Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The Porn Identity: Is It Damaging Men as Much as Women?

Porn is hard to ignore. Whether it inundates your life intentionally or unintentionally, its out there and its status as an economic cash-cow (revenues each year average $10 billion or higher) are undeniable. Personally I used to be on the fence about pornography; I took the “each to his own” and “whatever floats your boat” stance, mostly because of its inevitability. Porn markets the inevitability factor well. They argue that pre-historic man painted naked women on caves, so what’s the big deal about double penetration? I didn’t have the energy to fight this kind of ridiculous argument so I just let it go. I had more important battles to fight.

Well, consider me officially off the fence. Somehow porn has unintentionally inundated my life in a big way lately through articles, books, news stories, and casual conversations with friends. But instead of the usual battle cries of how damaging pornography is to women, the conversations lately have revolved around the affect pornography has on men. After all, men consume the majority of pornography so it makes perfect sense that they should be included.

The question is this; it is pretty obvious that pornography is damaging to women, and how men perceive women, but is it equally damaging (if not MORE damaging) to men?

If porn turns women into objects, what does it turn men into? Slaves? Animals? Addicts? Abusers? Run of the mill assholes?

Men as a whole are not to blame (the men producing porn are another matter, one that involves my fists and there big dumb heads). If young men are learning about sex by viewing porn in one of its myriad forms then their perception of sex will be altered accordingly. Sure its “fantasy,” but the human brain doesn’t have an easy button when it comes to separating fantasy and reality.

When it comes to the human male it is basically monkey see, monkey do.

Considering the porn that is most frequently consumed, as in what is rented or viewed online the most (I am not including soft-core, erotica, artsy porn simply because its viewing is fractional compared to hard-core gonzo and feature porn) the common denominator is control. Men are always in control, often to the point of causing pain.

Sex as domination, fantastic. Sure glad we don’t live in a rape culture or anything, because then we’d REALLY be in trouble.

Take note that my use of the word “consumption” to describe pornography viewing is intentional. Just like food it satisfies a need, plain and simple. But also like food moderation can be a problem. And it’s the food that is bad for you that tastes so much better.

Herein lies the problem of porn. Because it is so masterful at taking emotion completely out of the equation, porn becomes boring. Producers are scraping the bottom of one nasty barrel for the most extreme fare they can get. In this equation the nasty, demeaning, pain-inducing factor goes up while man’s capacity for human decency and empathy plummet.

Porn is destroying man’s capacity to remain HUMAN. This is the thesis argument of Robert Jensen’s excellent book Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Consider this excerpt:

“For many men, sex is often a place where we both display and reinforce our power over women. By that, I don’t mean that all men at all times use sex that way, but that a pattern of such relationships is readily visible in this society. Women deal with it every day, and at some level most men understand it. We can see that pornography not only raises issues about the buying and selling of women, but…about sex in general, about the way in which men and women in this culture are commonly trained to be sexual. It’s about men and women, and sex and power.

We live in a time of sexual crisis. That makes life difficult, but it also creates a space for invention and creativity…the possibility of a different way of understanding the world and myself, the possibility of escaping the masculinity trap set for me, that chance to become something more than a man, more that just a john-to become a human being.”

I don’t have any lofty ideas about single-handedly bringing down the pornography industry, however much I would like to. I will have to settle for indignation, outrage…but mostly sadness. I am sad for the men that are exposed to this smut, this degradation of women, and think it is the norm. Think that this is what the masculine identity looks like. Think that the women in these films are not somebody’s friend, somebody’s sister, somebody’s daughter.

It is our job to remind them. When they watch Ariana Jollee have sex with 65 men in one day as she does in the film 65 Guy Cream Pie they need to remember that her real name is Laura David and that Laura David is somebody’s daughter. Is that the life a father envisions for his daughter?

We are indeed in the midst of a sexual crisis, and we don’t have the luxury of riding the fence when the stakes are this high.

Lets take sex off the screen and put it back in the bedroom where it belongs.


For some incredibly different perspectives on this subject, I suggest the following reading:
Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity by Robert Jensen
Feast of Burden: The Transgressive, Disturbing World of “Feeding Porn” by Jessica Hester
Porn-Again Christian by Mark Driscoll

Friday, September 11, 2009

Some Gender-Related Factoids

  • In the 1400's a law was set forth in England that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have "the rule of thumb."
  • Many years ago in Scotland a new game was invented. It was ruled "Gentlemen Only...Ladies Forbidden." Thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.
  • The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
  • Men can read smaller print than women can.
  • Bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laserprinters were all invented by women.
  • It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon.
  • Men’s shirts have the buttons on the right but women’s blouses have the buttons on the left. This is because during the Victorian period buttons were quite expensive and were mostly worn by the wealthy. Since proper, well-to-do ladies were dressed by their servants, and most people are right-handed, their buttons were placed on the servant’s right which is the wearer’s left side. Most gentlemen dressed themselves so their buttons were placed on the wearer’s right side.
  • Every year, 11,000 Americans injure themselves while trying out bizarre sexual positions.
  • On average women blink nearly twice as much as men.