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I see it everywhere. It exists in its explicit forms in the upper racks of convenience stores, triple-X video outlets (which, these days, are more prevalent than bookstores) and on the Internet. But it also exists — in coded form — on billboards, in fashion magazines and on TV. I’m talking about pornography. It seems we’re drowning in the stuff. And like any other swimmer in the sea of modern life, drowning is not what I want to do. I need a life-raft.
I don’t want to look, I want to feel.
Porn, ultimately, is about voyeurism. It is not an actual experience, it is a facsimile. Because I realize this consciously, I make an effort to avoid it. I don’t just mean that I don’t look at it often. I mean, most times when I feel the urge to click on the “lifetime free porn club membership” that was e-mailed to me (along with mortgage offers and a promise to lengthen my penis), I hit the delete button.
But I’ve got to admit, I still sometimes feel its pull. This is a reaction that springs from my adolescence — a time when I did look at it, a lot. In fact, if I couldn’t, I got antsy. My habit had all the hallmarks of an addiction. And, recognizing this fact while feeling torn over a variety of sexual issues — not the least of which was the lack of an actual girlfriend — I decided to go cold turkey.
Did it help?
The simple answer is yes. In my mid-20s I got involved with a woman I didn’t feel attracted to at first. She was someone who’d been traumatized by often receiving this treatment from men. (I should hasten to add that I’m no grand specimen myself in the looks department).
But she was one of the wittiest and most creative people I’d ever met, and after being involved for a year I fell for her. Hard. I began to love the qualities that I once thought would prevent me from feeling a full attraction.
Qualities she was acutely self-consciousness about were suddenly delightful to me. She had an unusually shaped nose. She had an expressive, almost clownish face. I remember going into paroxysms of laughter just because of the way she changed her expression or used her hands and voice. The more I got to know her, the more pleasure I got from looking at her. I liked that she was different.
It was complicated, but it wasn’t a one-shot experience. It’s happened to me in other relationships. I’ve discovered that the cold perfect beauty found in magazines and on Web sites doesn’t hold a candle to the beauty that is capable of reciprocation.
Why does this happen? Why do we more easily experience sexual love — or at least become more sensitive to its potential — when we’re not spending as much time being stimulated by commercial images of sex?
Sex both is and isn’t what it appears to be. It’s sex, of course — it’s hugging, stroking naked skin and fucking. But it’s also about sensations that are far more nuanced. As those interested in tantric sex know, it’s about stages of ecstasy that have no simple names. Commercialized sex sees beauty as the be-all and end-all. Our image-based culture has amped up this prejudice.
The truth is, when my solitary campaign against looking at porn was at its height, I was a bit off my rocker. I got aroused by the most innocent images. I began to understand the extreme sensitivity that religious people sometimes experience when attempting “self-purification.” One summer, I was obsessed by the clear-skinned beauty in a Lancome cosmetics subway ad, a woman in a one-piece bathing suit.
All this may sound like the bizarre symptoms of an overly high-strung sensibility. I mean, it’s just sex, right? God knows, the real thing is pleasurable enough. And god knows our culture has made huge advances in its understanding of the necessity for sexual freedom. But then, as I said above, porn isn’t really about sex, it’s about looking at sex.
I wanted a girlfriend when I was younger, not just an image I yearned for but could never touch. However, it’s possible to surf the oceans of porn, to spend years looking and somehow not see the friend who adores you.
Our culture could benefit from a short moratorium on porn — and not even all porn — written, painted and drawn porn are all fine. Erotic culture is good. It’s just the sexually explicit photos and video images, created like an industrial process under klieg lights, that are problematic.
I don’t know what the ultimate answer is. But one thing I know for sure is that contemporary society’s present tolerance of porn is simply a lull in a debate that is far from over.
