A public health researcher running for Congress is sparking backlash after calling for sexual intercourse to be enshrined as a human right. Alexandra Hunt, a Democrat, is running to unseat Dwight Evans in Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District.
On October 17, Hunt posted a thread to Twitter in which she bemoaned the lack of sex young men are reportedly having, and appeared to blame the criminalization of the sex trade for violence against women. Hunt’s thread comes just days after a 22-year-old man in Ohio was arrested for planning a misogynistic “slaughter” of 3,000 women in relation for his lack of success in dating.
“Young men aren’t having sex!” Hunt wrote, “Nearly a third of men under 30 have not had sex. And a higher percent do not have as much sex as they’d like – not exactly surprising, but this kind of statistic is a sign of much deeper problems.”
Hunt went on to blame the “criminalization” of the sex trade for a decline in men’s mental health, and claimed that the removal of prostitution advertisements on sites like Craigslist was responsible for a spike in violence against women.
“Our society criminalizes sex & sweeps it under the rug. The consequences are straightforward – there is more violence. Since platforms like Craigslist were banned from advertising sex, serious violent crimes against all women – not just sex workers – has increased by nearly 1/5,” Hunt wrote.
“We should be moving toward a right to sex. People should be able to have sex when they feel they want to, and we need to develop services that meet people’s needs without attaching the baggage of shame or criminalization.”
Hunt’s thread has sparked widespread backlash, with feminists and anti-sex trade advocates in particular outraged at Hunt’s suggestions.
Tom Farr, a law reform specialist working in the area of abolishing sexual exploitation, took to Twitter to criticize Hunt, and condemn her vision for a “right to sex.” In an 11-post thread, Farr noted that Hunt’s idea that legalized prostitution services would reduce violence against women was largely unsubstantiated.
Farr pointed to a 2008 study out of New Zealand which showed that 35% of women working within the country’s decriminalized sex trade felt they “had to take a client even when they didn’t want to,” and that many had been sexually assaulted or forced to provide sexual services against their will.
“Suggesting that a ‘right to sex’ should be enshrined in law demonstrates a total lack of regard for the women & children who will be exploited, abused, & trafficked to meet this ‘demand,'” Farr wrote.
Speaking to Reduxx, Dr. Caroline Norma, a researcher at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and a member of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia, expressed grave concerns about Hunt’s posts on Twitter.
“The first thing any woman in the sex industry will tell you is that they avoid young male customers, especially if they’re drunk or high. This is because they’re more brutal than older men, and put them through hours of punishing porn sex,” Dr. Norma says, “Heterosexual women, too, try to avoid them, and know they’re not husband material anyway.”
Dr. Norma believes the blame is not the criminalization of the sex trade, as Hunt asserted, but rather the increasing socio-sexual impact of pornography.
“The fact is, young American men aren’t having sex these days because the sex they want is too much and too rough for even sexually groomed young women to face.”
Dr. Norma’s comments recall a TikTok in which a young woman was reporting severe cervical damage from rough sex recently went viral after they were posted to Twitter. The post sparked widespread discussion amongst young women in which they reported increasingly disturbing expectations from their male partners during sexual activity.
Weeks prior, a TikTok had wracked up attention in which UK-based influencer Emma Duncan described that sexual health professionals were reporting an “alarming” increase in young girls presenting with anal tears after being subjected to rough, porn-inspired sex.
“Congressional candidates like Hunt need to stand up as adults against the cyber drip feed of pornography going into the veins of the city’s male youth if it wants to deliver them better futures,” Dr. Norma says, “Sacrificing the city’s female youth to their pornographic fixes is a direct act of gender discrimination that should leave Hunt in the political wilderness.”
“Giving government endorsement to these young men inflicting themselves on women in prostitution is not solving the problem that caused their involuntary celibacy in the first place. The problem was pornography, and the Philadelphia congress needs to urgently wean its male youth off of this drug if it wants to secure them healthy, happy sex lives.”
Alexandra Hunt describes herself as an “advocate for social, racial, economic, and environmental justice, and an organizer.” She is a former stripper, and has spoken positively about her experience in the sex industry.
In April, Hunt became the first political candidate to partner with OnlyFans to fund her campaign. OnlyFans promoted Hunt’s candidacy, and even assisted her in the creation of a campaign advertisement using their logo.
Hunt is a vocal creator on OnlyFans herself. One of the first locked posts on her account is headlined: “dropping my own sex tape.”
Hunt is not the only political candidate in the United States who has made “sex positivity” a cornerstone of their campaign.
Last week, a third-party Congressional candidate in New York released a sex tape to highlight his sex positive campaign platform. Mike Itkis, who is running to unseat Jerry Nadler in Manhattan’s 12th Congressional District, released a video on a major pornography platform with adult performer Nicole Sage.
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