There are no winners in the comment section of any story by any online news source. Nothing is ever made better after we’ve been there. The comment section is where even the strongest, most logically constructed arguments are destroyed by nothing more than straw-man bravado, and the wildest conspiracy theories get pushed to the top based on how well they fit into the already misinformed worldview of everybody’s dipshit uncle. Sometimes, however, a story comes along that results in a comment section narrative that plays harmoniously in front of our country’s transparent curtain of rigid morality. This is the case with the story of our nation’s President and the Porn Star.

Here, the comment sections play out too predictably. Because she’s in the porn industry, it’s ok to dismiss her as a slut and a hooker and blame her for the fact that the man they voted into the Presidency of the United States was a willing participant with her in consensual sexual activity. Ignoring the hush money he paid her to sign a non-disclosure agreement, the potential violation of campaign finance laws, and his infidelity to his own family, his supporters can rest easy with their morals intact because she’s a slutty Porn Star.

Even many of those who didn’t vote for him want us to understand that while they disapprove of the Porn Star – lest they be cast in the same depraved light as her – they’re just pointing out the hypocrisy of the other side. In their criticism of the President, they prop up the very things about this story that his supporters ignore, while doing everything in their power to not seem sympathetic to the slutty Porn Star.

Potential legal issues aside, both sides of the political spectrum are scrambling to gain the moral high ground over the opposition at the expense of a easy target for their shared sexual repression– a woman who had the audacity to make a legal and successful career exploiting the hypocrisy of our puritanical notions about sex. Those notions are ours and not hers, and they’re outdated and ineffective, so stop shaming her for not being bound by them.