Myths indeed

Naomi Wolf writes an interesting but, ultimately, unconvincing essay here on how bad porn is for people — not, as was once thought, because it turns men into ravening and depraved beasts, but because it turns them into decadent porn addicts who aren’t interested in Real Women.

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?

[Cue the Lotus-Eaters riffs here.]

It is, as I said, ultimately unconvincing, because Wolf never gets beyond some anecdotal, self-selected comments from college-age kids who have self-image problems and odd ideas about interactions between men and women.

The fundamental problem is, that describes nearly all college-age kids, at least from back in the dark ages when I was in college. We all worried about how we measured up to ideals (even as we realized those ideals really weren’t), we all were lonely in our own ways, and desperate in others, and terribly, terribly confused about how to relate to the opposite sex (except for gay kids, who were terribly, terribly confused about how to relate to the same sex). Part of the college experience (at least on a live-in campus) is working through that stuff.

Wolf, though, takes it all at face value, and paints a picture of a particularly lost and distant generation, where the guys want Cyber-Sallies (or at least pay attention to them) and the women want guys who love them for themselves.

Guess what — two decades ago, it wasn’t all that much different, except that instead of the guys having computer-generated women or porn stars to ogle, they had Penthouse and Hustler and the like (and, yes, the occasional stripper or porn flick). Downloadable video loops of porn actresses uttering their stock phrases were less common in their analogs of twenty years ago, but there were plenty of other images competing against Real Women that those women felt inadequate against (and which the men who ogled them were ultimately unsatisfied by, even though they performed admirably as a physical release).

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.

Same tune I heard two decades ago, insofar as “measuring up” to poster girls, Penthouse girls, or other pin-ups. And then it was more common to hear nice girls lament that if they didn’t sleep around, or give over, they couldn’t hold onto a guy.

I suspect, given those two data points (one more than Wolf seems to consider), that’s something of a universal lament.

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.

And too many kids in my era learned about sex from Hustler, and faced the same question. Or maybe it was from an older brother, or friends. The discovery that there’s a difference between sexual activity and interpersonal relationships is one of the fundamental discoveries of adolescence and young adulthood. Porn hasn’t changed that.

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.

Sounds like Friday night in the dorm to me. Except for those of us who played D&D, of course.

Wolf notes, correctly, that porn has changed over the years. And so it has — as has all other media, and not just sexually. Nostalgia aside, most movies and TV shows (let alone music) of the 70s and 80s, for example, would flop today. I’m not convinced that the greater sfx and arguably more envelope-pushing plot lines of, say, Firefly over Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, is a sign of decadence, social decay, or senses-dulling excess. Similarly, while the average porn of 1980 might look quaint compared to that of 2003 (though the nude pin-up is always popular), it’s not clear to me that the change has led to a generation of jaded sybarites in our colleges, any more than other cultural changes have. If there’s anything hurting interpersonal relationships at colleges, it’s various online activities that keep kids in their rooms, alone — and those are far broader than just porn.

Wolf’s article is interesting, and has a few observations worth noting, but ultimately she seems to have had an idea and looked selectively for comments that support it, ignoring that the late teens have long been a time for figuring out how to relate, sexually and emotionally, and usually with a lot of pain, loneliness, and uncertainty along with it. Porn, in this instance, has little to do with it.

(via InstaPundit)