Porn Under a Bad Sign
Julian Sanchez | September 21, 2005, 2:19pm
There's a fascinating running debate at Slate about a couple of new books on the mainstreaming of porn, the "masculinization" of female sexuality, and What It All Means. Laura Kipnis is particularly on point.
A couple observations. Wendy Shalit writes:
Girls today have so much anxiety about appearing "hot" and servicing boys correctly, it never even occurs to them that they should actually experience--or wait for--their own desire. Is this not a problem?
Now, if she's talking about 13 year olds, maybe that is a problem—but she's obviously casting a net that includes college-age women as well. In the rather rhetorical way it's framed, of course, it
is a problem, since it's presented as a sort of self-abnegation. But Shalit also seems to be hinting that there's something unsettling about people's wanting to look attractive for members of the apposite sex or wanting to sexually satisfy their partners. Now, I do both these things, and it's never occured to me to regard either as unhealthy or degrading or self-objectifying. It's nice to go out and feel as though you look attractive—whatever your gender. And what would we think of a man who said he wasn't particularly concerned with "servicing" his partner "correctly"? Certainly, there
would be a problem if this were a one way street, and it was
only women who were thinking about these things—but wouldn't it be a problem with the thoughtless men? (As Kipnis observes, recent data on sexual behavior suggests this isn't the case: Oral sex, for instance, is largely reciprocal.) There's also a strange double standard in play in some of the discussion: The authors of the books being discussed (and Shalit) seem to assume that when women are aggressively sexual, this is a kind of performance to meet cultural expectations; when they exhibit uneasiness with that overt sexuality, they're expressing the true "deep down" feelings an oversexed culture has demanded they suppress. Well, doubtless some are. And doubtless in some cases, it's the other way around. Ambiguous or guilty feelings about one's own sexuality are neither new nor the exclusive province of women, after all.
Ditto with people's desires of their partners, porn-fueled or otherwise. The narrative we get from Shalit focuses on women uncomfortable with partners who want them to (say) shave or accept their porn-viewing. Cross-apply from above: Are we really supposed to be shocked that couples are going to need to work through different sexual desires and expectations, whatever their source? I've had various requests from partners to do things that weren't immediately super-appealing: Some, I discovered I liked; others weren't really my cup of tea, but I'd do because the other person liked them; a couple times, I said I wasn't into it. But I always regarded it as part of the ordinary give-and-take of a sexual relationship, not some kind of strange imposition produced by last week's technologies.
A brief note on the "desensitizing" effects of porn: First, if you find that you prefer sitting at home with a box of kleenex and Field of Reams to sex with a real-live partner, your problem probably isn't porn. Millions of men out there have been exposed to their fair share of porn, and it seems a safe bet that this particular preference ordering has never occured to the majority of them. Second, surely this cuts both ways: If porn can make sex boring through overexposure (so/mehow, I'm not bored yet), or get one partner excited about something the other doesn't want to try, can't it also spice it up? And to the extent porn is causing sexual problems, isn't it, in a sense, weird to focus on the porn and not the men for whom porn consumption is a problem, as though porn were some sort of alien brain-slug that had crawled in through the genitals and taken over the central nervous system? How about a sex-ed curriculum that includes a lesson on reflective, responsbile porn watching?
smacky | September 21, 2005, 5:33pm | #
I am not a psychologist, but my experience as a government lawyer leads me to believe that porn does illicit compulsive behavior. In the close to 50 cases of child porn and adult porn found on government computers I dealt with, I never once saw a case involving two or even a hundred pictures. They were always thousands of images. So many that there is no way that the guy could have gotten off over even a fraction of the pictures. Only compulsive behavior could cause someone to risk their careers and lives for pictures they don't even get off over. Clearly, lots of people see porn and are unaffected by it. But, I think that there is a certain percentage of people who do seem to withdraw from the real world and loose their ability to have real relationships due to porn. I don't believe that porn causes otherwise normal people to be violent towards woman or any of that crap, but I do think that it can and does socially stunt some people. All and all, it is probably no worse than people who pursue other otherworldly pursuits such as video games heads and fantasy football degenerates. Not an argument to ban it, but probably a good reason to keep your kids away from it.
Hypothetical Redux:
I am not a psychologist, but my experience as a [NOTHING WORTHWHILE] leads me to believe that
blogging does illicit compulsive behavior. In the close to 50 cases of
political blogging and
other blogging found on government computers I dealt with, I never once saw a case involving two or even a hundred
posts . They were always thousands of
posts . So many that there is no way that the guy could have
read over even a fraction of the
posts . Only compulsive behavior could cause someone to risk their careers and lives for
posts they don't even
read . Clearly, lots of people see
blogs and are unaffected by it.
(sic) But, I think that there is a certain percentage of people who do seem to withdraw from the real world and loose their ability to have real relationships due to
blogs . I don't believe that
blogs cause otherwise normal people to be violent towards woman or any of that crap, but I do think that
it can and does socially stunt some people. All and all, it is probably no worse than people who pursue other otherworldly pursuits such as video games heads and fantasy football degenerates.
(You got that right!) Not an argument to ban it, but probably a good reason to keep your kids away from it.
My point in doing this is to illustrate that many things are accused of being "addictive". I think the real issue is with the person himself who is allegedly "addicted"....it's a compulsive/obsessive personality issue, as Jennifer suggested.
And so what if someone is addicted to their computer? Keeps me off of the streets...
Larry A | September 21, 2005, 6:31pm | #
I thought she was saying something far more reasonable: that if men weren't learning about sex from pornography at age 8, or 10, or 13, then at least they'd have more of a chance to forge real intimacy with women.
I think the key may be this statement in Wendy's contribution.
The present ideal is that once a boy is weaned he should have no further contact with or sight of a female breast, etc., including movies, photos, drawings, and computer generated images, until his wedding night which should be after he graduates from college at age 22,
two decades later. Most specifically, even after puberty he should
never imagine or dwell on the subject of breasts, etc. to the point that he "abuses himself." Then on his wedding night he's supposed to be a caring and accomplished partner, who takes care of the needs of his spouse.
We do have "sex ed," but that's taught on a don't-try-this-at-home level. The alternatives are illegitimate ones: pornography and pre-marital experience.
Stephen King would be interested, but I have problems with the concept.
I personally am also dismayed at the thought of 8, 10, or 13 year-old males reading pornography. Not because the characters have genitals, but because the stories suck. Once again, prohibition (which decrees that any story available to anyone under 18 be completely neutered) is producing a toxic result. If we don't want young males (and young females) learning the wrong stuff from pornography, give them realistic stories about the way sex
should be.
Stevo Darkly | September 21, 2005, 11:31pm | #
Learning about sex by watching porn is probably a lot like learning about medicine by watching medical shows on TV.
But wait: There are all kinds of medical shows out there. And there are all kinds of porn. Certainly it is possible to learn real things, especially technical/technique things, depending on what you watch. IIRC, many years ago there was a news story about a very young kid (age 5 to 7, I think) who saved his mother's life by giving her CPR -- something he had learned how to do by watching a popular medical show.
And I'm not sure porn is much more damagingly inaccurate or incomplete than your standard sex education course. In both junior high and high school, we boys (the classes were segregated for this stuff) were told that the sex act consisted of putting Tab A into Slot B ... and that was pretty much it.
Oh, it was also mentioned that you might have to touch her breasts for a few minutes first, to get her ready. Of course, the most important thing about sex for a girl is emotional context. And commitment. She wants to know that she is loved. So you really ought to marry her first.
That was pretty much the extent of formal sex ed as I knew it.
Now, a true story: I had a friend who had lots of bad luck with girls. He had his first real girlfriend around age 20, and when they broke up five years later, he had a hard time getting over it.
Around age 30, he started dating this girl I'll call Welfare Queen. Also around this time he began watching porn. More precisely, he began
studying porn. He learned some technical things from it.
This greatly impressed Welfare Queen. She'd gotten pregnant, then married, at age 15. "I went directly from my daddy's arms to my husband's arms." However, it appears that her first husband's lovemaking technique was basically limited to the "Deodorant Method:" Roll on. Roll off. He probably had the same sex ed course I did. My friend opened up a whole new world for her.
The thing in my friend's favor, I think, was not only that he knew enough to be a little creative and interesting, but that he was considerate enough and made the effort to
make the process pleasurable for her too. Apparently this is fairly rare.
Unfortunately, Welfare Queen had a lot of issues, one being an apparent aversion to stability. After taking advantage of my friend emotionally and financially, she broke up with him and found another guy more like her first husband. My friend had a hard time getting over that, too.
When my friend was in his late 30s, he had what might have been a one-night stand with a girl he had just met. It was totally unplanned, and neither of them had protection. So my friend insisted on doing nothing that might possibly lead to the girl getting pregnant. Basically, that meant keeping Tab A well away from Slot B. So he did other things. Basically, he made it "all about her" -- all the orgasms were in Girltown that night. And the girl was impressed. Partly it was that he knew how to do "other things" and do them well -- and that was due to his pornographic studies. But mostly that he demonstrated that he was unselfish and foresighted.
My friend and the girl dated for several years. A year ago, they got married.
Please note: If not for porn, my friend would not be married today! Pornography is known to encourage monogamy and lifelong commitment!
Although I guess it also helps to have the right attitude going in.
As it were.
(And no, my friend is not actually me. It's weird that I know as much about the whole story as I do, but he's not me.)
