“Hard Core: The New World of Porn Is Revealing Eternal Truths about
Men and Women” by Natasha Vargas-Cooper — in reading that is not
for the faint of heart, the author reports that “in 2007, a quarter
of all Internet searches were related to pornography. Nielsen
ratings showed that in January 2010, more than a quarter of Internet
users in the United States, almost 60 million people, visited a
pornographic Web site. … That number … doesn ¢â‚¬â„¢t even take into
account the incomprehensible amount of porn distributed through
peer-to-peer downloading networks” and other options.
In an October 2010 study published by the Center for Sexual
Health Promotion at Indiana University, co-author Debby Herbenick
“believes that Internet porn now ‘plays a role in how many Americans
[mostly boys] perceive and become educated about sex.'”
Vargas-Cooper refers to “rapidly shifting sexual mores [which]
have been popularized and legitimized by porn.” In the process, she
acknowledges “The granting of sex is the most powerful weapon women
possess in their struggle with men. Yet in each new sexual
negotiation a woman has with a man, she not only spends down that
capital, she begins at a disadvantage, because the potential losses
are always greater for her.” The author also notes that “the
reactionary political correctness of the 1990s put forth a
proposition even more disastrous to women than free love: sexual
equality.”
Further observations include: “Internet porn … shows us an
unvarnished (albeit partial) view of male sexuality as an often dark
force streaked with aggression.” And males “make up two-thirds of
all porn viewers. …
“‘Tamed as it may be, sexuality remains one of the demonic forces
in human consciousness,’ Susan Sontag wrote in Styles of Radical
Will [2]. Yes, it’s a natural, human function, and one from which
both partners can derive enormous pleasure, but it is also one
largely driven by brute male desire and therefore not at all free of
violent, even cruel, urges. …
“Pornography, with its garish view of male sexual desire, bares
an uncomfortable truth that the women’s-liberation movement has
successfully suppressed: men and women have conflicting sexual
agendas. …
“The new neo-feminists … argue that the primary obstacle to
women’s gaining greater equality in the political and economic
sphere is today’s ‘hypersexuality,’ and specifically the spread of
online porn. This is a somewhat new take on an old position. …
“Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis compared porn to
science fiction: ‘Like sci-fi, porn replaces existing realities with
wild alternative universes (against which to measure the lackluster,
repressive world we’ve inherited).’ …
“Gail Dines, author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our
Sexuality [3], frets that the overwhelming exposure to emotionless,
rapacious sex on the Internet will socialize men to find degradation
of women sexually arousing.” Nevertheless, Vargas-Cooper reports: “I
have yet to see a single credible study that links proliferation of
pornography to an increase in abuse of women.” She finds “the main
problem with the new anti-porn critics is their naive assumption
that if only we could blot out Internet porn, then the utopia of
sexual equality would be achieved. But equality in sex can’t be
achieved. Internet porn exposes that reality; it may even intensify
that reality; it doesn’t create it.
“This isn’t to argue that pornography is harmless or even that it
shouldn’t be censored: its pervasiveness clearly exacerbates the
growing moral nihilism of our culture.”
Vargas-Cooper concludes by noting that “the common but
annihilating emotions that fuel [sex acts are] desperation and
loneliness. It’s the clash between vulnerability and indifference
that transpires after sex that is so savage. This is what [film
reviewer Pauline] Kael called ‘realism with the terror of actual
experience.’ The most frightening truths about sex rarely exist in the
physical, but instead live in the intangible yet indelible wounds
created in the psyche. Go try to find that on the Internet.” The
Atlantic, Jan ’11, pp97-106. <www.j.mp/fzsQZq>

Christians who read this catalog of depravity may well experience
a profound sadness concerning the state of our world.