The Porn Myth
Imagine coming to a table crowded with your closest buddies. You are hungry, your appetites sharp, your anticipation high. So when the kitchen door opens everyone starts cheering, knowing what’s coming next. But instead of delivering a great meal, your waitress merely parades by with all your favorite dishes—steak, lobster, shrimp, whatever—tantalizing you, teasing you seductively with the food, but never allowing you to taste it. And when she leaves you’re even hungrier, right? Your desire for food would have skyrocketed.
Isn’t it odd that porn doesn’t work this way?
Naomi Wolf is a feminist writer who as a young woman made a name for herself arguing that women should stop pretending that the unborn child isn’t really human. Abortion, she admitted, is homicide. But, she added, it is justifiable homicide. Just as it’s legal to take the life of someone who breaks into your home, Wolf argued that an unwanted child is an interloper who deserves to die. It was an essay calculated to inflame nearly everyone. And it did.
Her essay The Porn Myth is now nearly 6 years old, and it too is still striking sparks. It is about porn and its effect on relationships between men and women. In her words, “People are not closer because of porn, but further apart; people are not more turned on in their daily lives, but less so.” Despite the fact that it appeared in a major news magazine, it’s a pretty explicit article in spots, so if you are easily offended or tempted by the very discussion of porn you should avoid it. But if you’re one of the many who feel bombarded and jaded by sexual images, you might appreciate her insights on why you feel this way.
According to Wolf porn has changed things between men and women – and not for the better.
“For most of human history, erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn.”
“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. 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. 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.”
In Wolf, this loneliness inspired a yearning for modesty and—her word—sacredness.
“I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. 'Can’t I even see your hair?' I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. 'No,' she demurred quietly. 'Only my husband,' she said with a calm sexual confidence, 'ever gets to see my hair.'
When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husband—the kids are not allowed—the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.
She must feel, I thought, so hot.”
Sadly, Wolf’s insights don’t inspire her to rethink her understanding of who we are as men and women, nor does it shake her pragmatic approach to morality. In the end porn disappoints because, contrary to what we’ve been told, sex isn’t just another appetite like eating. It is the means to the end of intimacy, and we should refuse to be satisfied with anything less. I’ll give C.S. Lewis the last word here for the moment.
“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offers of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.”