Archive for the 'Porn' Category

Pornography, empathy, and the misuse of the disease model: some further thoughts on a way forward

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 6, 2008
in Addiction and mental illness, Porn, Sex work, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 85 Comments

I’m easing back into blogging this week. I have a bad cold, my first in months, probably contracted over the course of various recent travels. My wife and I spent Rosh Hashanah with the Kabbalah Centre International in Dallas, Texas last week; on Friday we flew up to Northern California for a weekend at our family’s country place in the hills northeast of San Jose. We went, in the damp and the bluster of an early autumn storm, to the Cal-Arizona State Homecoming game in Berkeley on Saturday afternoon. And our plane finally landed at Burbank Airport at 10:30 last night. I’m a bit groggy, but hoping to feel better as the week goes on.

And the emails! Folks, if you’ve emailed me recently, please be patient. I’m more than a little swamped. (Seven — count ‘em, seven — with questions about older men/younger women relationships in the last week alone. Flattering but overwhelming.)

The discussion thread below my post on “rethinking a virulent anti-porn/sex work stance” is approaching 200 comments, and is still quite active (and, all things considered, reasonably civil.) Amber Rhea put up a lengthy and thoughtful initial response at her place, and both she and Ren took issue with this remark I made in the original post:

I am keenly aware that porn can play a part in reducing our ability to connect with each other as full and complete creatures of light. Porn, it still seems to me, is the enemy of empathy.

That deserves some more explanation.

Empathy, of course, is the ability to not only imagine what an other person might be feeling(sympathy), but actually to understand what an other person understands, feels, and experiences. Contemporary English often confuses empathy and sympathy to the point that even many scholars seem to disagree as to the precise boundary that separates one concept from another — a point driven home to me in a few minutes of googling about this morning! Here’s one possible definition, from an article for physicians:

The origin of the word empathy dates back to the 1880s, when German psychologist Theodore Lipps coined the term “einfuhlung” (literally, “in-feeling”) to describe the emotional appreciation of another’s feelings. Empathy has further been described as the process of understanding a person’s subjective experience by vicariously sharing that experience while maintaining an observant stance. Empathy is a balanced curiosity leading to a deeper understanding of another human being; stated another way, empathy is the capacity to understand another person’s experience from within that person’s frame of reference.

I like that last bit, and it’s relevant to the experience that I think a great many men have with heterosexual pornography. One of the valid criticisms that gets thrown at Robert Jensen is that as a man writing about men’s use of pornography from a feminist perspective, he centers men’s experiences and reactions; his Getting Off contains relatively few women’s voices. (Given that he was writing a book about how pornography impacted men, rather than an overarching cultural critique of commercialized sexuality, this seems like a fairly reasonable editorial decision to have made. The problem, if there was one with Getting Off, seems to lie in his fairly brief and caricatured descriptions of the women who work in pornography — more certainly could have been done to hear what they were saying.) In any event, both Jensen and I come to the same conclusion: almost regardless of the conditions under which pornography is produced, the impact upon the men who “consume” it regularly is often a decreased ability to connect and empathize with other human beings. Continue reading ‘Pornography, empathy, and the misuse of the disease model: some further thoughts on a way forward’

Bridging the Porn Divide: sex, feminism, empathy, and the commitment to stop pathologizing the other side

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 24, 2008
in Feminism, Porn and Sex work
. 210 Comments

If you ask most folks who have been blogging for a while, they’ll remember the one “break-out” post that got them noticed, or first attracted a significant number of comments and hits. For me, it was this post about pornography back in April 2004. I wrote in response to news that several major stars of the adult film industry were infected with HIV.

I wrote that post, and many subsequent posts on pornography from two over-lapping perspectives. I wrote as a pro-feminist steeped in the anti-pornography tradition of one branch of feminism; I wrote as someone who was moved by the desperately sad story of Linda Lovelace, moved by the razor-sharp incisiveness of Andrea Dworkin, challenged by the dazzling legal theory of Catherine MacKinnon. But my intellectual response to porn was mixed with my own experience of “addiction” to pornography, and a long struggle to overcome the compulsive use of sexually explicit material. Porn addiction, particularly in my youth (long before cyber-erotica became available) had done tremendous harm to me — and as a consequence, it had damaging repercussions in many of my relationships. So my feminism, my faith, and my own intense desire never ever to go back into that addiction combined to form a very strong anti-pornography stance.

It has been a long time since I’ve “used” pornography of any kind. But that doesn’t mean I’m blind to the possibility of relapse. Heterosexual married men in my position — teachers, pastors, mentors — are famous for living sexual double lives. (The examples, sadly, are too many to list.) While some fall from grace in spectacular ways –Ted Haggard — others commit “adultery” only with their computers. I know my own tendency towards workaholism and Calvinist striving; I know that that Puritanical streak can, left unchecked, feed a dark side. It’s so easy, after all, to feel heroic doing what I do: mentoring, teaching, volunteering, advising, chairing committees and giving lectures. It’s easy, too, to buy into the lie that I’ve “been so good” and I “deserve” a little “me time.” For a lot of men, including myself for many years, that “me time” involved the compulsive consumption of pornography.

I learned early that a fulfilling sex life with a partner or a spouse is not a prophylaxis against porn addiction. I’m very clear these days that it isn’t my wife’s job to keep me sufficiently sexually sated that I don’t stray, even in my mind. It’s my job. And staying faithful in body and mind involves many things, of which willpower is actually the least important. Staying faithful to my commitments is made much easier by honoring the needs of my body as they arise. I was much more prone to use porn when I was hungry, angry, lonely, or tired; I have become much better (thank God) at recognizing my triggers. I listen to the needs of my body, and I don’t suppress them. That doesn’t mean I indulge every imperious demand! It means I do take the naps I need; it means I do get the (very non-sexual) professional massages that release the tension and the ache in my flesh. It’s when I bottle everything up, I know, that I am at risk of “acting out.”

But writing about pornography from the perspective of a recovering addict is problematic. Most saliently, it leads me — as it obviously did in that 2004 post — to be dismissive of those whose experience with pornography was radically different from my own. I’m not talking about the Larry Flynts of the world, mind you; I have little time for them. I’m talking about feminist voices, in the blogosphere and elsewhere, voices of women who work or have worked in the sex industry. Like so many folks, I’ve been more willing to hear the stories that match up with my pre-existing world view. I confess I’ve given more credence to those who spoke of the sex industry in negative terms (exploitation and abuse and addiction) than to those who talked about genuinely enjoying the work they were doing.

What I am most guilty of is pathologizing those whose experiences do not match my world view. I am not alone in this; many of my fellow anti-porn feminists do the same. We of all people, who ought to know better, still regularly suggest that women who work in the sex industry (or merely those who enjoy watching porn) are — take your pick — “deceiving themselves”, “working through childhood abuse issues”, “filled with a self-loathing they cannot acknowledge.” Sometimes, we infantilize female sex workers, suggesting that they are in desperate need of “rescue” by we the enlightened, the middle-class, and the sexually vanilla. Continue reading ‘Bridging the Porn Divide: sex, feminism, empathy, and the commitment to stop pathologizing the other side’

Sex worker bodies, farm worker bodies: a musing on agriculture, porn, and cheap grace

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 7, 2007
in Class, Food, Money, Porn, Veganism and Working
. 35 Comments

In the midst of the latest round of debates over sex here in the progressive blogosphere, I was struck by BrownFemiPower’s post about the kinds of oppression we sometimes ignore in our eagerness to focus on pornography.

I’m very very *very* tired of how sex work is framed as a labor issue by many anti-pornography activists–they chronically insist that porn is the worst worst worst job ever because it hurts females.

I hear this logic, and all I can think is, “Really?”

I’ve known women who have had to work 12-15 (or more) hours a day in 100+ degree heat with no breaks for water and no place to pee (I was one of those women). I’ve known women who have had to work on their knees the entire 12-15 hour shift (or in a squatting position), with a bag that digs into their backs and can carry 20-25 pounds of vegetables or fruits. I’ve known women who can not kneel at mass because their knees are so shot from the hard labor they’ve done most of their lives. I’ve known women who have worked in the fields since they were five or six. I’ve seen pregnant women, elderly women, young girls, disabled women all forced to walk up to two miles (after 12 or 15 hour days) to get back to their cars so they can go home.

I know women are being exposed to some of the most dangerous chemicals known to mankind. I know young girls are working in fields rather than going to school because their mothers aren’t being paid enough for the job that they do. I know women are being locked up and only allowed to leave the farms for up to two hours a week. I know women are working for wages that have not increased in 27 years. I know women who go to company doctors after exposure to pesticide clouds are being told that they have ‘female problems’ (rather than pesticide poisoning). I know women are giving birth to babies that die because of pesticide exposure. I know women are out digging ditches 20 days after they give birth. I know women are being sexually harassed by field bosses. I know young girls are being sexually harassed by field bosses. I know 90% of the female farmworkers in California say that sexual intimidation and harassment is a major problem at their jobs. I know women refer(ed) to a field in California as the “field of panties” because so many women were raped there. I know women are being threatened with guns by their field bosses.

At BFP’s, these last two paragraphs are filled with links that document what’s going on. Continue reading ‘Sex worker bodies, farm worker bodies: a musing on agriculture, porn, and cheap grace’

Against compartmentalization: a note on the repercussions of a local scandal

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 5, 2007
in Porn, Sexuality, Teaching and Youth
. 10 Comments

The buzz in Pasadena this past week has been over the arrest of a veteran teacher at local Mayfield School (a Catholic college prep school for girls) on charges of possessing child pornography. David Hassler, 62, who taught government, history, and religion, is on administrative leave after police found numerous printed images of child porn in his home, most apparently downloaded from the Internet. Mayfield, to its great credit, has been proactive in its response in terms of hosting forums and reaching out to its students, parents, and alumni to keep everyone informed.

In my eight years as a youth leader at All Saints Church, I worked with many girls who were Mayfield students. (A perhaps surprisingly high percentage of the teens in our Episcopal youth group were Catholic school students). I’ve also had a number of Mayfield alumnae in my classes here at the college. In the past week, since the news about Mr. Hassler broke, I’ve spoken to perhaps half a dozen young women, both current and former Mayfield students. One emailed me on Facebook to tell me what had happened, saying that she was stunned and upset and needed to talk. The reaction to the teacher’s arrest among the girls I’ve spoken with has ranged from shock to anger to concern for Mr. Hassler and what will happen to him. But there is a palpable sense of betrayal, and, in the words of one Mayfielder who wrote me this weekend, “an ugly feeling that I just can’t trust the way I did before.”

This post is not about David Hassler or child pornography. It’s about teachers and trust and the basic truth that if we want to be trusted, there must be radical coherence between our public values and our private behavior. When something like this happens in my community (and this sort of thing happens in many communities) I get angry. I get angry as a man who works with young people, because the David Hasslers of the world poison the well for those of us who are making a huge effort to earn the trust of kids and their parents. We live in a world that is frantic about the threat posed to children by sexual predators of one sort or another; in the public imagination, and rightly so, most of those predators are men. And sexual predators have time and again sought out positions of authority over young people in order to facilitate their own acting out. The secret lives of a few, when made public, make suspects of the many who are working so damn hard to love, nurture, and mentor young people in safe and healthy ways.

I’ve spoken to a couple of Hassler’s former students in the past couple of days. One girl said to me Monday: “Now I wonder what he was thinking about when he looked at me. It makes me feel so disgusting, as if my memories of Mayfield are being ruined. I know I’ll get over it, but right now, it’s just so shocking and upsetting and vile.” But even in her shock, this young woman couldn’t come out and say she was angry at Hassler. “I just keep thinking about him, and worrying about him. I’ve been afraid he’s going to hurt himself or something because of how awful this must be to have everyone know this. Is it weird that I’m so upset but also worried about him?” I assured her that hers was a very normal reaction, and that her anger — if it comes at all — may not come for a long time.

Watching this story unfold strengthens my conviction that in the end, our private lives are never really private. What we do in our own home, behind locked doors, bleeds into our public lives. I don’t have any interest in child pornography, and I never did. But thinking about David Hassler reminds me that everything I do matters. My students and mentees don’t need to know much about my private life. But if I am insensitive to my wife, if I nurture a secret porn addiction, if I relapse on drugs, if I cheat on my taxes or am cruel to small animals, those sins will, sooner or later, lessen my effectiveness as a teacher and a mentor and a friend. The young people in my life don’t need to see the details of what goes on behind closed doors. But if what goes on behind those doors is deceptive, exploitative, illegal or cruel, then sooner or later, those young people whose trust I seek will pay a public price for my own private misdeeds.

We lie to ourselves when we claim that we can compartmentalize with impunity. Though I can’t prove it, I suspect that David Hassler lied to himself about his child porn use. Perhaps he told himself that as long as his students and his colleagues never found out, he could still be a good, safe, effective teacher. But it rarely works that way. His students — and indeed, the entire Mayfield community — are reeling from these very serious allegations. But believing what I do believe about the human person, I am convinced that the darkness Hassler’s double life engendered was already affecting those around him long before he was arrested. And I grieve that for him, and I grieve it more for the young women who this week have felt so shocked, so shattered, so betrayed.

Beyond heat and pleasure to joy and light: the third post on Robert Jensen, porn, and sexual ethics

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 5, 2007
in Books, Porn and Masculinity Series, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 17 Comments

This is part three of my series responding to Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Part One is here, Part Two is here.

At the end of this short, powerful book, Jensen muses about sexual ethics. I was struck by what he has to say about heat, light, and pleasure:

Another common way people talk about sex, especially in the past decade, is in terms of heat: She’s hot, he’s a hottie; we had hot sex. In the world of hot, it’s natural to focus on friction, which is what produces heat. Sex becomes bump-and-grind,; the friction produces the heat, and the heat makes the sex good.

But we should take note of a phrase commonly used to describe an argument that is intense but which doesn’t really advance our understanding; we say that such an engagement produces “more heat than light.”… So what if our sexual activity — our embodied connections –could be less about heat and more about light? What if instead of desperately seeking hot sex, we searched for a way to produce light when we touch? What if such touch were about finding a way to create light between people so that we could see ourselves and each other better? If the goal is knowing ourselves and each other like that, then what we need is not really heat but light to illuminate the path.

I read that and leaped to my feet, crying “Yes!” At its best, I am convinced sex not only brings pleasure but helps to transform the people who are participating in it. I am a better teacher, better friend, and better mentor because of the light that my wife and I reveal when we have sex with each other. After three divorces and countless short-term relationships, I understand what Jensen is talking about here, because my wife and I are living it out. Make no mistake, I don’t think marriage is the only arena in which this kind of light can be created. But a relationship in which one or both parties is expending sexual energy on pornography and fantasy is one in which there is very little chance of light indeed.
Continue reading ‘Beyond heat and pleasure to joy and light: the third post on Robert Jensen, porn, and sexual ethics’

Shame and self-hatred, guilt and self-esteem: part two of the series on Robert Jensen, porn, and masculinity

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 3, 2007
in Books, Men and Masculinity, Porn, Porn and Masculinity Series and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 34 Comments

This is part two of a three-part response to Robert Jensens’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Part One appeared last Friday, I’m aimin’ to have Part Three up on Wednesday of this week.

Courtney Martin wrote last week that Jensen’s prose “reeks of self-hate and desperation.” Blogger “Sweating Through Fog” writes that “Jensen uses porn to indulge his hatred for masculinity.” In this second part of the series, I’d like to take up this issue of male self-loathing (or, to put it another way, the loathing of one’s own maleness.) Far from hating himself, or men, Jensen is calling men to love themselves, their fellow men, and women enough to transform. His argument hinges on understanding the distinction between shame and guilt, a distinction that may have eluded some of those who read (or have decided to condemn without reading) the book.

The charge of “self-loathing” is one of three classic slurs used against feminist men. Any man who is committed to feminism publicly will regularly encounter at least one (and likely more) of the following stereotypes:

1. All feminist men are gay, and thus not “real men”.

2. All feminist men are “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, using an outer veneer of egalitarianism in order to get women into bed.

3. All feminist men are filled with self-loathing; secretly believing that women are the superior sex, they project their own self-hatred onto other men.

From the time I began studying feminism and doing pro-feminist men’s work, I ran into all three of these charges on a regular basis. The men’s rights advocates (MRAs) who periodically comment here tend to use all three, with a few not-very-bright ones insisting that all three are true simultaneously. So when Robert Jensen makes a compelling, at times radical case against pornography — accompanied by a searing and entirely accurate indictment of contemporary American masculinity — it’s little wonder that even well-meaning folks bring out the “he must really hate himself, or at least hate his maleness” card. Continue reading ‘Shame and self-hatred, guilt and self-esteem: part two of the series on Robert Jensen, porn, and masculinity’

Part one of a series on “Getting Off”: masculinity, pornography, and the truth of what we don’t want to face

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 30, 2007
in Men and Masculinity, Porn, Porn and Masculinity Series, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 49 Comments

This will be the first (long) part of a three-part post. Parts two and three to come next week.

I started reading Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity over the Thanksgiving holiday, and finished the relatively short book earlier this week. As I said in my post immediately below this one, it has had a deep and profound impact upon me.

In this first post, I’ll look at the case Jensen makes against porn, particularly the arguments he marshalls against the idea that porn isn’t a “big deal” and that “normal people” can use it without negative consequences for themselves, their relationships, and society as a whole. In the second post, I’ll respond to the charge against Jensen — reiterated by Courtney Martin – that his prose “reeks of self-hate.” Self-loathing is a common slur tossed at pro-feminist men, and deserves a response all of its own. In the third post, I’ll look at Jensen’s proposals about masculinity and sexuality, particularly his remarkable suggestion that we ground our sexual ethics not merely in pleasure, but in joy and in light.

Robert Jensen is one of a small group (others include Jackson Katz, Michael Flood, and Michael Kimmel) who are the dedicated public faces of the pro-feminist men’s movement. Jensen, a professor of journalism at Texas, wrote the marvelous Heart of Whiteness, about which I also ought to blog someday. Getting Off sees Jensen take an enormously brave step. Balancing thoughtful analysis with deep candor, he makes the most powerful case against pornography that I’ve read since the late Andrea Dworkin’s Pornography: Men Possessing Women, a book now more than 25 years old. And yes, Getting Off is dedicated to (among others) Dworkin herself.

Jensen starts by reminding us of what we already know: we live in a porn-saturated culture. Technological innovation has made the furtive peeps at father’s Playboy an unknown experience for most young people today. Jensen, born in 1958, describes his own adolescent fascination with pornographic magazines and the lengths to which he and his buddies would go to acquire porn. My own experience with porn was similar; I “discovered” it in 1979, when I was twelve. The porn that so indelibly marked (and marred) my nascent sexuality came in print with magazines like “Club International” and “Penthouse.” What’s available today online –even for free — is infinitely more vivid, infinitely more hardcore, and infinitely more interactive than it was in my youth or in Jensen’s.

We know all this of course. What we don’t know — or, as Jensen points out, what we don’t want to know — is how truly ugly pornography is. For a host of reasons ranging from denial to civil libertarianism to sheer horny curiosity, a great many voices across the spectrum are unwilling to name porn as one of the most corrosive influences on our culture and on our humanity. Continue reading ‘Part one of a series on “Getting Off”: masculinity, pornography, and the truth of what we don’t want to face’

Previewing a post on pornography, masculinity, and Robert Jensen: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 29, 2007
in Links, Men and Masculinity and Porn
. 11 Comments

I’ve spent part of my time this week scribbling out some thoughts about Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, the genuinely extraordinary new book from Robert Jensen, professor of journalism at the University of Texas.

Deo volente and the crick don’t rise, I’ll finish my review tomorrow and post it. In the meantime, Courtney Martin has her own thoughts up at Feministing, and the comment thread below her piece is very interesting. Courtney is clearly troubled by the book, both by its insights into a world she has deliberately avoided, and by Jensen’s radical proposed solution: the eradication of masculinity as a category of human identity. I’m less troubled — largely because I think Jensen is more right than Courtney would like to believe.

I’ll say this as a preview: this is the first non-fiction book I’ve read this year that’s made me weep. It’s the best thing I’ve read about pornography in years, and it functions brilliantly on many levels. It’s so good that as I read, at times fighting back tears, I cursed Robert Jensen for writing the book I would have longed to write. Whatever I publish on pornography and masculinity in the future will be heavily influenced by this book and my response to it. I’ll explain tomorrow, and in the meantime, check out Courtney’s post.

UPDATE: The thread at Feministing has a lot on the problem of fantasy, and Greg raises the issue below this post. Let me, as a prelude to what I’m gonna write tomorrow, offer these links to old things I’ve written:

Why Pornography Bothers Me More than Depictions of Violence

Some Very Long Thoughts on Fantasy and Masturbation

Saturday reprint: Courtly Love and Double Standards

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 10, 2007
in Chivalry and performing gender roles, Christianity, Feminism, Porn and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 9 Comments

It’s a long holiday weekend, and I won’t be back to regular posting until Tuesday morning. In the interim, here’s a repost of something I wrote back in March 2005:

The comments on this post from last week about accountability have shifted to the topic of bad male behavior, particularly the sort that takes place when no other fellow is around. Mythago recently wrote:

Chivalry has always been about good manners towards ‘ladies,’ not to women, period. It’s as true in the modern day as it was when The Art of Courtly Love was written.

She’s right about the Art of Courtly Love. Andreas Capellanus, who wrote that famous medieval tract, argued for immense patience in pursuing women of gentle birth. As for peasants:

“If you love a peasant woman, praise her and force her–peasants don’t respond to gentle wooing.”

So much for seeing all women as one’s sisters in Christ! Capellanus makes it clear that the pursuit of courtly love is likely to be immensely frustrating for a man — which is why peasant women make such a convenient outlet for pent-up sexual desire.

Mythago is right when she suggests that nine centuries after Capellanus wrote his tract, the attitudes within it survive. Many of the male commenters on my recent posts about responsibility and propriety have implied that good manners are essentially reciprocal. Their thesis? If a woman dresses appropriately, she is deserving of respect in return. If she doesn’t respect herself or her community, then she forfeits her right to be respected. In other words, “nice” girls, “demure” girls, have the right not to be objectified and openly lusted for; “bad” women (you know, the bra-less ones, the ones in short skirts), deserve the wolfish stares from their brothers and resentment from their sisters. Continue reading ‘Saturday reprint: Courtly Love and Double Standards’

Rethinking — and rejecting — an old post about Naomi Wolf, porn, and modesty

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 30, 2007
in Marriage, Men and Masculinity, Modesty and Porn
. 18 Comments

Vanessa at Feministing takes issue with Naomi Wolf’s cover piece this past weekend in New York Magazine: The Porn Myth. It’s not a new article, it just seems to keep getting recycled. I commented on it back in May 2004.

One of the things about blogging for several years: one’s opinions and views evolve, and one is then left with the interesting archival evidence of that evolution. While consistency is surely a virtue, so too is a willingness to rethink one’s stance on key issues, especially in light of new information or further reflection. So, since Wolf’s piece reappeared online this week, I’m going to revisit what I said in 2004. More to the point, I’m going to reject much of what I had to say three years ago.

I am as thoroughly anti-porn as it gets, as any visitor to my pornography archive will quickly read. (That sounds more titillating than it us.) I agree with Wolf’s view that pornography tends to destroy authentic sexual appetite. She writes:

The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as “porn-worthy.” Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention.

Wolf talks of chats with college-aged women who relate their anxieties about competing with pornography, and what she writes rings true with me. Where Wolf falls down — and where Vanessa was right to challenge her, and I was wrong not to do so in 2004 — is that Wolf urges women to adopt modesty and concealment as a strategy for reenergizing the male libido. Wolf is enchanted by the story of an observant Jewish friend of hers, a woman who allows only her husband to see her hair, and the rest of the time, keeps it concealed under a wig or a scarf. Wolf writes:

I am noting that the power and charge of sex are maintained when there is some sacredness to it, when it is not on tap all the time. In many more traditional cultures, it is not prudery that leads them to discourage men from looking at pornography. It is, rather, because these cultures understand male sexuality and what it takes to keep men and women turned on to one another over time—to help men, in particular, to, as the Old Testament puts it, “rejoice with the wife of thy youth; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times.”

The red flag for me in 2007 (which wasn’t there in 2004) is the verb in bold. The implication is that in and of themselves, men lack the incentive and the ability to maintain a strong and vibrant sexual focus solely on their wives. It’s a great passage from Scripture she quotes, mind you, and one I love. Married men are called to direct all of their sexual energy towards their wives, even as both they and their wives age. But it’s not women’s job to “create mystery” in order to keep men excited! While marriage is surely a partnership, it is deeply misguided (if very traditional) to suggest that wives must strategize to keep their husbands from straying in act or thought, with flesh-and-blood mistresses or with cybersex.

The story Wolf tells of her bewigged friend Ilana is frustrating for this very reason. Wolf is on awe at what she imagines is the steamy eroticism of this very traditional Orthodox marriage, and is convinced that it is Ilana’s modesty that is the cause of the continued strong sexual charge between husband and wife. Coming at the end of an article about porn, it’s hard to miss the implication that Wolf is convinced that if more women would simply be more like Ilana (creating “mystery” by hiding themselves), more boyfriends and husbands would be more sexually excited by enduring monogamous relationships.

What’s wrong with this seemingly commonsensical analysis is, of course, that it’s rooted in the notion that men are hardwired to pursue “everlasting novelty.” The everlasting novelty thesis of male sexuality suggests that women who want monogamy from their male mates need to pursue an aggressive strategy in order to overcome a man’s “natural” programming to stray, to seek out what is new, to become fascinated with seeing (or touching, or possesing) new skin. According to this thesis (so memorably satirized in Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale) women need new outfits, new hairstyles, new transformations on a regular basis in order to fool their husbands and boyfriends into thinking that they are somehow a series of different women. Call it the “familiarity breeds contempt” theory of enduring sexual attraction.

Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for two people experimenting with new ideas for keeping their sexual life fresh and exciting. I understand completely that routine is indeed the enemy of eros. But there’s all the difference in the world between urging men and women not to get stuck in sexual ruts, and suggesting that women need to conceal themselves in order to capture and hold male attention. The former bit of advice doesn’t place any gender-based onus on one partner more than the other. The latter suggests that the male longing for everlasting novelty is women’s problem to solve, and that’s absolutely, shockingly, indefensibly wrong.

Whether or not promiscuity is hardwired into the male brain is ultimately irrelevant. Humans have free will strong enough to trump any programming. Just as we can learn to pee in toilets rather than wetting ourselves, we can learn not only to practice monogamy but to do so with enthusiasm. What I find so wonderfully challenging about monogamy isn’t just staying faithful. Not sleeping with other people, not flirting with other people, not fantasizing about other people — heck, that’s just the beginner’s class! (All good stuff, mind you.) The advanced class in monogamy work is maintaining strong and enduring sexual excitement. Monogamy is not merely about what you don’t do with others, it is also — at its very core — about what you do do with your partner. It is a mandate for both parties to be creative, to be persistent, to be brave. As a husband, my responsibility is to keep my sexual energy focused on my wife no matter what she wears, no matter what she weighs, regardless of whether or not she covers her gorgeous hair with a wig or a baseball cap or lets her curls down in public. My wife has the same responsibility towards me. This doesn’t mean we are obligated to please each other; it doesn’t give either of us the right to demand sex. But, practicing the mutual submission that Scripture calls us to, it means we don’t expect the other to be in charge of keeping us excited, aroused, hot.

Nothing exasperates me more than the enduring myth of male weakness. Nothing infuriates me more than the suggestion that it is women’s responsiblity to keep men focused, to keep men faithful, to keep men aroused. Naomi Wolf is, as far as I’m concerned, spot on accurate in her indictment of pornography. But her suggestion that women ought to adopt modesty as a strategy to keep their present (or future) boyfriends and husbands on track and away from porn is dead wrong.

Note: this thread is for feminist or feminist-friendly comments only.

Demand, supply, and moralistic sermons: a reply to Garance Franke-Ruta

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 9, 2007
in Porn and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 13 Comments

Lots of discussion about porn and the “Girls Gone Wild” phenomenon this week. Last Friday, Garance Franke-Ruta made the case in the Wall Street Journal for raising the minimum age for performers in porn from 18 to 21. She makes a good point about the huge changes that take place for most folks in those vital three years, and argues that — especially for the drunken spring breakers who lift their shirts and scribble on a model release form handed them by Girls Gone Wild, Inc. — raising the age to 21 would provide much-needed protection against enduring regret and exploitation.

Franke-Ruta’s modest proposal has been much discussed in the feminist blogosphere; I am late to the party again indeed. Amanda at Pandagon leads the charge of those who weigh the idea sympathetically, and then discard it as ultimately unworkable and paternalistic. Ultimately, I’m not big on the idea either. Allowing young women to get blown up in Iraq at 18, but not allowing them to lift their shirts for the camera until they’re 21, seems silly to me.

My objection to Franke-Ruta lies in this middle section of her WSJ piece:

Curtailing the demand side of such a “market” is difficult, requiring moralistic sermons and abridgements of speech. But the supply side is more vulnerable to change. It is time to raise the age of consent from 18 to 21–”consent,” in this case, referring not to sexual relations but to providing erotic content on film.

I’m a big, big proponent of fighting most social vices by reducing demand first. I’m a historian and a recovering alcoholic who knows damned well Prohibition was largely a failure and Alcoholics Anonymous has been, by and large, a phenomenal global success. Pot is illegal, and I didn’t have trouble finding it in my youth and my students seem to have very little trouble finding it today. Using the power of the state to reduce the supply of an addictive commodity often ends up raising its price and making it more dangerous for those who work to produce it. Reducing demand, the seemingly more difficult task, is ultimately the more successful strategy.

Smoking has been greatly reduced in this country. Yes, higher prices for cigarettes and greater restrictions on where one can smoke have played a part, but the real source in the drop in cigarette consumption has been the growing awareness of just how bad tobacco is for living creatures. The slow but clear success of the anti-smoking movement has proceeded primarily by reducing demand; the tobacco industry until very recently received colossal subsidies from the government in order to continue producing supply.

Why not the same for pornography? When we show school children cigarette ads from the 1920s that promised tobacco could help cure sore throats, they giggle. Who could ever have believed that cigarettes were not only harmless, but positively therapeutic? Today, we have legions of folks who insist that pornography provides a healthy release for those who have no other sexual outlet; occasionally, we have a dimwit claim that the availability of porn reduces rape (rather than making it more likely). Many feminists, troubled by mainstream porn’s narrow and male-centered depiction of women’s sexuality, long for an alternative pornography, perhaps one in which women as well as men are encouraged to ogle, lust, and masturbate from the resulting excitement.

But in the internet age, there is growing evidence that online porn addiction is bringing devastation and heartache. There is growing evidence that as with cigarettes, there are few “casual” users. As with any drug, casual use quickly turns habitual, and what is habitual often turns compulsive. Of course, some folks can use porn once every five weeks and not think about it again. They remind me of my great aunt, who famously smoked a cigarette once a year with great ceremony. The porn industry makes its money on those who are willing to run up credit card bills, stay up late at night on the computer, and often compromise their social and romantic obligations in order to hunt down the next exciting image of a stranger (usually young, poor, and female) unclothed.

Franke-Ruta has no taste for “moralistic sermons.” Neither did Phillip Morris (whoops, Altria), who spent years waving the flag of “personal choice” to defend their staggering profits from the toxic leaf. Now, I like me the occasional moralistic sermon. A good sermon — delivered either in secular or openly theistic tones — challenges people to think about themselves and their behavior in a radically new way. A good sermon doesn’t have to be modeled on a William Wigglesworth or a Jonathan Edwards. It can be modeled on a Dr. King, who had a clear and compelling way of delivering uncomfortable truths to an overly comfortable audience. Moralistic sermons, delivered by ordained ministers and backed up by public action, changed this nation’s views on race. Is it okay to use religious language to inspire people to turn away from Jim Crow, but not okay to use that same language to inspire them to stop buying the Girls Gone Wild DVD set? Is it okay to use “moralistic sermons” to change white hearts and minds until they see blacks as their full equals, but not okay to use those same sermons to challenge men to see young women as deserving of love and respect rather than objectification?

Sermons alone didn’t change America’s attitudes on race. Sermons, backed up by direct action (often including civil disobedience) did. We live in an era that sees the male sex drive as overpowering; we live in an era where we have so little faith in our brothers we daren’t ask them to stop masturbating to porn because we doubt, in our hearts, they have either the desire or the will to change their lives. (Italicized parenthetical aside: If I had a dollar for every woman I’ve heard say “I don’t like that he looks at porn, but I won’t tell him to stop. If I say I’m okay with it, then at least he’s not lying to me and doing it behind my back.” Talk about the false dichotomy built on low expectations: men will either use porn with your consent or without it, so you might as well give it so you won’t get deceived. God, how depressing.) A good sermon — which can be given on the blog, in the classroom, in a casual conversation at work as well as from a pulpit — inspires people to believe that they can do what they had not previously believed was possible. A good sermon, given by preachers and fathers and brothers and mothers and sisters and lovers, can work wonders. A good sermon, filled with anecdotal and research-derived evidence about the effects of porn on families, about the effects of the industry on those who are its “stars”, can really begin the process of changing hearts, changing minds, and more to the point, changing behavior and spending habits.

Most folks agree Voltaire never said “I despise what you have to say, and will defend to my death your right to say it.” Still, it’s a fine sentiment, and one with which I generally agree. (I still have a soft spot for the ol’ ACLU.) I have no interest in using the power of the state to stop porn, just as I am not (at least yet) ready to endorse the use of the state to mandate veganism. The way to put an industry out of business that profits from exploitation and degradation is through taking away their customers, one at a time. And we do that by changing their hearts. And we change their hearts by holding them accountable, by refusing to accept or enable, by lovingly challenging them. I’ve seen it work in my life, and in the lives of friends of mine. And that’s how I intend to keep fighting against pornography.

Some further thoughts on relationship, fidelity, porn use and how we negotiate boundaries: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 3, 2007
in Masturbation, Porn and Relationships
. 43 Comments

My post on Monday on Ethan and his views on porn is getting more hits than any other post I’ve put up since writing about Cho Seung-Hui a few weeks ago.

There’s a good debate about the male sex drive and porn use in the comments section below my post and Ethan’s original one at Crucial Minutiae. Lynn shares her own contribution to the discussion here. Clearly, a lot of us are taking issue with his original thesis that there were only three possible options for men “overwhelmed” by the hornies.

Ethan was a bit less than enthusiastic about my views on radical intimacy and relationship. He writes in a comment:

The other issue is that I’m a real relativist when it comes to relationships. This mostly comes from my mother, who is a psychotherapist and feminist. I believe that the presence of pornography in a relationship–or its total absence–is something that should be discussed and agreed upon within a relationship. As in, there is no outside morality that holds any sway within the confines of your relationship. Only what you and your lover agree upon matters. That’s my view.

Yikes. That makes me very uncomfortable. As several other people immediately pointed out, no “discussion” takes place in a vacuum. Let’s say a man — like an Ethan — brings into his relationship his belief that the male sex drive is an overwhelmingly powerful force. Let’s say he also brings in his steadfast belief that he can compartmentalize, meaning that he can “use” porn (read: masturbate to it, let’s be honest, boys) without having the images he see have any deleterious effect on his relationship with his girlfriend.

Let’s say his girlfriend brings in what many women bring in: the strong and powerful desire to be “different from the other women”, the ones who “are too uptight about porn and strip clubs.” So boyfriend brings his story of his tsunami-force libido, and girlfriend brings her desire to be pleasing, and then they have an “open discussion” without “any outside forces” influencing the relationship. They ignore “outside morality.” Sounds very progressive and mature, no doubt, but it ignores completely the reality that we all bring our people-pleasing, our control issues, and our pre-determined views into the discussion.

With all respect to Ethan, I’ve seen a lot of these discussions go down. Often, but not always, girlfriend says that boyfriend’s porn use makes her uncomfortable. Boyfriend explains that using porn isn’t really cheating, because as Ethan says, “thoughts are not actions.” (Masturbation, brother, is an action.) Boy explains his remarkable male ability to compartmentalize, to move seamlessly between spending an hour on his computer hunting down the next exciting image or video and seeing his girlfriend as a complete human being. Girlfriend isn’t really convinced, but since she’s not a guy — and since boyfriend seems so emphatic — she starts to wonder if maybe this kind of compartmentalization can work. At this point, boyfriend points out that using porn is much better than having an actual affair, and he sometimes (if he’s got the chutzpah) suggests that girlfriend should be grateful that this is “all” he does. Boyfriend usually structures a false set of options, typically in which porn appears as the Least Bad Thing. He tells girlfriend she can:

1. Have more sex with him (or “different” sex) with him to meet his needs
2. Have him go crazy with horniness and be miserable — and just maybe, prone to infidelity
2. Let him use porn “on the side”

Obviously, not all women fall for this argument. But plenty do. And so it’s not enough to say that “every relationship can define its boundaries for itself”; we need to acknowledge the myths, assumptions, and needs that each person brings to the discussion. And when both parties to the discussion consider the discourse of the overwhelming male sex drive to be an incontrovertible fact rather than a myth, than the entire subsequent conversation will take place under false premises. And the outcome will not be the best.

Note: I’m quite aware that there are some very stereotypical assumptions in the scenario I paint here. My goal is not to reinforce those stereotypes, but to expose as fallacious the idea that “outside morality” (or cultural discourses) can ever be successfully excluded from a relationship discussion.

UPDATE #1: Let me be clear, Ethan’s writings were not about his actual relationship with his girlfriend. He writes at his place: …I do want to make the point that I was writing about what I see as the general condition of porn and men in relationships, and the role of compartmentalization, NOT the specific conversation/framework that my girlfriend and I have on the subject… Fair enough, and I’m happy to clarify.

UPDATE #2: Let me link with enthusiasm to No Porn Northampton, which has been kindly linking to me. They’ve got some good stuff up.

“The average guy who can compartmentalize, disconnect, and then come back”: a response to Ethan on porn

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 30, 2007
in Men and Masculinity and Porn
. 38 Comments

I like Ethan, who writes at Crucial Minutiae. But his post today in defense of pornography left me, well, disappointed. Ethan writes:

The male sex drive can feel oppressive, more like a visceral need than a casual desire. Moreover, I think our biology is geared to make men seek variety over consistency. Guys can A) bug their girlfriends/wives for more sex (maybe with crazy outfits or roleplay) B) seek it elsewhere from strangers, prostitutes, or mistresses or C) simply satisfy themselves with Internet pornography.

That’s as good an articulation of absolutely everything I disagree with as I’ve read in a while! The “discourse of uncontrollable male sexual desire” is a foundation stone of anti-feminist thought. Since it’s used to excuse date rape and infidelity, I suppose we ought to be grateful that it’s only being used here to excuse porn use. Now, I agree completely that men — particularly young men, and I was young not so very long ago — can perceive lust as “visceral need.” But feelings are not facts, and not every desire, no matter how powerful, requires a concomitant outlet. Ethan listed three options above, and conveniently leaves out at least two others:

D. Masturbate without pornography, focusing the fantasy on the absent partner

E. Refrain from masturbating altogether until he can be with his partner again, a seemingly impossible task that I see lived out regularly by men I know well and trust profoundly.

E is surely a level of self-denial and commitment that goes beyond what most folks, male or female, might be willing to offer. I’ve argued that it’s perhaps the best of all possible options, but a great deal of compassion and charity is needed here. Option D seems perfectly reasonable to me, however. If I were to concede that in singleness or a long-distance relationship, masturbation was a positive good, it still wouldn’t follow that porn was necessary in order to achieve arousal and satisfaction. Porn only reinforces the great lie of everlasting novelty, about which I have posted at length before.

Let me repeat what I wrote last May, this time in response to Ethan:

Ultimately, the great tragedy of porn is that it teaches the men who use it to pursue “everlasting novelty.” Ask any man who uses porn — does he want to see the same pictures over and over again of the same women? No. If looking at one beautiful naked woman was enough, Playboy could put out one issue a decade. Internet porn sites could update annually instead of daily. But as most porn users admit, what was an intense turn-on the first time quickly becomes stale and boring. The seductiveness of internet porn in particular is that some brand new woman, one you’ve never seen before, is just one or two clicks away on your computer.

The pursuit of everlasting novelty is the enemy of actual relationship. Real relationships are built on a very different premise from porn — the notion that what is really sexy is not “new skin” but radical connection with one other person. Porn says that happiness is found by having the same experience over and over again with lots of different women; true eros says that happiness is found by having different experiences over and over again with the same person.

Ethan claims that men can compartmentalize with near-impunity:

But for the average guy, the one who can compartmentalize, disconnect, and come back, I think they really can watch the ice cream every day, then come back to the frozen yogurt. Know why? When they are watching porn, the girlfriends are tucked away in their minds, safe from the taint of the unattainable images. And when they are with our girlfriends, the porn stars are unseen, unheard. It’s not a perfect arrangement. But it’s better than the alternatives.

I’m sure this is immensely comforting to your girlfriend, Ethan, and you seem like a nice young man trying to make a sincere case — for the indefensible. She may buy it; I don’t. (And um, wouldn’t she rather be ice cream than yogurt? How did that image go down with her?)

I’ve been doing men’s work for many years now. And while I may not be the average bear, I do believe this with every fiber of my being: no one, no one, no one, can just “compartmentalize, disconnect, and come back.” Many men think they do so with impunity, but it’s the consensus of both the theologians and the marriage and family therapists that no good life can be lived well in compartments. We are called to wholeness, Ethan; men — all men, even in their late teens in the throes of lust — are capable of matching their desires, their behavior, their hearts. Is it easy? Heck no. But is it possible? Yes. Is it desirable? You bet it is.

I lived my life in compartments for years, not because I was a slave to uncontrollable, visceral lust but because I was fundamentally selfish. My conversion experience and my commitment to fidelity (and not using porn) did not come about because my libido suddenly declined in my early thirties; it came about because, among other things, I realized that I wasn’t nearly as weak as I had once imagined. I could make the choice to be the same man alone in front of the computer as I was in front of the classroom. It wasn’t easy, but I did it, inspired by other men who made the same decision.

When we “compartmentalize” and “disconnect”, we stop seeing women — real women, and porn stars are real women — as actual human beings who have needs that go beyond our own pleasure. And as a pro-feminist historian, I note that when men “disconnect” from a recognition of the essential humanity of any woman, it rarely turns out well for her… or for anyone else.

Is porn any more defensible when women use it? A response to Eric and Daddyslittlegirl

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 14, 2007
in Favorite posts 2007, Feminism, Porn and Relationships
. 22 Comments

I got an email a few days ago from someone named Eric:

After reading this post over at Ilyka Damen’s blog, I have to ask, what would be your perspective on the idea that it is okay for women to look at porn of men, porn in which the men are objectified? From being a fairly long-time reader of your blog, I know you are very strongly against porn (a sentiment I share), so I have an idea of what your response will be, but still I am curious.

For example, one of the pages linked from that post shows pictures of a man naked in an outdoor picture with clouds blocking his face. Is this not the same objectification and dehumanization (removal of thoughts, simply the portrayal of people as bodies for the viewers’ pleasure) of humans which leads us to believe that porn (featuring women) is morally wrong? I am not trying to waste your time with this question and I am not an MRA (though I am worried that is how I will come across in asking this), I really am trying to find an answer to reconcile this discrepancy. To say that the objectification of women for the pleasure of a man is wrong, but the objectification of men for the pleasure of a women is okay seems to be going against my notion that all humans are entitled to the respect and dignity of not being objectified in such a way.

The post at Ilyka, by the way, is from someone with the handle “daddyslittlegirl”, and yes, the links she puts up are indeed not safe for work. Frankly, for some of us, they may not be “safe” for home or Starbucks either. There’s more than one definition of safety, people, and the freedom to surf without being monitored by an employer is only one.

Perhaps facetiously, perhaps candidly, “daddyslitlegirl” writes:

…once I saw all the pictures of those hot naked guys on the page, I sorta lost track of what anyone else was talking about.

Let me see if I can work through some thoughts here.

One basic tenet of feminism is the refutation of the lie that women don’t have a “visual sexuality.” A great many men I know comfort themselves with the falsehood that “most women don’t like to look”. If men knew how often women were looking, one feels, a great many more men would feel considerably more anxiety. Because we live in a culture where women are shamed for openly lusting, fewer women — obviously — admit to doing so. But that doesn’t mean that women don’t have strong libidos that can be reinforced by various examples of eye candy, including those found in pornography.

Wearing my feminist hat, I can say that there’s a small part of me that responds positively to a woman publicly asserting her own sexual appetite. We live in a culture where women’s sexuality has been denied, suppressed, hidden, and repressed for, well, eons. Though we’ve certainly seen eras (think Puritan America) where men were held equally accountable for controlling their sexuality (Hawthorne got that wrong), in living American memory we’ve seen a culture where men have enjoyed tremendous leeway when it comes to living as sexual beings. The “sex industry” largely caters to men and reinforces the sense that male sexuality is not only powerful, but often uncontrollably so. We aren’t there for women, not by a long shot. So when a woman of any age talks openly about her own lust, she’s doing something countercultural in a way that a man who speaks the same way isn’t. In that sense, there’s something redemptive about the sort of frank post that daddyslittlegirl (I’m not commenting on her handle) has put up.

If you read through my “porn archive”, you’ll see that I object to porn on a number of levels. I object to it because of what it does both to the subject and the object in the visual transaction. I object to it because I believe that most women (and men) who work in the porn industry are exploited, placed at great risk, and generally undercompensated. The fact that a few porn stars become famous and rich, the fact that a few loudly trumpet their own sense of contentment with their work, doesn’t change the fact that a great many more young people (mostly women) suffer physical, economic, and psychic injury. In this sense, my veganism and my anti-porn stance are analogous: they are both based on the assumption that using another being’s flesh for my own pleasure is deeply and profoundly sinful. That’s a radical stance, but it’s one rooted in the best instincts of both the Christian and the feminist traditions.

Again, let me be clear: I’m not a killjoy. Neither were my Puritan ancestors! I’m not against lust or sex. Lust has a tremendously positive aspect; like any other hunger, it teaches us we’re alive. Desire, in and of itself, is neither bad nor good. But whatever our desire — for a new Mercedes, for a steak, for someone else’s ripped and toned body — when we act on that desire without regard for how our actions affect the world around us, we sin.

I’m also against porn because of what it does to the viewer. Even if every sex industry performer was well-compensated, emotionally well-adjusted, and receiving health benefits with a pension plan, I’d still be troubled by porn. I’m troubled by it because porn disconnects lust from commitment and responsibility; it teaches the lesson that the bodies of others are ours for the taking. I am convinced that spiritually and psychologically, “porn consumption” makes us a little less compassionate, a little less sensitive, a little less likely to connect our own pleasure with our responsibility to share joy and pleasure with another. Because I live as a heterosexual man, I’m more intimately familiar with how this works in the lives of men. But I’m well aware that a growing percentage of “porn product” is consumed by women. While some women surely pretend to enjoy porn in order to please their male partners, there’s no question that a great many others actively delight in viewing it and masturbating to it. And Eric is absolutely right that when he assumes that I find it no less troubling when women do it.

As a feminist, I rejoice that we’ve come so far in our struggle to get the world to acknowledge the reality of women’s sexuality. The “sugar and spice and everything nice” (read: asexual) ideal deserves to die a quick death. The stereotype that women trade sex for what they only really want, love (while men do the reverse) fails to capture both the potential power of the female libido and the potential depth of the male soul. But when it comes to pornography, when it comes to consuming the bodies of the young and the economically vulnerable with our eyes, I see no reason to believe it’s any better when the viewer is a woman and the object is a man. My anti-porn stance is hard, fast, and gender-neutral. (If that line seems vaguely subjective to you, for shame!)

I need to prepare a lecture on Esau, Jacob, Rebekah, Isaac, and birth order.

Why pornography bothers me more than depictions of violence: a response to Dethboy

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 31, 2007
in Movies, Porn and Sexuality
. 62 Comments

In addition to this long one from yesterday, the other post I’ve had percolating in my head is about porn and violence. It comes in response to something I hear quite often from folks: why is it that so many Christians seem so concerned with pornography, and less concerned with violence. For example, in response to my post on “anxiety and arousal” last week, “Dethboy” writes:

…the dirty secret of porn (is) that most of it is actually not that bad…

The most graphic pornography I have ever encountered entailed a woman having needles inserted, one by one, into her breasts, and then extracted. There was a trickle of blood, and it was expressed that it was painful, but overall, the atmosphere was erotic but clinical, precise. Compare this to Saw II, or Hostel, or Turistas. Is seeing someone have sex as negative an impact as seeing someone get thrown into a pit full of needles, have their kidney cut out while their awake, or have their eye torn out in graphic detail? Is seeing a woman get facialed as upsetting as seeing a man impaled on a spike? Would you rather have your children see a woman having sex, or a man being shot in the face? Hugo stands in the middle of a burning house, demanding that, right now, the candle be put out on the night stand, because it’s the *real* problem, not the walls catching fire or the ceiling caving in.

I’ve missed the horror films Dethboy references, but I get the point. “Porn is just about sex”, folks say; “violence is so much worse.” Surely it’s misplaced puritanism to get so worked up about pornography and to be less concerned about violence. There’s a thoughtful response to that, one that others have made (one that my brother Philip makes quite eloquently), and in this post I want to get to it.

Let me be clear that I have little stomach for graphic violence. I hated pictures like Natural Born Killers, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction because of the violence — bloodshed so relentless that it vitiated any redeeming artistic qualities the films had. I went through a brief period in early adolescence where I liked scary movies, but that ended by the time I was old enough to drive. I view the current revival of low-budget horror films as a cynical attempt by Hollywood to maximize profits by working with C-list actors and D-list writers to produce films that can generate quick and massive returns.

I’m willling to sit through heavy violence as part of a larger story; I actully liked last year’s “A History of Violence”, and I’ve sat through my share of war movies in the “Saving Private Ryan” and “Letters from Iwo Jima” vein. And of course, I’m also comfortable with sex scenes in movies, particularly when those sex scenes serve the primary purpose of advancing the plot and providing a depth to the characters, rather than serving merely to titillate. (The graphic sex in “A History of Violence”, for example, fit that bill.) I’m not by nature prudish! I am reluctant to see the bodies of others exploited on screen for my pleasure, whether that pleasure comes in the form of chills (as in a slasher film) or arousal (as in porn). When bodies tell a story, that’s somehow radically different than when they serve only to arouse or shock.

But the thing about depictions of violence in films, television, or in print is simple: it is the graphic depiction of something that we know to be fundamentally bad. To use Dethboy’s example, everyone recognizes instinctively that throwing someone onto a bed of needles is wrong. There is never an instance where to do so is good and loving. In certain instances, killing a bad guy might be justifiable, but most of us are aware that violence itself, while perhaps necessary, is never an a priori good. The violence we see in these films is violence of the sort few of us will ever engage in, Lord willing. The violence we see depicted is what the vast majority of us would never want done to us, and would never want to do to another.

But sex is different. Most of us will have sex at some point in our lives, with ourselves or someone else. Most of us want to have sex, and most of us (it is to be most fervently hoped) will have very good sex at some point with someone we love very much. Sex is, at its best, spine-tinglingly, earth-shatteringly, transcendently good. And most of us know that, or very much want to know it!

Porn lies. Porn misrepresent sex. It takes something that is fundamentally good and joyful and mutual and makes it selfish. It teaches a strong connection between the bodies of others and one’s own pleasure without demanding an iota of concern for the well-being of the other. Ask women whose husbands and boyfriends regularly use porn: are they better lovers as a consequence? Though they might pick up a “trick” or two, they are also far more likely to be distant, remote, and concerned with their own pleasure as a consequence.

Pornography is ultimately more harmful than depicted violence because of the far greater likelihood that those who watch porn will want to imitate what they see. Dethboy refers to “facials”: the ubiquitous habit in modern porn of ejaculating onto a woman’s face. When I was growing up, facials weren’t common in porn. And none of my male friends with whom I talked in great detail about sex talked about the practice; now, I hear frequently from young women whose boyfriends are eager to “try it”. Most of the women, understandably, are at best ambivalent about having their faces and their hair splattered! “Facials” are just one example of a “learned behavior” from porn.

When we see axe murders in the movies, only a tiny fraction of us (thank heavens) will say “Gosh, I’d like to try that!” When we see porn, and particularly when the young watch porn, they are far more likely to draw inspiration from what is shown. (Think about it, people: A young man, watching “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” with his girlfriend, is very unlikely to have an insatiable urge to trundle down to Home Depot, buy a Husqvarna*, and dismember her. Watching the male star of “Cum Bunnies of Cleveland VII” ejaculate on the faces of his co-stars may spark a more imitative response!) For those who watch porn regularly, particularly in adolescence, their sense of what sex is and of how it is supposed to work is deeply affected by what they see. And what they see is almost never loving or mutual. What they see, alas, is a lie.

So yeah, porn bothers me more than violence. And while watching a horror movie might give a teen a night of bad dreams, watching porn may help shape a whole worldview about men, women and pleasure. I’m pretty clear which is more harmful.

*Though you wouldn’t think if of effete little OKOP me, I know quite a bit about chainsaws, having spent much of my childhood on a ranch, clearing brush with an enthusiasm that would put our president (a famous brush-clearer) to shame. And based on years of experience, I’m a great and loyal believer in Husqvarna saws, another fine product from the socialist democracy of Sweden. This is the one I currently covet.