October 15th, 2009

This week’s Horror Chick is about Paranormal Activity, that new “Blair Witch”-type thing that’s being hailed the “scariest movie ever made” (if by “scariest” you mean “most packed with set pieces from Bed Bath & Beyond,” then I concur). One of the points that sort of found its way in there is about porn — specifically, that I’m wary of men who don’t like it. (Rationale: They’re either repressed or lying, or both.)

It’s tough to have any kind of rational conversation about porn. People (aka “certain women and/or religious types”) love to leap on it as some Dworkin-esque symbol of universal evil. For women who are not involved in the adult film industry, taking a pro-porn stance is bound to get you pummeled with the “bad feminist” label. Even Christie Hefner, one of the best examples of a powerful and successful businesswoman who took a company from a man and turned it into a moneymaking juggernaut, is getting flak for essentially not shutting down her family’s business in the name of female solidarity. (Uhh, guys? You really think Playboy is porn? Have you been on the Internet lately??)

The thing is, as we’ve discussed before, men like sex. A lot. They want to have it most of the time. And it’s a good thing for our species that they do. The logical extension of this is that men also like porn. And the larger point is that this preference is what it is — it’s ingrained in around 50% of humankind. It’s not going away.

So whether or not it’s “evil” or “sinful” or “degrading” isn’t really worth fighting about — we’ll never agree, and the conversation will never move forward. As such, there’s a fundamental peace that women (myself included) can make with What Men Are — and something tells me that once we’ve hit that Porn Acceptance Nirvana, everyone with a Y chromosome will start breathing a lot easier.

Now if you want to get into a debate about this type of porn being more degrading than that type of porn — well, no thanks. I mean what do I look like, some kind of devil-worshiping pervert who watches this stuff? (Don’t answer that.)

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