Flutterby™! : Sex & politics

I had ignored Naomi Wolf's article The Porn Myth, subtitled "In the end, porn doesn't whet men's appetites—it turns them off the real thing", because I didn't see the need for more "waaaah! we're still victims!" whining. In the past few days everybody (Eros, Doc, and many others) has been linking to Eric Raymond's rebuttal, the gist of which is:

There is one truth buried, oblique and nearly invisible, in Ms. Wolf's informants' reports. Sex with a real woman trumps porn, but porn trumps women who dangle sex in front of men and don't deliver.

Which I think is an overly simplistic answer. Debra Hyde, however, comes through with responses to the real issues. Go read it, if only for the pointing out of the obvious when she says:

Last, I'm annoyed by Wolf's repeated mention of porn interfering with a woman's ability to "hold a guy." Why, I ask, are we still focusing on holding onto a guy? If a man's too shallow to let go of his ignorance and self-interest to admire a woman's natural body, maybe he should hear repeated and from many women, "Sorry, if you can't appreciate me as I am, get lost."

Somewhat relatedly, a bunch of folks have sent me Mark Morford's rant on The Whitehouse "Protection From Pornography" week proclamation. Worth reading, as are Columbine's take and Debra's take.

But both of these provocations simply show us that there are people out there who are far more interested in control than coexistence, who want to drag others back with false accusations rather than solving real problems, and who want to do that by pandering to existing prejudices rather than enlightening. That Wolf does it on one side and Bush does it on the other shows that in most cases for people like me alliances with or voting for those along the the "left/right" affiliations can only be matters of political expediency.