As a porn addict (seriously) I feel I have the qualifications to add some perspective on the matter.
The porn question has usually been a chicken/egg situation: can you not get lid because you watch porn or do you watch porn because you can't get laid? In my case, it was the latter. Around the time I started buying it, my complete invisibility to girls caused me to decide "if I can't have the real thing, I may as well get the next best thing" and thus my addiction was born. And I have no intention of fixing it. I have an addictive personality and given the number of things to which I could be addicted, I find porn to be the safest. Porn won't cause kidney or renal failure, liver cirrhosis, or get my legs broken by Russian mobsters.
Some of Wolf's points have merit, but then towards the end, her arguments veer into dangerous territory not because of it's seemingly un-feminist views, but rather for what it implicitly suggests about human nature.
Porn gives you variety and experimentation; things that are not only looked down upon in relationships, but sometimes quashed entirely. Some people look at standup comedy that talks about relationships as humor, but I see it as commentary on serious problems in the way humans interrelate. We don't have boring libidos--we're very flexible--but we do have stingent contexts where libidos are allowed to roam. Aside from role-playing, people don;t get to tool around much with different things, and even then, role-playing is restricted in how much creativity can go into it. Most people never get to find out what they want or like, much less cultivate those tastes, and even when they do, they often deny it if they think they shouldn't want it. Good luck getting in the practice either: you need the pretense of a relationship just to get a partner to experiment with.
Try saying "I'm bored" in a relationship and see what happens. This brings me to the second allure of porn:
Escape.
Escape from what? What else? DRAMA. Oh, drama fucking SUCKS, we say so every day. Girls in porn never get paranoid, analyze the time delay between e-mails, go poking around in your belongings while demanding privacy for themselves, or concoct unbelievable intepretations of what a candy wrapper on the floor means about your feelings for her. Girls in porn like sex as much as men do, and they respond to stimulation very easily. For women, this may seem like the over-sexualization of women, but for men it's making a more sexually relatable woman who doesn't take as much work to please. We like porn because we can get a woman who is both visually and personally appealing who is as easy to please as we are and doesn't want to argue. All the benefits, none of the stress.
And don't blame porn for drama. It was there long before the invention of the daguerrotype. Men and women have always had their similarities and differences, but THEY ARE NEVER ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT IT! Nowhere in any magazine or article have I ever seen it mentioned that women and men never take the time to learn the other's language or lexicon. And even if one makes the effort, it's still gender-biased. Men are supposed to do all the legwork to learning how to appreciate a woman's emotional needs, but women are never encouraged to learn the language of sexual expression. For all of it's progressive thinking, feminism is still tied to the chivalrous perception that women are special, pure, and naturally good unless corrupted by an outside influence. It would be like admitting they were as much to blame as men. Try saying that at an N.O.W. conference without getting castrated.
I can't tell you how many arguments and asinine conversations I've seen couples have where I just wanted to slap the fuck out of both of them because they kept skirting the core of the argument with segues about implied subtext in comments and actions. I have Asperger's and even I couldn't believe that rational beings would engage in such insipid dialogue! And these things happen so much that standup comedians make a fortune telling jokes about these things without realizing how terrifying it is that these behaviors are so widespread.
But there's a telling validation to her concern...
or is it the case that the relationship between the multi-billion-dollar porn industry, compulsiveness, and sexual appetite has become like the relationship between agribusiness, processed foods, supersize portions, and obesity? If your appetite is stimulated and fed by poor-quality material, it takes more junk to fill you up.
Porn's acceptance of technology as a means of distribution is probably what gets it blamed for the effects of the digital age. We've seen that technology is affecting our social skills by allowing us to maximize communication and minimizing the effort. But the old-fashioned way was loaded with bias and baggage and anxiety-causing presumptions. Most of the push to modernize socialization came from the asphixiating protocols they had in place that I think often pushed people into psychotic romantic notions about love and hasty marriages.
In a way, porn is truly indicative of the modern age: compartmentalization. In a world where everything is scheduled and micromanaged, sexuality has been similarly boxed in. Sexual gratification is treated like a lunch break or a pilates class...open a slot for it, get your fix, then move on to the next thing. Busy, busy, busy, gotta keep moving.
If you wanted to fix this, you'd have to change everything from the structure of the global economy to the Protestant Work Ethic that dominates Americna values. Until ruthless commercial pursuits become unprofitable, you're not likely to see these trends stop.
Here is where I think she goes into dangerous territory...
It is Pavlovian. An orgasm is one of the biggest reinforcers imaginable. If you associate orgasm with your wife, a kiss, a scent, a body, that is what, over time, will turn you on; if you open your focus to an endless stream of ever-more-transgressive images of cybersex slaves, that is what it will take to turn you on. The ubiquity of sexual images does not free eros but dilutes it
What is eros? The romantic, the erotic, all of these things, where do they come from? And how good were they to begin with? Modern cultures don't teach patience or conflict resolution, so people give up easier. But the old ways discouraged sexual exploration and curiosity. It's one thing to be sexually desensitized by internet porn...it's another thing to be so deliberately conditioned to sexual ignorance that you need a how-to manual on your honeymoon not even knowing if you're going to like it once you're done.
She mentioned her friend who converted to Orthodox Judaism, where modesty translated into percolating sexual tension that probably exploded in the bedroom. She also mentioned and lamented the loss of sexual "mystery":
“Why have sex right away?” a boy with tousled hair and Bambi eyes was explaining. “Things are always a little tense and uncomfortable when you just start seeing someone,” he said. “I prefer to have sex right away just to get it over with. You know it’s going to happen anyway, and it gets rid of the tension.”
“Isn’t the tension kind of fun?” I asked. “Doesn’t that also get rid of the mystery?”
This kind of makes sense from a woman's point of view. Female sexuality requires more time to reach arousal, so this "tension" she mentions is likely the build-up that precipitates excitement. But keep in mind, that it's sensitivity to this kind of "tension" that cause men to underperform or climax too quickly. By being desensitized to the minutiae, men are more likely to last longer. From here on in, the only real loss stemming from this one of pride: knowing that a man can get turned on by even the smallest part of your body, even your scent is probably a giant ego boost, and that is probably the core of every woman's desire.
To me this looks the same as starvation dieting: you deliberately refrain from eating until the hunger builds in you until you can't take it anymore and you gorge yourself on things that taste really really good. Yeah, deliberately cultivating sexual tension through deprivation just so you can get overexcited by little things.
Sounds a lot like another addiction to me, only this one is more like an addiction to power; the power to be adored and worshipped and sought after from any trivial part of your body, including scent. Only a woman could so monomaniacally desire to possess such reinforcement that every single part of her was beautiful.
Cultivating ignorance so that we can become excited by detail is an evasive act. It over-sensitizes us and distracts us from the real problem: baggage. What is the cause of female insecurity? What is the root of male insensitivity? I think it has less to do with porn and more to do with our ideas of what it is to be male, female, or human.
I think people always got bored in relationships; it's just that the old ways took longer for the boredom to come, and it was so subtle when it did, that people believe it's not there.
