The Myth of Pornography

Naomi Wolf wrote a while ago in Porn Myth. She observed that feminist Andrea Dworkin’s prediction that pornography would flood the modern world and become compulsive rapists was largely correct. However, she notes:

“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.’”

Wolf goes on to lament that whereas women once had a ‘high exchange value’ on the sexual market, these days women must look more and more like the porn stars and skinny, surgically-adjusted models of the media if they’re to be considered sexy. A real, warm female body was once enough to turn men on, she claims and now the stakes have been raised by pornography. Men have come to expect to find in real life the airbrushed sexual objects they find online.

‘Today, real naked women are just bad porn.’

Although Naimi Wolf paints the picture with rather a large brush – that’s what she’s paid to do, after all – there’s little doubt that our sex lives have been changed by pornography and the internet. No longer do adolescents have to pluck up the courage to shoplift a magazine from the top shelf, give them an internet connection and a working knowledge of Google and they’ll soon have as many naked bodies as their eyes can handle.

On one level there’s a certain amount of freedom in learning what people’s bodies look like without any clothes on – when you’re young, that's one of the greatest secrets in the world. Still, it’s often one of the first thoughts that goes through a person’s head when he or she meets someone new. Oh, like that. Interesting. Next.

Wolf compares our deluged world of sexual imagery to traditional cultures like Orthodox Judaism where a woman will not even show her hair to anyone except her husband. The atmosphere of charged sexuality is kept strong by its secrecy and exclusivity, she claims. I can’t help thinking, however, of a 27 year old religious Israeli I met who had to ask me, a goy, just why women had periods.

Wolf isn’t advocating a return to that kind of secluded society by any means, she’s just observing that sex is no longer sacred and that it’s a shame. She’s right, of course and yet pornography only proliferates in this society because our sexual mores are so open. Sex has always been the first thing most religions have tried to control and then dole out to the faithful in limited doses.

Of course, now in all the sexually-repressed countries of the world, there’s also the internet. They receive the by-products of our own culture without having gone through the same social evolutions. Whether the internet provides a catalyst for change in these countries or is simply an example of cultural pollution remains to be scene. Will photos of lithe dominatrixes do much for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia? Maybe not but it might push young men to wonder why they can’t even go on a date in public without being arrested.

Does pornography reduce the male libido? In a culture of instant gratification, less really is more. Comparisons have the power to make us miserable and if we’re constantly looking at our lovers and wishing they were 19 year old models, we’re setting ourselves up for a lifetime of dissatisfaction.

More than that, sex is sacred. It is mysterious and exciting and risky and the one place where you can truly let down all your defences and allow the vulnerability that is the prerequisite to true intimacy with another soul.

But presumably not if you’re filming yourselves at the same time.