Anti-porn advocates blasted the 2021 Grammy Awards on Monday night for featuring sexually explicit content that's shown to kids on primetime.
Television watchdog Parents Television Council and anti-porn organization National Center on Sexual Exploitation have strongly voiced condemnation against the recently-held Grammy Awards for normalizing prostitution and pornography on primetime viewing times, The Christian Post reported.
The two organizations were particularly against the live performance of artists Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion for the song "WAP", which The Christian Post said stands for "wet a-- p----".
In a statement provided to The Christian Post, the National Center On Sexual Exploitation pointed out that such a performance was unbefitting in the Grammys for it "glamorized" prostitution. The center advocates for sexual abuse survivors and against pornography.
"In a performance that could have been cut from a hardcore pornography film, CBS allowed a glamorization of stripping and prostitution to be broadcast in front of a national audience--a portion of which were children--for no other reason than for TV ratings," National Center On Sexual Exploitation Senior Vice President and Executive Director Dawn Hawkins said.
"Prostitution and stripping are never empowering for women, as they set up systems that exploit and oppress women," he added, "CBS has contributed to furthering the sexual exploitation of women and contributed to the 'normalization' of porn culture."
The Daily Mail described the 'WAP' number with Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B "on a ultra-raunchy performance" on a pink bed doing pole dancing as a pair that "left little to the imagination in their ode to female anatomy."
In addition, the Daily Mail cited conservative author Candace Owens during her interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News stating the performance as "perversity" and "essentially pornography" because it simulated in public and on television a "lesbian sex scene" yet something ironically "considered feminist." She said it was "seeing the destruction of American values, American principles." Owens herself went "nuclear on Cardi B" directly on Twitter, humor-based news site Not The Bee said.
Besides Owens, the Daily Mail reported that Carlson himself condemned the performance and called it "totally degrading" for it was "intentionally trying to degrade" the American "culture and hurt our children."
The Christian Post also reported that the performance was described by Parents Television Council President Time Winter in a statement they released on Monday as "entirely unfit for a primetime network television broadcast" who should have a "higher standard--especially during the times when children are likely to be in the audience."
This same sentiment was echoed mostly by Netizens who said it lacked "decency and honor" for children, was "distasteful and demeaning to women," "absolutely disgusting and ridiculous," and "belittling to all women and shouldn't have a place in society at all."
In their blog that calls for an end to sexual exploitation, the National Center On Sexual Exploitation lengthily discussed how the 2021 Grammy Awards show normalizes systemic issues of sexual exploitation that "have long marginalized women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals in order" to supply the "rich, powerful, and privileged" their "sexual demands." It pointed out that prostitution and stripping "set up systems that exploit and oppress women" and, thus, are "never empowering."
The blog post elaborated how oppressing strip clubs are; the role of racism in sexual exploitation; the "anti-feminist basis of pornography and the commercial sex industry"; and the implications of eradicating sexual abuse, exploitation, and oppression in the world today.
