The Problem with Porn

by: Liz Funk
Pace University
The Pace Press

I am willing to make the bold assumption that there is a lot of porn-watching going on in universities. I've watched it. I've watched a lot of it. However, I watch it for very different reasons than the average college male (sexual release) or female (sexual crescendo). I watch it because I don't get it. I've tried to get turned on by it, but it just doesn't work.



Ideologically, I am not a fan. I don't believe in censoring porn, because when we let the government dictate what we can or cannot create or consume, we are in trouble. However, if it were up to me, porn wouldn't exist. I think most of it is misogynistic, racist and portrays the lowest common denominator of society. As I say this, I almost don't like criticizing porn because so many people see being anti-porn as being anti-sex. However, Dr. Robert Jensen, a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote a recent article on the problem with porn for AlterNet which said, "When we criticize McDonald's for its unhealthy food, environmentally destructive business practices, and targeting of children through manipulative advertising, does anyone ask whether we are 'anti-food'?"



Given my inclination to meet people in the middle, I tolerate (if not accept) pornography which depicts people of a variety of ages, races, body types and sexual orientations engaging in consensual, egalitarian-minded sex. I even acknowledge that some of it can be artistic. However, the more sleazy stuff featuring women as receptacles, children and rape with the intent to arouse makes my skin crawl.



It's often said kids who watch too much TV become less creative. Well, what about adults who watch too much porn? Experts say between abstinence-only sex education, our hook-up culture and our society's conflicting obsession with virginity and love of raunch culture, young people in our generation haven't been taught how to communicate their sexual desires. So what happens when you throw voracious pornography consumption into the mix? A 2004 article for New York magazine by David Amsden discussed how men with porn addictions lose almost all attraction to real women. So what about men with just a affinity for porn? Do they lose attraction to some women?



In the majority of porn films, women tend to be under 30, blonde and white, with Barbie-like features. The men tend to be under 35, white, well-built, with almost unnaturally large penises. Now, what percentage of sexually active couples actually align with these caricatures? Pornographic films that feature people outside these qualifications are dubbed as deviant fetish films. Our society is increasingly obese, aging rapidly with a vast amount of baby boomers and has a growing minority population. Yet, porn reflects our crippling size-ism, age-ism, and racism by only depicting thin, young, white people.



While the feminist community is constantly arguing over the place of porn in a progressive society, I feel they are just giving in. As discussed in Ariel Levy's book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, feminist satisfaction with the adult film industry is a reflection of oppressed people being content in an effort to please the oppressors.



It is the world's greatest cliché: young women entering the sex industry to get rich; statistically, however, poor women who enter the sex industry stay poor. Being in porn probably generates more money than working at a McDonald's, but what kind of society are we living in where we get aroused at the exploitation of a historically disenfranchised group?



I just read a really great book called Men Fake Foreplay and Other Lies that are True by Mike Dugan which analyzes many men's sexist idiosyncrasies through a feminist - and comedic - lens. In discussing pornography, he wrote, "Men watch porn because it's fun, convenient, and sometimes it's the only thing that will stop the pain of the emptiness it creates."



If this isn't poignant enough, Dugan, a major Bruce Springsteen fan, relates his personal story that turned him off from porn. He was in a video store renting a porn when he saw Springsteen renting a PG, mainstream flick with his wife. That's like Naomi Wolf catching me leaving my tanning salon. I'd be pretty ashamed.