Darklady Versus Naomi Wolf
 

The Porn Myth
In the end, porn doesn’t whet men’s appetites—it turns them off the real thing.

By Naomi Wolf
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/

At a benefit the other night, I saw Andrea Dworkin, the anti-porn activist most famous in the eighties for her conviction that opening the floodgates of pornography would lead men to see real women in sexually debased ways. If we did not limit pornography, she argued—before Internet technology made that prospect a technical impossibility—most men would come to objectify women as they objectified porn stars, and treat them accordingly. In a kind of domino theory, she predicted, rape and other kinds of sexual mayhem would surely follow.

The feminist warrior looked gentle and almost frail. The world she had, Cassandra-like, warned us about so passionately was truly here: Porn is, as David Amsden says, the “wallpaper” of our lives now. So was she right or wrong?

Not Tonight, Honey. I'm Logging On.: Internet porn is everywhere; even "nice" guys are hooked. So where does that leave their girlfriends? By David Amsden (October 20, 2003)
The New Position on Casual Sex: The rise of Internet dating has brought a sexual openness (not to mention one-night stands) to the younger generation not seen since the seventies heyday of Maxwell's Plum. But can there be too much of a good thing? By Vanessa Grigoriadis (January 13, 2003)

She was right about the warning, wrong about the outcome. As she foretold, pornography did breach the dike that separated a marginal, adult, private pursuit from the mainstream public arena. The whole world, post-Internet, did become pornographized. Young men and women are indeed being taught what sex is, how it looks, what its etiquette and expectations are, by pornographic training—and this is having a huge effect on how they interact.

But the effect is not making men into raving beasts. On the contrary: 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.

Here is what young women tell me on college campuses when the subject comes up: They can’t compete, and they know it. For how can a real woman—with pores and her own breasts and even sexual needs of her own (let alone with speech that goes beyond “More, more, you big stud!”)—possibly compete with a cybervision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer’s least specification?

For most of human history, erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn.

For two decades, I have watched young women experience the continual “mission creep” of how pornography—and now Internet pornography—has lowered their sense of their own sexual value and their actual sexual value. When I came of age in the seventies, it was still pretty cool to be able to offer a young man the actual presence of a naked, willing young woman. There were more young men who wanted to be with naked women than there were naked women on the market. If there was nothing actively alarming about you, you could get a pretty enthusiastic response by just showing up. Your boyfriend may have seen Playboy, but hey, you could move, you were warm, you were real. Thirty years ago, simple lovemaking was considered erotic in the pornography that entered mainstream consciousness: When Behind the Green Door first opened, clumsy, earnest, missionary-position intercourse was still considered to be a huge turn-on.

Well, I am 40, and mine is the last female generation to experience that sense of sexual confidence and security in what we had to offer. Our younger sisters had to compete with video porn in the eighties and nineties, when intercourse was not hot enough. Now you have to offer—or flirtatiously suggest—the lesbian scene, the ejaculate-in-the-face scene. Being naked is not enough; you have to be buff, be tan with no tan lines, have the surgically hoisted breasts and the Brazilian bikini wax—just like porn stars. (In my gym, the 40-year-old women have adult pubic hair; the twentysomethings have all been trimmed and styled.) Pornography is addictive; the baseline gets ratcheted up. By the new millennium, a vagina—which, by the way, used to have a pretty high “exchange value,” as Marxist economists would say—wasn’t enough; it barely registered on the thrill scale. All mainstream porn—and certainly the Internet—made routine use of all available female orifices.

The porn loop is de rigueur, no longer outside the pale; starlets in tabloids boast of learning to strip from professionals; the “cool girls” go with guys to the strip clubs, and even ask for lap dances; college girls are expected to tease guys at keg parties with lesbian kisses à la Britney and Madonna.

But does all this sexual imagery in the air mean that sex has been liberated—or is it the case that the relationship between the multi-billion-dollar porn industry, compulsiveness, and sexual appetite has become like the relationship between agribusiness, processed foods, supersize portions, and obesity? If your appetite is stimulated and fed by poor-quality material, it takes more junk to fill you up. People are not closer because of porn but further apart; people are not more turned on in their daily lives but less so.

The young women who talk to me on campuses about the effect of pornography on their intimate lives speak of feeling that they can never measure up, that they can never ask for what they want; and that if they do not offer what porn offers, they cannot expect to hold a guy. The young men talk about what it is like to grow up learning about sex from porn, and how it is not helpful to them in trying to figure out how to be with a real woman. Mostly, when I ask about loneliness, a deep, sad silence descends on audiences of young men and young women alike. They know they are lonely together, even when conjoined, and that this imagery is a big part of that loneliness. What they don’t know is how to get out, how to find each other again erotically, face-to-face.

So Dworkin was right that pornography is compulsive, but she was wrong in thinking it would make men more rapacious. A whole generation of men are less able to connect erotically to women—and ultimately less libidinous.

The reason to turn off the porn might become, to thoughtful people, not a moral one but, in a way, a physical- and emotional-health one; you might want to rethink your constant access to porn in the same way that, if you want to be an athlete, you rethink your smoking. The evidence is in: Greater supply of the stimulant equals diminished capacity.

“For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn.”

After all, pornography works in the most basic of ways on the brain: It is Pavlovian. An orgasm is one of the biggest reinforcers imaginable. If you associate orgasm with your wife, a kiss, a scent, a body, that is what, over time, will turn you on; if you open your focus to an endless stream of ever-more-transgressive images of cybersex slaves, that is what it will take to turn you on. The ubiquity of sexual images does not free eros but dilutes it.

Other cultures know this. I am not advocating a return to the days of hiding female sexuality, but 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.” These cultures urge men not to look at porn because they know that a powerful erotic bond between parents is a key element of a strong family.

And feminists have misunderstood many of these prohibitions.

I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. “Can’t I even see your hair?” I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. “No,” she demurred quietly. “Only my husband,” she said with a calm sexual confidence, “ever gets to see my hair.”

When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husband—the kids are not allowed—the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.

She must feel, I thought, so hot.

Compare that steaminess with a conversation I had at Northwestern, after I had talked about the effect of porn on relationships. “Why have sex right away?” a boy with tousled hair and Bambi eyes was explaining. “Things are always a little tense and uncomfortable when you just start seeing someone,” he said. “I prefer to have sex right away just to get it over with. You know it’s going to happen anyway, and it gets rid of the tension.”

“Isn’t the tension kind of fun?” I asked. “Doesn’t that also get rid of the mystery?”

“Mystery?” He looked at me blankly. And then, without hesitating, he replied: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sex has no mystery.”

 

And now for the rebuttal...

Feminism's Sour Porn Grapes

by Darklady
http://www.yesportal.com

Naomi Wolf's latest anti-porn rant heavy on opinions/light on facts.

After finishing feminist writer Naomi Wolf's latest anti-porn temper tantrum (http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/) one of the many thoughts that zoomed through my mind was "sounds like somebody isn't getting laid - not even with the help of porn."

This is too bad, because the few photos I've been able to find online indicate that Wolf is a pretty hot looking chick. She's got impressive professional credentials, having been a consulting editor at the now defunct George Magazine and an advisor to Al Gore's failed presidential bid. She co-founded the Woodhull Institute (http://www.woodhull.org) -- which is not to be confused with the Woodhull Foundation (http://www.woodhullfoundation.org) -- and has her words in publications including The New Republic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Glamour, Ms., and the above cited New York Metro.com. The Yale graduate/Oxford University Rhodes scholar is also the author of The Beauty Myth, Fire with Fire, and the provocatively titled Promiscuities. This is an impressive list of accomplishments and regardless of whether or not I agree with all of Wolf's conclusions I admit that her contribution to feminist academic dialogue has been great. However, I also believe that the word "academic" is of vital importance when evaluating many of her views regarding pornography. Speaking as a woman who has spent the past seven years writing about - and watching - pornography, I must confess that ivory tower feminists bore me.

The now 40 feminist writer -- who probably wouldn't be amused to learn that there's a porn star riffing her name -- laments the sad state of sexual affairs Americans have allegedly found themselves in thanks to the wickedness of pornography. According to the esteemed Ms. Wolf, the woman she sees as the goddess of all things anti-porn (and pretty much anti-intercourse in general) was right when she foretold that it would bring about the end of all that is beautiful and sacred. However, instead of naughty photos turning men into ravening rapists like Andrea Dworkin anticipated - it has entirely unmanned them. Instead of objectifying the poor, helpless, weaker sex that is woman, their gender opposites have come to ignore them. Given the repellent aspect that some feminist thinkers have defined as the natural male condition, one would think this would be a welcome state of affairs. Seems like men just can't satisfy some women - in so many ways.

Where feminists once blamed the fashion industry, the advertising industry, the cosmetics industry, and the diet industry for all that ailed women and their quest for equity, porn is the new omniscient evil. According to Wolf, it is from porn that young people learn how to interact and have sex with one another. So much for sex education in public schools, the involvement of caring parents, or the copious number of quality books and magazines on the subject. The Internet, of course, is the primary vector for this insidious infection. Apparently no number of alternative viewpoint websites, publications, or videos can contend with the fascinating siren that is pornography. But instead of Dworkin's nightmare of serial rapists, the once savage male has become a milquetoast coward afraid of interacting with real women, disinterested in their "mere flesh and blood," and suffering from a "deadening" to their libidos.

Yes, it's not like the good old days. Wolf sorrowfully recounts how flaunting a modern girl's goodies just doesn't put men into the idiotic sexual frenzy that it did in the past. This must, of course, be due to the numbing affects of pornography and not the fact that men are sick and tired of being teased - and aware that AIDS and other STDs can lurk in even the prettiest of girl's pussies. Pornography does not piss and moan about how much time a man has spent on the computer. Pornography does not demand to know when you're coming to bed. Pornography does not get pregnant. Pornography does not get jealous. Pornography does not require a condom. Pornography does not call you up in the middle of the night to suggest that you visit the free clinic.

No, indeed. In fact, pornography sounds pretty darn exciting the way that Wolf describes it. Certainly more exciting than the real women that Wolf suggests must sit alone at night living a life somehow less fulfilling because there is not enough heterosexual intercourse going on. Whatever happened to the days when women wanted a life outside of the bedroom and its religiously inspired responsibilities and duties? Pornography, as Wolf describes it in her dot commentary, is just too adventurous. It will take it up the ass, in the mouth, and between the pussy lips. It wants on top, on its knees, on its back, hanging from a trapeze, and any which way it can. And we know that real women would never enjoy any of these things, right?

Invariably, the long-dead horse of addiction is given yet a few more whacks with the disapproval stick. Is it that porn is truly so much more appealing than the average woman or that men in Wolf's world are just too dirt stupid and weak to close a magazine or turn off the computer? Neither of these proposed solutions sound very appealing for the women standing nakedly nearby, their lacey teddies apparently unrumpled, their carefully coiffed hair annoying kempt, their liberated cunts unplunged.

The way Wolf tells it, any female whose pubic hair hasn't been sculpted into a heart, whose belly isn't flat enough to bounce a coin off of, or whose boobs didn't come from a plastic surgeon might as well join a monastery. This comes as a shock to those of us who bear no resemblance to the Vivid girls yet somehow manage to get laid quite satisfactorily on a regular basis - sometimes even after (or while) viewing explicit sexual material.

Naomi Wolf is not a stupid woman. She has an English degree from Yale and was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University. But that doesn't mean she knows everything. Nor does it mean that her writings are supported by facts instead of strongly held personal opinions. While I do not doubt that young women come to her to confess their frustration with their boyfriends and the effect they believe pornography has on their intimate experiences, I also do not doubt that those are exactly the kinds of young women most likely to strike up a conversation on the subject with her. I am not surprised that young men confide to Wolf that porn hasn't done much to help them understand their female peers. Just as I'd never expect a person who's seen Star Trek or Star Wars 1000 times to be qualified to pilot the space shuttle, I'd never expect a person who's watched 1000 money shots to know how the girl next door likes to be kissed. He will, however, have an advantage that I didn't have when I was young because he'll at least have some idea how Tab A goes into Slot B (and C and D).

While none of these things surprise me, what does surprise me - and deeply concerns me - is how much like the sex negative religious and philosophical right many of Wolf's comments sound. Where some might consider it a sign of liberation and sexual frolicking, she derides women who enjoy visiting strip clubs with their male partners and ordering lap dances, that learn to remove their garments like a 21st century Salome, or that kiss one another with the knowledge that it gets guys hard. Given her early insistence to the contrary, one can only wonder how such a response could be possible if the real thing is so vastly inferior to X-rated photographs and streaming video. Even if such exhibitionistic behavior does work - isn't it exactly what she had previously said she'd liked about the lost salad days of her tender youth?

These potentially sour grapes aside, it is Wolf's unexpected praise of what one might be tempted to call traditional family values that surprises me the most. The very book many feminists previously claimed had held women captive for centuries is unexpectedly called upon to support the anti-porn view. The Bible, we are assured, had it right when it told men to be entirely satisfied with their wives. Further, cultures that proscribe erotic materials do so not because they wish to censor thought but because they wisely know that sex is best "when there is some sacredness to it." And here I'd always thought it was best when there was mutual love and respect between those involved. Additionally, Wolf proposes that sex increases its fun quotient "when it is not on tap all the time." Suddenly it's not just that porn stars are so much better looking than everyone else, it's the sheer availability of erotic imagery and behavior that is making men's cocks fall asleep in the presence of the modern Everywoman.

Indeed, from reading Wolf's consistently unsupported personal opinions paraded as incontrovertible fact, one might conclude that nobody knows what gets men and women hot and horny better than an ancient culture that insisted upon abstinence until marriage. Her single real world example in support of her view amusingly presents a fetishizing Wolf singing the praises of an old friend who has taken the headscarf of Orthodox Judaism. Her friend's pretty blonde hair is now tucked away from all of the world except the eyes of her husband. Once upon a time feminists would have claimed that such a thing unfairly sexualizes women and makes their bodies the property of their husbands. Here it's presented as a liberating form of privatized sex. Now, I've got no problem with people adapting whatever mutually consenting religious views they wish into their daily lives, but I'm not going to pretend that I'm interested in having my sex life dictated by anyone other than myself, no matter how sacred the text being used to justify that control may be. Somehow I don't think Wolf would feel the same way about a lifestyle submissive's desire to wear her Master's collar or to burn his initials into her flesh. Yet, the way Wolf raves about the sexiness of her modest friend, the more I wonder when I should expect to read her praise the Taliban's legislation of burquas. If the covering of her friend's hair is such a big turn on for her husband, just imagine how perpetually turgid the guys in Afghanistan must have been when they couldn't even see a woman's ankles!

Ultimately, what most concerns and disappoints me about Wolf's litany of complaints against pornography is her refusal to back up any of her opinions with fact - and her insistence that sex should maintain a sense of mystery. Mysteries are a result of ignorance. The last thing I want young people dealing with during sexual intimacy is ignorance. Let them enjoy the mystery that comes with gaining knowledge and understanding of their partners but please, oh, please, don't encourage them to become lost in the "mystery" that is sex. A "mystery" that nearly every mammal on the planet will discover in time. Unlike Ms. Wolf, I do not believe that sexual tension depends upon sexual "mystery." I believe that it depends upon chemistry.

Of course there are people who would rather look at porn than interact with another human being. Perhaps it's best that they do so until they gain the skills to do otherwise. And of course there are people who do not expose themselves to a wide variety of sexual and social experiences, and thus do not gain a mature perspective about their preferred sexual gender and its likes or dislikes. But is this the fault of pornography or the fault of the self-limiting individual? Of course there is porn that is of poor quality or that offends or upsets. Pornography is fantasy, and just as the movie theaters are filled with romantic, horrific, comedic, and adventuresome offerings, so are porn videos and photo spreads. Pornography is big business. Pornography has always been popular - and appears to be well on its way to becoming increasingly popular with women as well as men. Interestingly enough - and quite at odds with Ms. Wolf's contentions, niche pornography including that featuring fat women, "older" women, and amateurs is among some of the most popular and has some of the most devoted fans and followers.

If women want men to understand their needs and desires, they're a lot more
likely to accomplish their goals by providing positive examples and participating in open hearted and open minded discussion with their partners than they are by standing around, pouting, and bitching about women who enjoy explicit materials or activities. If their interests and those of their lovers do not match, then seeking a more appropriate partner seems a better idea than blaming everything on porn. As for Wolf's contention that pornography is to blame for the lack of self-esteem that supposedly plagues today's young women I feel compelled to quote one of my favorite strong - and decidedly non "porn worthy" -- women, Eleanor Roosevelt, who wisely pointed in her 1937 autobiography This Is My Story, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

I refuse to give anyone - whether pornographer or feminist or right wing evangelist - consent to make me feel inferior. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some porn to watch - and a real world sexual encounter to enjoy.