Hugo Schwyzer responds to Naomi Wolf’s post: “Is Porn Driving Men Crazy?”
Naomi Wolf’s recent piece at the Huffington Post speculated that porn might be making men literally crazy. But the whopper in her opening paragraph nearly had the same effect on me. Wolf begins:
It’s hard to ignore how many highly visible men in recent years (indeed, months) have behaved in sexually self-destructive ways. Some powerful men have long been sexually voracious; unlike today, though, they were far more discreet and generally used much better judgment in order to cover their tracks.
More discreet? JFK had sex with an untold number of women in the White House, including a threesome in the presidential swimming pool, and he was hardly the first American male politician to be sexually voracious outside of marriage. The difference, of course, was that JFK lived in an era when men could outsource their self-control to the media. By every count, powerful men in the past were no more discreet than our leaders today. Journalists, not politicians, were the ones who exercised self-control. And it was that restraint that created the fiction of a more virtuous past.
Porn use can become compulsive, perhaps even to the extent that it does rewire the brain. But in her effort to paint it as a great scourge of our time, Wolf overreaches to the point of silliness, as when she asks:
Could this (porn addiction) be why men who in the past could take time-delayed steps to conduct affairs behind closed doors now can’t resist the impulse to send a self-incriminating text message?
Uh, Naomi? The reason that men in the past took “time-delayed steps” to screw around was because they had only time-delayed technology at their disposal. What JFK might have done with a Blackberry and a Twitter account, we’ll blessedly never know.
It’s kind of sad but with the internet, as legal internet porn grew, so did child pornography. Which makes an astounding 3 billion yearly. It’s such a hard thing to wrap your mind that there are enough people supporting child porn that it’s a 3 billion dollar industry. I think men that sleep around on their partners…Arnold, Tiger…(even JFK) are really filled with self loathing. Because no man that is proud of himself and feels good as a man disrespects his own family like that. I do think porn is a huge disfunction in today’s society. I do think porn… Read more »
re. Jackie Kennedy being the dutiful wife, I was reminded of a quote from Brad Meltzer in his graphic novel Infinity Crisis, “Bruce knows what he wants to know, and, more than any of us, he also knows that you should never underestimate what someone will do for the people they love.” Assuming that she was ignorant of the character of her husband or of her father-in-law insults her. Assuming that, knowing, she chose to keep quiet about it for the benefit of her children and her country may be making more of her than she was, but assuming that… Read more »
Sorry guys,, but I think she’s onto something here. Her choice of words is perhaps a bit over the top but one only need to read the headlines to see something is off kilter. Sex trafficking, pedophiles, rapes, gang rapes, prostitution rings aplenty. There’s an article in Newsweek pertaining to this subject matter.
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/07/17/the-growing-demand-for-prostitution.html Pay attention to the headlines. Geez, just look at some of the men…..Tiger, Charlie, David Ducovny, Christie Brinkley’s ex…. I could go on. Something’s happening. Our men are being emasculated….. who or what is doing this?
That’s a fairly bias article
“… the fiction of a more virtuous past.” –> Bingo!
Another fiction: that humans are inherently monogamous. Yet another: that we *aren’t* the nosiest species on the planet. As for the living-vicariously possibilities of cyberspace … many swords, with many edges …
Wrong JayT. Humans are neither inherently monogamous or polyamorous. We have chemicals and natural biologies that support both relationship/sex systems. What it comes down to is what we ultimately choose. It’s a little something called “free will”. You are not a creature of your impluses even though it’s easier for all of us to tell each other we are so we have no accountiblity. So if *you* aren’t monogamous, no problem! But stop acting like “monogamoy” isn’t natural when it’s *just* as nautural for women AND men as is polygamy.