Love Or Hate Porn? Read This

If you’re interested in feminist discussions of pornography, there are a number of must-read texts you should check out and Pamela Paul’s Pornified is one of them.

Published in 2005, Paul’s analysis of a society so accustomed to everyday images of softcore pornography and increasingly desensitized to more hardcore offerings, is every bit as relevant today as when it was published. Its age perhaps lends merit to its argument — that pornography is changing the social landscape and human relationships — as with each passing statistic the reader wonders just how much worse things have become in the past six years.

Paul refreshingly begins Pornified by letting us know this isn’t like every other anti-pornogrpahy book out there; she’s not going to spend page after page alerting us to the individual horrors of the various brands of extreme pornography. Instead she dissects the pros and cons of pornography, giving voice to those who enjoy it, those who oppose it and those who try to do both at the same time. Her aim is to convince us that pornography is changing the way we view sex, not to convince us of it’s inherent goodness or badness.

While Paul starts off strong and the opening few chapters are filled with interesting anecdotes, studies and expert opinions, the middle section of the book is repetitive; there are only so many individual case studies and interviews about men’s experiences of porn you can sit through. While qualitative research always has a place, particularly in cultural studies, Paul’s recounting of men and their porn habits becomes a little boring.

Fortunately for those of us who stuck it out to the end, Paul really finds her stride and hits home some serious messages in the final 30 pages of Pornified. She highlights some of the contradictions and hypocrisy evident in the world of pornography. For example the majority of men, particularly those who enjoy it themselves, acknowledged they wouldn’t want their sons to learn about sex and how to relate to women through pornography, yet pornography advocates declare it the most effective form of sex education. These same advocates say porn helps keep marriages strong by ensuring men’s nature doesn’t cause them to stray from their wives, yet numerous studies reveal those who are exposed to high levels of porn report lower respect for the sanctity of marriage. If you remotely challenge pornography you’re immediately deemed anti-sex and anti-change, while porn continues to depict old-fashioned Madonna/whore dichotomies of women’s sexuality.

But the over-arching message, which slowly curls its way through the pages of Pamela Paul’s Pornified, is just how far removed from reality pornography really is, with Paul outlining how oddly smooth sex runs in pornography. There are no “hiccups” she says, no impotence or premature ejaculation, no woman struggling to reach orgasm, no pillow talk, no unwanted pregnancies or herpes, no wincing or objection when men try anal sex without asking, no pain when young women lose their virginity. In porn, the ugliest men get to have sex with the most beautiful women, and the women enjoy it. Sex and relationships are simple.

Pornified may be hard to stick with at times, but persevere, the penny will drop when you least expect it.

Contact the author here: brianna@morningquickie.com