On Wednesday, the European Parliament approved a new bill that effectively eliminates gender stereotypes in the media, which is bad news for Italian weathermen who refer to giant storms as “spicy meat-a-balls”. But buried way deep down in the pages of this proposal was a little piece of language that would have banned all forms of pornography throughout Europe.

Fortunately, if there’s one thing that European lawmakers can sniff out, it’s someone messing with their erotica. So when someone spotted that language sneakily inserted by Dutch politician Kartika Tamara Liotard, they ripped it right out. By the way, my new European porn name? Kartika Tamara Liotard.

So what the hell is going on across the pond anyway?

If this is all in the name of protecting against gender stereotypes and prevent the sexualization of women in the media, what stereotypes would a ban on porn actually be shattering? According to the wording of the proposal, it would involve, “the importance of promoting the representation of the female image in a way that respects women’s dignity … while fully respecting freedom of expression”. That’s assuming that women’s dignity cannot be maintained in porn. The proposal is not only reductive, but it ignores the issue of gay porn entirely.

This is a major movement towards censorship, but it also completely plays into the whole, “gasp, let’s not ruin women’s innocence and propriety” thing that we’ve been trying to shake for centuries. (Via Nerve)

I’m not going to pretend to know anything about European politics – my expertise leans toward Latvian city councils at best – but is it really possible to ban porn? Let’s say that CNN breaks a story this afternoon that Barack Obama has made an executive decision to ban pornography in the U.S. Would that really stop us? I mean, I’m a grown adult with an active imagination, and it took me all of 5 seconds to make this:

So I guess that means my brain would have to be thrown in jail. And feel free to keep that, you pervs.