Conservative Group Got Walmart to Remove Cosmo from Checkout Lines, Thanks to a Gross Misunderstanding of “#MeToo Culture”

If you shop at WalMart, you’ll no longer see Cosmopolitan magazine in the checkout lines. Thanks to a push from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation–a conservative, anti-pornography group–the magazine can only be found in a separate aisle, not by the cash registers. This will be to keep minors from being able to see the “sexually explicit material” that the NCOSE thinks Cosmopolitan forces on our eyeballs.

This puritanical censorship of women’s magazines would be bad enough on its own. But the real embarrassment is in the NCOSE’s attempted hijacking of the meaning of the Me Too movement.

A statement on the group’s website reads, “This is what real change looks like in our #MeToo culture, and NCOSE is proud to work with a major corporation like Walmart to combat sexually exploitative influences in our society. Women, men, and children are bombarded daily with sexually objectifying and explicit materials, not only online, but in the checkout line at the store.”

Usually, the argument against Cosmo’s visibility has to do with influencing children. I don’t buy into that argument on its own, since the frequent woman-shaming headlines of gossip magazines (She’s desperate! Her body got terrible! etc, etc) strike me as far more destructive than mentions of healthy sex. If these people want to ban all magazines from the checkout area, that’s different. But Cosmo is in no way the worst threat to children. And pivoting their argument to be about protecting grown women is just plain disingenuous.

According to NCOSE, “Cosmo sends the same messages about female sexuality as Playboy. It places women’s value primarily on their ability to sexually satisfy a man and therefore plays into the same culture where men view and treat women as inanimate sex objects.”

Okay, sure, that would be true if only everything about it weren’t total BS. Cosmopolitan is a women’s magazine, aimed at female consumers with a staff made up mostly of women. While they’ll forever be known as the source of unending sex tip listicles, they offer a huge range of articles on subjects that are important to young women, from discussions of sexual assault and harassment to information on birth control and STIs. And yes, they also just talk about sex. Talk of sex doesn’t have to be limited to medical issues (although again, they tackle that plenty!) to be deemed acceptable. Cosmo acknowledges that sex is a pleasurable, non-shameful part of most women’s lives, and it’s hard not to see this removal of magazines from checkout lanes as punishment for that viewpoint.

The #MeToo movement is about ending the objectification, mistreatment, and devaluing of women. It’s about fighting the silencing of women, which is exactly what this group is trying to do. The #MeToo movement is absolutely not about denying women’s sexuality. Sexuality is not the same thing as objectification and anyone who tries to convince you otherwise does not care one bit about supporting women. They care about silencing and shaming them.

(via HuffPo, image: Hulu)

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