Porn has been here in one form or another for thousands of years. It’s a reflection of our human nature. It’s a cultural phenomenon with no exact definition. Dictionaries provide some variation of the following… a kind of media that stimulates sexual arousal.
For some people, images of an attractive, fully clothed woman, can be arousing. Is that porn? For others, nudity, even in the form of 2,000 year old Greek sculpture, is enough to be labeled porn. For most people, some level of sexual provocation is required. The point is, the definition of porn is in the eye of the beholder.
People engaged aggressively in thought policing tend to employ the broadest possible brush in describing porn, and they condemn all forms of sexualized media and all sexual expression as morally corrosive. Even now, in the emerging 21st century, women bear the brunt of this obtuse moralizing. Hundreds of millions of women and girls remain subjugated culturally and denied access to even basic education. They are treated as chattel, forced to cover their bodies head to toe. More than a hundred million women, as a reflection of cultural purity, have endured the brutal cutting of their genitals. In those places, girl children, as young as six years, continue to be subjected to this medically indefensible practice.
Just the other day, a news report told of a young women in the middle east, who was raped. As a result, she was condemned by a court to death, while the rapist went unpunished. A video showed the young female victim, kneeling in a ditch as men, including her own father, hit her with stones until she was reduced to a bloody corpse. The subtext is all too clear. Female sexual expression is evil. If a man rapes a woman, surely she must have behaved provocatively. She is responsible. It’s no wonder that people from those deeply repressive cultures consider Americans and other westerners as infidels.
In America, religious conservatives loudly condemn pretty much any form of sexual expression, unless within a marriage, and as a function of procreation. These same people are quick to shame even the tamest form of female sexual expression. The depravity of those who engage in this shaming is reflected by the fact that places like Utah and Arkansas, bastions of cultural conservatism, are also the states with the highest per capita consumption of on line porn.
Pornography is a fact of life. It feeds into our natural human interest in all things sexual. We are hardwired to be sexual creatures. It is in our DNA.
Are we suggesting that all porn is good and should be acceptable? No. Not even close. What we are saying is, porn is not going away. It is here to stay. Instead of blanket condemnation, let’s decide what is good and what isn’t, and stop underwriting the latter, as much as possible.
When we think of bad porn, words like abusive, demeaning, violent, painful, hurtful, and male dominant come to mind. When we think of good porn, we’re thinking of media that celebrates sexuality in a gender equal and joyful matter. Some people call good porn feminist porn, because female sexuality is front and center. What’s not to like about that?
In America, young males are active consumers of on line porn. Lessons learned about male behavior from porn can be a big factor in shaping a young man’s sense of how to view women. Unfortunately, at this point in time, most porn continues to present dominance as the way men should be. That must change.
The way to move the on line porn marketplace away from the bad and toward the good is for those of us who are consumers to vote with our dollars. This is already happening with women, who are an ever increasingly portion of the porn viewing marketplace. We say to you lady consumers of porn, train the men in your lives by exposing them to erotica that respects women. If you find it fun and exciting, chances are your men will get the message. You have nothing to lose, and we all have everything to gain.
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