More Mainstream Porn stupidity

While I’m on the subject of stupidity and porn, as I was just a couple of posts ago, I should tip my hat in the direction of the NY Times. They’ve had a couple of recent articles that would fit under that umbrella.

To be fair to the first one – What Teenagers Are Learning From Online Porn – it’s hard to tell if the problem stems from the article itself or the porn education classes it’s reporting on. Possibly a little of both. It feels terribly dated, and that impression isn’t helped by the pictures that look like they’re taken from 80’s VHS tapes. Sexuality and pornography are incredibly complicated and interesting topics. Deconstructing porn and understanding how/why people use it and make it should be a fascinating area to dive into. Instead this turned it into ‘Porn isn’t real and can be bad, m-kay?’

The real stupidity comes with Ross Douthat’s column ‘Let’s Ban Porn‘. I might not agree with the title’s sentiment, but it’s a defensible one from a particular moral viewpoint. The stupidity comes when he tries to tie it to the #MeToo movement. Apparently widespread pornography has led to a lot of men who think it’s OK to sexually assault women because they’ve seen it in porn. It’s wrapped in a lot of bullshit and accompanied by much fact free hand waving, but that’s the heart of his point.

A slightly more fact based observer might note that men have being doing this shit for decades before the internet was invented. The key enablers appear to have been men in positions of power, with companies and social structures that covered for them, and a society that actively punished people for speaking up about assault. There have been some truly piss poor excuses offered by some of the men called out, but I haven’t seen any stoop so low as to blame internet porn. I’m sure they would if they thought they could get away with it.

A man trying to re-purpose #MeToo from a story about women speaking up about sexual assault into a way to push your personal politics is pretty obnoxious. And blaming internet porn for some men’s terrible behavior is a stupid as blaming comic books, rap music, movies or videogames for violence in society. Oh wait…

I guess if Ross Douthat was right, then publishing this kind of filthy pornography would actually be contributing to future sexual assaults. I guess it’s therefore a good job he’s got his head up his ass.

Updated: Thanks to a helpful comment, I can attribute this to Goddess Serena, a UK based pro-domme.