#pornography

There's mainstream pornography--soft-core airbrushed fluff such as Penthouse and Playboy. The folks makin' this stuff do men and their range of desires a disservice; their implication is that anything outside the "big hair, fake tits, tiny waste, no pores, limited body hair" aesthetic is deviant, weird, not normal--and not something that a red-blooded American man would be interested in. The common boys-will-be-boys explanation for porn--that men get turned on visually (in contrast to "feminine" mode of arousal, which is mental and emotional)--is nothing more than an insult, making men out to be Pavlovian dogs who salivate uncontrollably and strain at their trousers upon contact with nudie pictures. Antiporn arguments, however well-meaning, are no better. Folks like Catherine MacKinnon also believe that men are inherently drawn to porn. And to them, porn is by definition violent, suggesting that it's somehow in men's nature to be aroused by hurting others. Furthermore, antipornography activists think that porn leads men to commit violence--as if men have no self-control or capacity to separate fantasy from reality, as if an erection is a driving force that can't be stopped once it's started... The only difference is one of perspective: Antiporn folk believe that male sexuality is always threatening, while men's-magazine editors think it's always fabulous. ↗

— Lisa Jervis

#men #pornography #sexuality #men

When [beauty pornography is] aimed at men, its effect is to keep them from finding peace in sexual love. The fleeting chimera of the airbrushed centerfold, always receding before him, keeps the man destabilized in pursuit, unable to focus on the beauty of the woman--known, marked, lined, familiar—-who hands him the paper every morning. ↗

— Naomi Wolf

#aging #beauty #body-image #cosmetic-surgery #cosmetics

Art is sanctioned pornography ↗

— Stewart Home

#pornography #stewart-home #art

The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#photography #pornography #movies

Consuming pornography does not lead to more sex, it leads to more porn. Much like eating McDonalds everyday will accustom you to food that (although enjoyable) is essentially not food, pornography conditions the consumer to being satisfied with an impression of extreme sex rather than the real. ↗

— Virginie Despentes

#sex #food

She's got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#pornography #sarah-palin #sex-appeal #imagination

I don't know what the definition of pornography is and nobody else does either. Pornography is somebody else's erotica that you don't like. People are interested in their own sexuality and they've always reflected it in their art. End of story. ↗

— Erica Jong

#art

Since Thami had the Arab's utter incomprehension of the meaning of pornography, he imagined that the police had placed the ban on obscene films because these infringed upon Christian doctrine at certain specific points, in which case any Christian might be expected to show interest, if only to disapprove. ↗

— Paul Bowles

#pornography #imagination

Edna restored the toffee to the centre of her tongue and sucking pleasurably, resumed her typing of Naked Love by Armand Levine. Its painstaking eroticism left her uninterested--as indeed it did most of Mr. Levine's readers, in spite of his efforts. He was a notable example of the fact that nothing can be duller than dull pornography. ↗

— Agatha Christie

#humour #pornography #sarcasm #love

Any violation of a woman's body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography. ↗

— Andrea Dworkin

#men #pornography #sexism #sexualization #violence