Unfortunately, I doubt I’ll have the time today to respond to any of the many Fiskings this article is receiving, but I will strongly recommend reading Naomi Wolf’s critique of our society’s ubiquipr0n.

I read Ellen Goodman faithfully not because I share many sympathies with her feminism, but because maybe 15% of the time she says something that could as well have been written by a Christian apologist. Wolf is doing nearly the same thing here:

But does all this sexual imagery in the air mean that sex has been liberated–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. People are not closer because of porn but further apart; people are not more turned on in their daily lives but less so.

Of course she pulls the punch where I would really want to start connecting, but her point remains strong:

The reason to turn off the porn might become, to thoughtful people, not a moral one but, in a way, a physical- and emotional-health one; you might want to rethink your constant access to porn in the same way that, if you want to be an athlete, you rethink your smoking. The evidence is in: Greater supply of the stimulant equals diminished capacity.

Her main point is that ubiquitous pornography hasn’t turned men into raping, pillaging, sex monsters, but has turned them off from real women. Greg Krebiel argued a few years ago (and I doubt he was alone) that pornography would devalue real women by making a cheap alternative available. Wolf seem to be on board with this thesis, and has at least some anecdotal interviews to back it up.

Read the whole thing. This is excellent commentary.

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• Posted by Tim on Wednesday, October 29, 2003 at 12:36:01 pm PST
• Category: Miscellany
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