Is Porn degrading to women?

Slate's Book Club looks at two new texts; 'Pornified' and 'Female Chauvinist Pig', and then debates the heady cultural questions of whether porn is damaging to women/society or not.

Sadly, both texts appear to be thinly veiled sonservative screeds against porn - but the debate by the three women of the book club (Laura Kipnis, Wendy Shalit and Meghan O'Rourke) was far more interesting than either text appears to be.

"Both paint a depressingly disconnected world, like Sartre's No Exit for the porn age: Women want intimacy with men, men want fantasy sex with porn stars, and the porn stars presumably just want a paycheck. No one's getting much pleasure. It's all alienated, compulsive masturbation, cartoonish artificial breasts, and incessant pop-up ads." - Kipnis

"Here are a few of the many bad things Paul blames on porn: failing relationships, men's flight from intimacy, men judging women by harsh appearance standards, men liking large breasts, female body-image issues, general female insecurity, lack of sexual foreplay, male impotence, men demanding more oral sex, infrequent sex among couples—just about everything but acne. (Yes, a single explanation for every social ill is very convenient.) - Kipnis

"True, there have always been men who objectified women, but society also encouraged them to grow up at some point. But today, even grown women are taking their cues from the most immature males. Under pressure to compete at being "hot," young girls are making objects of themselves. Don't you find this a teensy bit depressing? I certainly do. Levy asks, essentially, isn't there a way for women to be sexual without having to be publicly sexual? " - Shalit

"Reading 'Pornified', I sometimes thought the women were simply allowing an unrealistic dream of imaginative fidelity to shape their response to their partners. At other times, I wanted to get myself to a nunnery, so crazily unappealing—and relentlessly objectifying—did these guys seem, with their anomic affection for digital bodies and their disgust with live girls." - O'Rourke

"But what about the milder cases: Are men who look at porn on a slippery slope to permanent alienation, as Paul worries? Does pornography really shape your expectations of what you want from the person you're sleeping with, and if so, does it distance you fundamentally from that person? It seems to me those questions aren't necessarily the same. Paul, I think, assumes they are. I'm not suggesting that porn opens our hearts and minds. I'm merely questioning the conviction that pornography is inherently degrading. Likewise, what if women who flash their tits on Girls Gone Wild are enjoying themselves—if not all of them, then a select few? What then?" - O'Rourke


See what I mean? Interesting, thoughtful and salient commentary from three women on porn.

As to my own thoughts, let me say this; until Playboy came along most guys had to make do with the stimulation of a bare ankle flashed suggestively at church, or the Sears catalogue spread on brassieres.

In economic terms, this describes a supply problem, not an absence of demand. They enjoyed the ankle or the Sears catalogue because that was all they could get.

After Heffner, porn was defiantly mainstream.

All the internet has done since Heff blew the doors open in the 60's-70's is democratize the imagery available. Are you into stout Phlillipino girls? Big butts? Whip cream lubricated lesbian orgies? Burly motorcycle cops? Women in high heels smoking cigars? Tattooed punks? Puffy nipples? Hairy legs? Amputees?

Somewhere there is a porn website just for you. Which is another way of saying, that the supply now meets the demand.

Is porn destructive to relationships? Not in and of itself it isn't (though I am reminded of a friend whose ex found his porn stash and went through it all with a magic marker blacking out the naughty bits - my advice to him was an unequivocal 'Dump Her Now').

Addiction of any kind is destructive to relationships, porn no more (and likely less so) than many other problems we can addict ourselves to (like say; gambling, smoking, scrap-booking or cocaine).

My advice? Watch it together. Find porn that works for both parties. Divine your desires. Share them. Celebrate them.

The alternative is some form of self denial or self censorship. And as Freud clearly showed us, sublimation and repression of our desires will only make that slim and dashing ankle at church more dangerous - not less.