I believe that the image presented here perfectly exemplifies what Gayle Rubin termed “sex panic.” In Rubin’s own terms, “Right-wing opposition to sex education, homosexuality, pornography, abortion, and premarital sex moved from the fringes to the political center stage after 1977, when right-wing strategists and fundamentalist religious crusaders discovered that these issues had mass appeal.” It is exactly this opposition to sex education and anti-homosexual sentiment (as well as media sensationalism) that led to the misidentification of this flag of dildos and sex toys as an ISIS flag. It is essentially the stigma against the erotic that caused this misidentification, and demonstrates the true nature of “sex panic.” However, Rubin’s arguments about sex panic are entirely hinged upon the Western emphasis on the “sexual imperative,” as Ela Przybylo puts it. There is no mention of asexual erasure, e.g. insisting that asexuality cannot exist, or that the asexual experience is not valid. The image I present is innately sexual as the objects depicted on the flag are for the sole purpose of sexual acts. This complicates sex panic in the context of everyone within society as not everyone in society has sexually driven thoughts and / or feelings.
Asexuality and The Sexual Imperative: An Interview with Ela Przybylo
Thinking Sex