Fighting sex businesses fights sex offenses, state lawmakers theorize, and they plan to win this fight with paper signs.
Adult-oriented businesses could soon have to post a warning label akin to those on tobacco and alcohol products. They would read — “Attention: By engaging in this type of entertainment, you may be contributing to an increase in domestic assault, rape or sexual assault, and human trafficking.”
The Tennessee state Senate already approved the bill for these signs, which passed largely on party lines. Though the idea did get approval in committee from Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis). It now awaits approval in the House.
To get here, state Sen. Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma) connected some dots.
“Social scientists, psychologists, and medical professionals have studied the relationship between sexually explicit entertainment and violence for decades,” Bowling told the Senate Judiciary Committee in late March.
She claimed a 2021 study published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) concluded, “exposure to pornography was positively associated with sexual aggression.”
She connected this dot (one we could not independently confirm to exist, more on this below) to another dot. That dot would be that at least 700,000 people — primarily women and children — are trafficked annually, with at least 50,000 in the U.S. That figure came from “Congress” from around 2000. She also cited global figures from a Texas group called Unbound Now. (More on them below.)
The final dot put the dollar figure for global sexual exploitation (not precisely adult-oriented businesses) between $6 billion to $15 billion annually.
Bowling connected all of this and deduced: “ By posting the signs as this legislation requires, we can increase awareness about the link between this entertainment — quote, unquote — and the incidents of domestic violence, sexual assault, rape, and human trafficking.”
One lawmaker jumped to criticize Bowling’s bill. Yes, the sign had to be 8.5 inches by 11 inches. But it did not say one word about “font size, font type, color, legibility, or anything like that,” said Sen. Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield). They delayed a vote on the bill until Bowling refined those details and quickly passed it out of committee.
Adult-oriented businesses (as defined in Tennessee law) are:
• an adult bookstore
• an adult motion picture theater
• an adult mini motion picture establishment
• an adult cabaret
• an escort agency
• a sexual encounter center
• a massage parlor
• a wrap parlor
• a sauna
These businesses have to register with their county’s Adult-Oriented Establishment Board. Not every county has one. Shelby County does. So, if the bill passes and is signed by the governor, these businesses will not be able to get a license to operate from these boards unless they post Bowling signs prominently.
Should the legislature pass another bill that would define bars that have drag shows as “adult cabaret” establishments, they, too, would have to post Bowling’s signs.
Bowling founded her argument to other legislators on a study by the NIH, even as she was publicly skeptical of its guidance during the Covid pandemic. She claimed a study found a direct link between porn and aggressive sexual behavior.
The only 2021 NIH study we found on this said “findings are difficult to reconcile with the view that pornography use plays a causal role in male sexual violence.” Another NIH study from 2022 reviewed “dozens of studies over multiple decades” on the link between porn and sexual aggression. It found that “evidence did not suggest that nonviolent pornography was associated with sexual aggression.”
However, a 2024 blog post from the leader of Unbound Now, that Texas group Bowling cited, said this link is solid and direct.
“Pornography is in such high demand because viewers, including sex traffickers, wish to act out what they observe in scenes,” reads the blog post by the group’s CEO Susan Peters (with support from Sarah Berning, professional writing intern). “Traffickers gather ideas from porn and force victims to watch so they know what is expected of them. Scenes depicting physical and verbal aggression lead to worse abuse towards victims.”