Professor’s Name Due Date Sex, Drugs, Rock, and Law The creation and expansion of the FBI coincided with a push towards greater rationalization and centralization on the part of law enforcement as federal power grew in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. Created as a regulatory body to stand apart and above the power of individual state governments, the FBI was charged not simply with enforcing laws by rounding up and charging individuals but with targeting whole groups. The point was to coordinate law-enforcements efforts so that they could have greater impact on public behavior. No longer was law enforcement limited to actions designed to keep the peace and reduce lawlessness to an acceptable level. The Bureau’s function was, at least in part, to remake society by targeting so-called “degenerate” elements. This involved a greater intrusion in the lives of individual citizens than had ever existed in the country’s previous history. This intrusion was particularly concerned with sex, bent on regulating both sex acts and the sexual actors themselves. The freedom of the individual and the interest of the State to regulate that individual represent competing and incompatible objectives. The individual wishes to act without interference, whereas the state is concerned with imposing norms. These norms are nominally meant for the sake of harmonizing the society, though this interference may in fact betray the prejudices of the State actors themselves. Government has the power to declare a group’s status valid through the implementation of policy (Bishin et. al., 2021, 95). Likewise, the state has the power to delegitimize behaviors, and groups of people who engage in those behaviors, also. Concerned with the flourishing of prostitution, the FBI was tasked with curbing the practice of “white slavery” or sexual exploitation of prostitutes. Under the “White Slavery Traffic Act” of 1904, prostitution was regarded as social ill that needed to be combated with coordinated, centralized efforts by the state (Pliely, 2014, 3). Prostitution had always existed in some form, of course. But prostitutes came to be understood as existing within a particular group. This group of “white slaves” were the victims of coercion. Because they were not acting on their own, the thinking went, these prostitutes could be “saved” through government intervention. Specifically, the cross-border transportation of prostitutions from state to state could be curtailed by the newly formed FBI (Pliely, 2014, 4). Since the state had the power to effectively create and then normalize group identities, it created the category of “white slaves” and then used regulation in an attempt to dissolve this group. The moral panic surrounding white slavery corresponded with the ascension of the FBI, and the Bureau grew in relation of the perceived need by members of the public, particularly elites, who felt that greater regulation of sexuality was needed. White slavery offered the perfect justification for intrusion. Progressives who argued in favor of protecting young women from the degradation of prostitution were interested in combating vice (Pliely, 2014, 85). Since prostitution was illegal, the women who might not have wished to be designated “white slaves” were in no position to advocate for themselves. Because they engaged in illegal activities, they could not object to intrusive regulation of their sex lives. Speaker 1 from the lecture on August 19th raised the question of how sex comes to be defined not by the individual by the group, asking, “How is it your most personal decisions about your own life…gets to be voted on by other people?” (8/21 Lecture, 17:41) The answer to this rhetorical question can be found in something called social categorization theory. Once a social category is created, this category effectively establishes, “...the process through which people categorize others and conditions their attitudes and behaviors toward them” (Flores et. al 198). Because crusaders imagine prostitutes as white slaves, they designate members of this social category as both victims and moral degenerates simultaneously. Because both designations imply a lack of agency regulation is not only permissible but necessary. After all, anyone who is a “slave” cannot advocate for themselves and so must be advocated for by others. While “white slavery” was a pressing issue in the minds of reformers as the FBI was first being established, regulating sexuality continued to be an important part of the Bureau’s mission as its mandate expanded. By the 1920s, the FBI was concerned not only with maintaining female chastity by combating prostitution but also targeting “pedophilia and some instances of interracial sex” (Pliely, 2014, 107). This shift in focus demonstrates how the mission of regulating sex was elastic. It could change according to the FBI’s discretion of what represented “moral behavior.” Since this moral behavior could be defined broadly, and because the actors defining this behavior were agents of the State, it should be no surprise that attempts to regulate sex became more intrusive. When describing the authoritarian personality and how this personality can shape attitudes to sexual minorities and other outsiders, Philip Jones and Paul Brewer point out that authoritarians are individuals who have “more disgust sensitivity” and “more conservative ideologies” than is typical (Jones & Brewer, 2020, 72). FBI agents who saw their mandate as protecting moral behavior embody this personality type. As a centralized government agency interested in superseding the power within individual states, it naturally follows that members of this group must embody at least some of the traits Jones and Brewer describe as authoritarian. And indeed, high levels of disgust and conservative ideology explain the jump from the seemingly-unrelated activities of prostitution and interracial sex. The FBI’s expanded mandate to regulate sex grew out of the same logic that propelled it to combat prostitution initially. Namely, the regulation of all sex acts not sanctioned with the designation of “normal” could be targeted. What constituted “normal” was left up the discretion of agents of the State. Three songs by three performers can provide insight into the ways that sex is regulated by the government. Billie Holiday was a renowned singer whose music crossed the color barrier. But while the singer was widely admired, Harry J. Anslinger with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics targeted her personally. Anslinger was a racist, and he was also charged with rooting out illegal drugs, of which Holiday was a user (Chang, 2021, para. 4). But the reasons for Holiday’s targeting by Anslinger had to do with the regulation of sex. Jazz music, it was thought, was a sexual style of music which federal agents characterized as filthy and suggestive of impure sexual urges (Chang, 2021, para. 6). In order to protect the public from degenerates like Holiday, Anslinger felt that he was justified in taking her down. This closely mirrors the way that the Mann Act was used to target prostitution, something which the FBI considered illegitimate and the result of coercion (Pliely, 2014, 208). In both instances, federal agencies pursued biases against people who they felt were promoting sexual indecency. Little Nas X has likewise been singled out for criticism, and sex and sexuality are at the center of the controversy. Nas’s song “Montero,” which is also the artist’s first name and suggests a personal connection between the song’s content and his personal life, is presented in a music video. In the video, Nas experiences a sexual encounter with a devil (Furstenberg, 2021, para. 12). That the devil is male in this video is worth pointing out. Little Nas X is one of the most prominently openly gay rappers. So, the combination of his sexuality and his use of demonic iconography make the controversy around him unsurprising. Gays have been the target of government censure before many times. The McCarran Act effectively banned gay and lesbian people from participating in government, and even those merely suspecting of homosexuality were purged (Bishin, et. al., 2021, 123). Regulation of sexuality by the state, as it pertains to homosexuality is nothing new. Though Nas’s controversy does not involve a federal probe, and homosexuality is no longer something which the government considers unlawful, it is still controversial in a society where heteronormativity is promoted via elites. Finally, Cardi B faced criticism from a Wisconsin congressperson over one of her songs. Glen Grothman condemned the artist after his office received complaints. The complaints were in response to a sexually-charged song called “WAP” (Saksa, 2021, para. 3). Grothman claimed that the FCC was not diligently regulating the material being shown during the Emmy Awards ceremony and allowing sexual content to bring about, “...the moral decline of America.” (Saksa, 2021, para. 2). This theme is likely indicative of the kind of sexual regulation that the government has been engaged in since at the least the creation of the FBI, if not sooner. Grothman’s claim is one that might have been made about any number of other celebrities, something which author Jim Saksa points out in the article he wrote about Cardi B and Grothman (Saksa, 2021, para. 4). So, in some sense, Grothman’s claims are nothing new. By claiming that he was speaking on behalf of his community, Grothman was employing a tactic common to politicians of all stripes. Regarding a separate but related issue, the fight over access to public bathrooms for transgender people, elected officials claimed that they spoke for the public even as they held opposit...