Kevin Drum is a little worried:

(d) For the purposes of this section, the term “material that is harmful to minors” means any communication that— (1) taken as a whole and with respect to minors, appeals to a prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion….

Excretion? What’s up with that? I mean, the last time I looked kiddie TV was so full of fart and poop and pee jokes that it even makes me a little queasy. Or is there a whole subgenre of excretion porn that I am blessedly unfamiliar with?

Theorem: In societies with a sufficiently advanced division of labor and a market-based economy, for any x there is a whole subgenre of x porn.

Lemma 1: It’s probably available online.

Who said social science doesn’t lend itself to general laws? (Umm, I think I did.) I’m pretty confident of that one, though.

Meanwhile, the Volokhs and the OxBloggers have discovered the wonderful world of socially-constructed gender roles, and plan to discuss them further. I am interested to see if they come up with theories that reproduce, in matchbook form, the ideas of people they might ordinarily think of as PoMo/feminist gender theorists.

To pick at random from a vast literature, let me recommend Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret by Leila Rupp and Verta Taylor, because they gave a talk at my department recently.