WASHINGTON — The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) released the 2021 edition of their ‘Dirty Dozen’ List of organizations that ostensibly contribute to widespread sexual trafficking and exploitation. The list shows a willful ignorance of several things that are often viewed as common sense and comes from an organization that employs on ass-backward thinking, reminiscent of when people thought jacking off would cause infertility.

NCOSE’s annual Dirty Dozen campaign began in 2013 to hold large companies and other social institutions accountable for ostensible violations of endemic, mainstream sexual exploitation.  In crafting it, the organization relies on its well-documented roots of religiosity and unscientific views. And, in many ways, the NCOSE is basically shooting itself in the foot. 

Amazon — the old guard of lube and cheap vibrators

Amazon topped the Dirty Dozen list. Amazon sells sex toys, and NCOSE finds that to be potentially exploitative to kids who have access to a cell phone and the internet. Nothing else. 

Who in their right mind would allow their children to have access to their Amazon account and their credit card? How does NCOSE surmise that just because an e-commerce site sells sex toys that all kids are somehow at risk of being exploited sexually? 

That thinking isn’t rational. NCOSE doesn’t stop there, though.

Amazon “peddles endless amounts of sexual exploitation,” claims NCOSE.  Amazon’s Twitch, says the group, is also somehow an unaccountable social media platform that relies on sexual exploitation for video game streamers to make a buck. 

Amazon Prime is also at fault for producing and distributing critically acclaimed television shows and feature films that depict sex.  Based on NCOSE’s infinite wisdom of technology, the AWS platform — a widely used virtual cloud for websites — hosts (get this) porn sites. 

*facepalm.*

EBSCO Information Services and NCOSE

The academic database hosting platform EBSCO is also on this year’s list. Yeah, EBSCO — the widely used series of academic databases available for K-12 and higher education. 

In 2017, NCOSE named EBSCO on their watch lists on similar grounds as this past year.  They asserted that its databases “could be used to search for information about sexual terms.” NCOSE justified their “flagging” of EBSCO for sexual exploitation by pointing how some articles indexed by the database algorithms came from publications like Men’s Health.

Education Week reported that the 2017 listing places NCOSE in the wrong light.

Jaclyn Zubrzycki, the journalist who authored that report, disclosed that a spokesperson for EBSCO “was not aware of any instances of students using its databases to access pornography or other explicit materials.” Zubrzycki reported: “[The spokesperson] said she believed that the searches NCOSE was concerned about had been conducted by adults actively searching for graphic materials, often on home computers that don’t have the kinds of controls and filters common on school computers.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in United States v. the American Library Association, Inc. that schools will not receive federal funding for internet access unless there are preinstalled filters to screen out pornographic content. Citing this, Jame LaRue told Zubrzycki that NCOSE’s accusations that year had no grounding in a potential court ruling. 

LaRue is the director of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom. 

“I feel they’re certainly within their rights to advocate for greater restrictions on access to sexual content, but my observation is, they often do this by pushing for filters or suppression of content,” LaRue said in his statement to Zubrzycki. 

ALA also made the ‘Dirty Dozen’ lists in 2015, 2016, and 2017. 

Another *facepalm.*

Netflix and those steamy, critically-acclaimed “Bridgerton” scenes

The other ‘Dirty Dozen’ recipient I laughed for hours about is Netflix.  NCOSE justified their pick by stating that the streaming platform produces content “from a sexually objectifying and voyeuristic motif.” The well-crafted sex scenes in the Netflix original, ‘Bridgerton,” come to mind.

YNOT previously reported that scenes from the series landed on porn sites because of how well-produced and acted those scenes are. Netflix isn’t happy about that. 

While I wasn’t interested in “Bridgerton,” the series formed a fantastically written story that offers viewers much more than NCOSE’s unhealthy obsession with gratuitous sex on television. 

But that seems beside the point. To claim that Netflix is an enabler of sexual exploitation and trafficking is like calling an oval a circle.  It just doesn’t make sense and speaks to an anti-porn bias that crosses into a darker group of anti-First Amendment tendencies. 

*facepalm* on a very red face. 

The rest of the ‘Dirty Dozen’ list

Other ‘Dirty Dozen’ picks include the following: Discord, the State of Nevada, Reddit, Twitter, Verisign, and Wish. They also listed platforms like OnlyFans and Seeking Arrangement.

And under “contenders for the Dirty Dozen.” NCOSE named Snapchat, TikTok, and Visa as candidates for their future lists. 

*facepalm.* * facepalm.* * facepalm.* 

One list entrant that truly leaves me scratching my head

NCOSE, bless their hearts, named Chromebook and Chrome OS — Google’s proprietary operating system — as platforms for supposed sexual exploitation. 

(Fun fact, this column was drafted and edited on a Chromebook.)

The organization accuses the operating system of being an unaccountable hive of obscene activity. This accusation comes partly from the distribution of Chromebooks for education for students during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Since most Chromebook models are relatively cheap, the option seems suitable to mass purchase cost-effective devices to accommodate remote learning for all students, regardless of grade or age group, during an unprecedented public health crisis.  Saying that an entire line of computers and an operating system enables sexual exploitation is like preaching in a choir that is already aware of a digital lifestyle’s risks and benefits. 

Due to districts purchasing these devices for at-home learning during the pandemic, these claims could harm a child’s ability to learn by distance if NCOSE can convince parents of these unfounded harms. 

Behind the ‘abolitionist face’

Much of what NCOSE has argued, and continues to argue, harm much more than the adult entertainment industry. 

For a brief recap: NCOSE fought against scientific safe-sex curriculums in the twentieth century; they pressured Walmart to remove Cosmopolitan from their shelves for “verbal pornography”; the group argues that porn is a public health crisis. Shortly after the Walmart controversy, NCOSE tried to conflate their action to remove Cosmopolitan from the store as a win for the #MeToo movement. 

“This is what real change looks like in our #MeToo culture,” said Dawn Hawkins, NCOSE’s director, in 2018. 

Vogue contributor Michelle Ruiz highlighted that Hawkins’ comments and Walmart’s actions were never in favor of addressing the social and political issues behind the #MeToo movement. 

“I’m embarrassed for Hawkins because she just broadcasted to the entire country that she is a woman who has no idea what #MeToo means,” Ruiz wrote in her column. “ICYMI: #MeToo is about unwanted sex and sexual attention, sexual assault, and harassment.”

NCOSE also accused NGO Amnesty International of exploitation by standing with the World Health Organization and Human Rights Watch to decriminalize sex work. 

They were a major supporting organization for the passage of the controversial and potentially unconstitutional FOSTA legislation in 2018.  NCOSE has advocated for policy that harms LGBTQ communities and women. When NCOSE was still known as Morality in Media, they boycotted The Walt Disney Company.

More recently, New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof has received media attention for his controversial “Children of Pornhub” column by NCOSE’s social media accounts. Kristof also attempted to legitimize the “Trafficking Hub” campaign in December of 2020 by mentioning the organization, backed by groups aligned with NCOSE, in his viral Times column.

LaRue, the same director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, wrote in their resident Journal of Intellectual Freedom & Privacy about NCOSE.

“I have read and thought deeply about the claims of NCOSE,” LaRue wrote for the journal in 2017. “I do not find them credible. I find, instead, an attempt to impose a narrow religious view, not supported by the evidence, on the entire American citizenry, young and old alike.”

I think most people agree. I do.