It is very possible that Casey Anthony killed her daughter. Before we say anything else, we should say that: the fury that was unleashed over Anthony’s July 5 acquittal is based on some very understandable outrage. Anthony did not report that her two-year-old daughter Caylee had gone missing for 31 days; she lied to the police on numerous occasions, including one occasion on which she told them that a non-existent nanny had stolen the girl; the girl was found dead by the road, and several people said they’d smelled a decomposing body in Anthony’s car. Even after the verdict, no-one really believes Anthony was uninvolved in her daughter’s death. So quite a lot of people hate her, both for what they believe she did, and for the perceived lack of punishment she faces now. And, in the absence of a guilty verdict, America has turned to what it considers a suitable punishment for Casey Anthony: Porn.

Vivid Entertainment was the first to make an offer; they wanted Anthony to star in one of their films, with Steve Hirsch telling the press that “we believe we can help [Anthony] make the transition into a new life.” They later rescinded the offer. Now, Larry Flynt is taking up the cause, telling Nancy Grace that he’s prepared to pay $500,000 to get the Hustler spread of Anthony that “droves of men” have apparently requested. Hugh Hefner says he’s also received an “amazing” number of requests to feature her in Playboy.

Of course, offering Casey Anthony a job is an easy way for porn companies to get coverage, and it’s tempting to stop there. “The more you write about people offering Casey Anthony money to do porn, the more you encourage them to pull such crap stunts again,” Fleshbot editor Lux Alptraum Tweeted.

Alptraum is very smart about the dynamics of the sex industry, and I’ve no doubt that she’s correct. Still, despite the hazards, I think it’s worthwhile to explore why this is happening. Because, the fact is, from the moment her trial started, Casey Anthony’s sexuality has been a public good. And this has revealed some very ugly truths about women, about sex, and about the role sex still plays in the cultural imagination. When we, the people hate a woman, we want more than anything to see her get fucked.

Anthony’s sexuality has always been at the center of her trial. The prosecution called her a “party girl” who killed her daughter so that she could be freely promiscuous, and the press ran with that, reproducing whatever provocative photos of Anthony they could find. Just try to form a logical connection between these two sentences:

Casey is charged with murdering her toddler daughter Caylee and the Orlando case has made national headlines for months. Now, these new photos show her out of control, the shocking life-of-the-party, engaging in some passionate kissing with a girlfriend.

There is none. The photos in question are not relevant to the case. They were taken well before Caylee’s death. Casey Anthony may have killed her daughter, Casey Anthony made out with a girl at a party–there is no connection between the two ideas. Unless, that is, you buy the idea that being sexual — impermissibly, “shocking”-ly sexual! In public! With a girl, even! — makes you a monster. Or the idea that, for a woman, enjoying sex is a moral offense that can be fitted onto the same scale of human evil as murdering a toddler. If you buy that, the connection is perfectly clear.

Plenty of people roll their eyes at terms like “slut-shaming” or “sex-positive,” and that includes some feminists. But the fact is that, culturally, we maintain a virulent hatred of sex that does not follow the standard rules. You can see it in the legally supported oppression of GLBT people. You can see it in the hateful and borderline-violent reaction to women who speak too freely about their own sex lives. You can see it every time a woman presses rape charges, as both the press and the defense scramble to find some way to paint her as “promiscuous.” And you can see it when women are the ones who stand accused of crimes.

No-one wants to defend Casey Anthony, no-one can defend what she may have done to her daughter. But it’s profoundly dangerous to ignore the implication that her “out of control” sexuality contributed to her capacity for murder or abuse. When we argue that women murder because they’re “promiscuous,” we’re also arguing that promiscuous women are more likely to murder. And when we act as if a woman’s “sluttiness” is evidence that she is a criminal, we legitimize all of the hatred and violence against “slutty” women who have committed no other crime.

And yet, even as we use Casey Anthony’s sexuality as evidence against her character, we want to lay claim to it. Those provocative photos of Anthony weren’t just printed to feed into the public’s hatred; they were printed so that the public could get off on them. For the same reasons, blogs publish pantiless “upskirt” photos of loathed female celebrities, Vivid has pursued “Octo-Mom” Nadia Suleman relentlessly, former sex blogger Lena Chen’s ex posted naked photos of her online without permission, and Hustler made a porn film based on Sarah Palin’s career. When we find ourselves a bad girl, a nasty girl, a girl we hate, there is one surefire way to re-assert control over her: Strip her down and make her get us off. Take her sexuality away from her — it’s dangerous — and make it serve us instead.

This isn’t an anti-pornography argument. Pornography is just explicit, unsimulated sexual imagery; that can be made under good or exploitative conditions, and with any sort of ethics or politics. But, though feminists have cried out for decades that sex need not be a means of domination, it continues to be used as a means of punishment and humiliation for women who have stepped out of line. The attempts of Vivid and Flynt to get Casey Anthony naked on-camera — and the “droves of men” apparently asking them to do so — are just one expression of this fact.

It’s understandable that people hate Casey Anthony. But when people start to use sex as a means of expressing that hatred, that is where the question of Casey Anthony’s guilt stops, and the question of their guilt begins.

Front page photo: Casey Anthony’s mugshot, 2011, public domain.

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