Porn Killed Sex

Naomi Wolf has an article about porn in The New York Times and its real effects on that fact that it’s become “wallpaper” and seeped into mainstream media.

For most of human history, erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn.

For two decades, I have watched young women experience the continual “mission creep” of how pornography—and now Internet pornography—has lowered their sense of their own sexual value and their actual sexual value.

Because its harder to connect than to tune into some image. So much of our media sexual images come not from experiences with our lover, but experiences that don’t even happen to us – they happen in advertisements and television and on the Internet.

Mostly, when I ask about loneliness, a deep, sad silence descends on audiences of young men and young women alike. They know they are lonely together, even when conjoined, and that this imagery is a big part of that loneliness. What they don’t know is how to get out, how to find each other again erotically, face-to-face.

But does all this sexual imagery in the air mean that sex has been liberated?

Personally, I think its lowered people’s – men’s and women’s – real sexual pleasure. As Oprah and the sexologist said last week on the sex show: Sex is everywhere – but not many people seem to be having a really fulfilling sex life.

I’m 35 and I’m just barely getting its affect on how I experience sexual pleasure. Personally, I think its lowered people’s – men’s and women’s – real sexual pleasure.