I came across this excellent article on pornography’s deadening effect on the male libido. I have never been a big fan of Naomi Wolf, and certainly she is still missing some of the pieces. But she gets it with porn, and the article is dead-on when she states the following:
“The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as “porn-worthy.” Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention.”
“…a powerful erotic bond between parents is a key element of a strong family. And feminists have misunderstood many of these prohibitions.”
“Here is what young women tell me on college campuses when the subject comes up: They can’t compete, and they know it. For how can a real woman—with pores and her own breasts and even sexual needs of her own (let alone with speech that goes beyond “More, more, you big stud!”)—possibly compete with a cybervision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer’s least specification?…Today, real naked women are just bad porn.”
There is a whole other dimension about college student sex that is equally destructive of intimacy that Wolf seems not to have tapped into yet. However, she’s a work in progress, as are we all. Her observations from the college student population play out ever more destructively in marriage.
However, it’s worth noting that young women feel they can’t compete with porn. One would expect that lament from women a few decades down the line, but if 20 year-olds can’t compete with other women the same age, then that’s a whole new dimension of pathology.
Read the rest of this powerful treatise. The best I’ve seen in a long time. Here’s a teaser, her ending is the most powerful Christian take on sex you’ll ever see in New York Magazine!
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Photo via essenceofwoman.com
Coming Home 
Pornography is horribly damaging and is a HUGE addiction in society today. I don’t’ have any medical research to back this up, but I have no doubt that pornography is an addiction on the level of drugs or alcohol. So divisive (sp?), so destructive.
I wonder though if there are other factors as well.
After all not only are men (and women) exposed to porn in virtually every aspect of daily life (walk by La Senza in the mall!) but the hook up culture in college must have some effect too.
I mean, after you’ve slept with every other ( or maybe EVERY) girl on the dorm floor, I’m sure it gets pretty darn boring after a while. Or maybe it just gets to be like going for a run or whatever…..
and yes the comment at the end of the article is so sad.
“her ending is the most powerful Christian take on sex you’ll ever see in the New Yorker”
great post, but I have to point out that the linked article is from “New York” magazine, not “The New Yorker” magazine.
Excellent post.
I read this article a while back and never forgot Naomi’s take on her covered friend. “She must feel so hot”. Indeed.
Just want to comment as a former hard core left wing feminist, I remember when Naomi scandalously suggested to feminists that they take responsibility for their actions and call an abortion what it actually is- the taking of a human life. She was nearly excommunicated from Feministland for that one.