This anti-porn article by Naomi Wolf has been making the blogosphere rounds lately, most recently by way of a dismissal of it at The Intermittent. I’m of two minds about this.
On the one hand, I’m a lot more sympathetic to Wolf than most people, and even many feminists, seem to be. This is because I found The Beauty Myth, her book about how the fashion, diet, entertainment, and cosmetics industries essentially generate neurosis in women to fuel their respective economic engines, both compelling and convincing. It does not hurt that I’ve seen this in action, live and in person, with my wife, who without putting too fine a point on it was driven to slow suicide with the help of the standard of “beauty” propogated by contemporary culture. The current wave of “lighten up!” sentiment is well taken when it’s used against the stifling of dissent that’s part and parcel of political correctness, but when it ignores or ridicules the real, demonstrable damage done to real, demonstrable women by unrealistic, impossible standards of appearance and behavior, it’s something to fight against, not for.
And Wolf’s article points out many things to be feared about the pervasive influence of pornography on our culture. I guarantee you that high school and college age girls now feel compelled to kiss each other to turn guys on. This is not some victory for the sexual revolution–well, it may be for some girls who are genuinely bisexual or even lesbian–it’s just forcing yet another unrealistic, male-dictated sex role on women who ultimately have little say in the matter if they want to be valued as sexually attractive beings. I’ve talked about this before in the context of MTV (the Tatu and Madonna/Britney/Christina bullshit), but it seems reasonable to suggest that porn has helped raise the demand for this sort of behavior among men–aided and abetted, of course, by the pop-culture media that jerks itself off about such things (Rolling Stone, anyone?). Finally, there’s certainly an argument to be made that while porn is interesting and arousing, PORN! as trumpeted on the covers of every New York City-based glossy and beamed into our homes in countless salacious MTV and E! and Dateline reports and staring down at us in the shape of a 200-foot Jenna Jameson billboard in Times Square is a tedious, anti-sensual bore, just like trucker hats and Ashton Kutcher.
But Wolf also evinces what appears to be a strange and, I think, unhealthy aversion to sex practices that have little or nothing to do with pornography. Listen to the way she seems to shudder as she discusses the idea of using orifices other than the vagina for sexual gratification, or the prospect of having one’s face ejaculated upon. I’ve never been able to figure out what’s so degrading or demeaning or insulting or dominating about any of these things. They aren’t degrading or demeaning or insulting or controlling at all–if you’re doing it right. They can, and maybe even should, be a part of any sexually healthy person’s repertoire of giving and receiving pleasure. Personal preferences may vary, and no one should do anything they find physically or emotionally uncomfortable, but Wolf appears to suggest that there’s something intrinsically wrong with these things, beyond the clear wrong of feeling pressured to do them.
This vague sense that sex is somehow dirty or bad is reinforced by her effusive praise of an orthodox Jewish friend of hers who has adopted the strict dress code and head-covering routine of that religion. Wolf breathlessly describes how “hot” it must be for this woman to only be visible, sexually, to her husband. I don’t think I need to suggest that you simply substitute “fundamentalist Muslim” and “burqa” for “orthodox Jewish” and “head-covering” for the bizarrely retrograde and repressive nature of this notion to be readily apparent. I’m all for women covering up if that’s what they feel like doing, but fundamentalist religions make not doing so a sin, something intrinsically wrong and bad. There’s nothing hot about that at all, particularly since such rules of dress and conduct usually applies a lot more stringently to women than they do to men. And the idea that this kind of covering-up is for the wife’s benefit as opposed to the husband’s (his property, his alone to enjoy) is simply preposterous. (I don’t mean to suggest that orthodox Jews are akin to the Taliban or the ayatollahs–I’ve heard of very few honor killings in Crown Heights, just by way of a for instance–but you’ll forgive me if I have very little respect for religions that prove how “special” women are by forcing them to shroud themselves like dead bodies at a crime scene.)
As for the notion that men are being “spoiled” by porn and are no longer attracted to real live women, I’ve seen some anecdotal evidence of this, but in my experience and in that of most guys i know, seeing sexy women makes us more interested in being with sexy women, not less. At any rate, if the prevalence of male-directed porn is truly a problem, to me the answer is more porn, not less–and this time of the female-centric variety. And not just porn, either, but Maxim-style magazines where the latest male starlets are paraded around half naked and airbrushed for the perusal of bored women commuters; sitcoms where dimpy, annoying women are married to gorgeous, intelligent men and not the other way around; Justin Timberlake making out with David Bowie; and so forth. Women are not going to be sexually empowered by sticking them in head coverings and nuking the Internet so men have no other options; they’re going to be empowered when they take the reigns of sexual culture and are free to explore and demonstrate what they find sexy, not what they’re supposed to find sexy–pornography and puritanism be damned.