The Pornography Debate, Part Two: Gender Bias

In Part One I looked at pornography from a historical perspective and how we know porn today is a new concept and how that might have some baring on the use, or as some view it, the over-use. This time I am going to take a peek at gender biases and where lines get drawn between the sexes.

I am currently reading the book Pornified by Pamela Paul and there are many things that do not sit well with me in the entire pornography debate. When it comes to the world of pornography everything seems to be a double standard. Actually, it's just not what I am reading in Pornified that is bothering me, it's everything that I have read on the topic from both sides.

Those who seem to be protesting the loudest are women and the highly religious. I am not going to begrudge anyone their religious beliefs, they are entitled to them. However, I have a problem with one group wanting to dictate one standard of morality to the entire population.

Then there are the women who complain about "men and their porn". Even the men who jump on the anti-porn bandwagon, such as Val Richards in his paper Pornography - Safe or Sexual, quote the anti-porn feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin in their stance that pornography dehumanizes women, that women are presented as sexual objects who like pain, humiliation and being raped and that it's all about violence. They don't say, "I am a man and I am against porn because..." They just state what the anti-porn feminists have been preaching over and over as if they are brainwashed into believing it and can't form their own opinion. What's funny about this is that you don't hear men complaining about women looking at pornography.

Maybe it's because women aren't as blatant. Maybe it goes back to the double standard that if a man has sex with twenty women he's a stud but if a woman has sex with twenty men she's a slut. Through out history women were supposed to be pure on their wedding night but it was okay for men to have gone out and sow the wild oats as it were. It was normal for the upper class men to have a wife and a mistress. No one thought anything of it, but if a woman was caught cheating on her husband she was disgraced. Have things really changed that much?

Women like looking at the male form as much as men like looking at the women. The thing is no one has thought to put out anything like the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition for women featuring men in swim trunks and Speedos. It's still easier to find a copy of Playboy than it is to find a copy of Playgirl. What's worse, the same thought doesn't go into Playgirl that goes into Playboy. If the same care were taken it would probably be just as popular. Men have Playboy Bunnies, women have rock stars and actors. I know women that get excited if Brad Pitt or The Rock turns up shirtless in a movie. Women pass around pictures via the internet of shirtless buff men with six-pack abs or pictures of nude men taken of the backside with his head turned in silhouette. How is this different than men looking at Playboy bunnies, SI swimsuit models or Victoria Secret girls? Why don't we hear about women objectifying men? It's always the other way around.

I have read many things over the last couple weeks, including a paper titled The Porn Myth by Naomi Wolf that make the argument that viewing pornography desensitizes men to sex, prevents them from having normal relationships. I am having a problem believing this.

My husband and I have talked about this at length. I trust his viewpoint on this as a man who spent ten years in the United States Navy and has a wider world view of these things rather than the view of a scholar who studies the relationships between men and women. I am told, not only by my husband but other men that I know, that men do not want to play the social games of women. I would have to agree with the men that were interviewed by Pamela Paul that for men it is easier to just stay at home, cruise the internet or watch a movie, and masturbate.

When you consider that books like Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus and The Rules have made the bestseller lists advising women "never to call a guy and rarely return his calls", "stop dating him if he doesn't buy you a gift for your birthday or Valentines Day" and "don't accept a Saturday night date after Wednesday". Has anyone stopped to think that this kind of advice, so prevalent in self-help books on relationships, isn't doing damage to relationships between men and women?

On the flip side Mystery has published a book called The Game telling men how to score with women and become a player. The women that I have voice their opinion on this book basically find it uncouth, just like men looking at porn. Women think it's sleazy for a man to go to a club to pick up a woman, and at the same time they aren't returning a phone call from a guy that is interested, because a book told them not to, and they are wondering why he never calls anymore. Two entirely different games the sexes are playing and no one is meeting in the middle.

I am no expert. That is just my observation. I don't understand the double standards and I am trying to make sense out of them.

There is also the mindset that pornography causes more violent sex crimes against women. Wendy McElroy points out in A Feminist Over of Pornography, Ending in a Defense Thereof that real world feedback has shown the opposite. In Japan, where graphic violent and brutal pornography is widely available that they have much lower rape rates per capita than the United States.

According to The Big Book of Porn by Seth Grahame-Smith Denmark was the first country to legalize all forms of pornography and that the following year there was a noticeable decline in sex offenses.

A recent article published in the legal section of AVN Insider states "Those states whose residents were more capable of accessing adult content say a 27% decrease in rape over the twenty-one year period from 1980 to 2001, while the four states whose residents were least capable of accessing adult content say a 53% increase in rapes." This comes from Anthony D'Amato, a law professor at Northwestern University.

So, which side of the argument are we supposed to believe? I can't take either side because I see just as many men being made to feel inferior next to Brad Pitt and The Rock as I am women who feel insecure over their husband or boyfriend looking at the latest Playboy centerfold.