|
Sex and Obsessions
Some schools are refusing to take advantage of the wealth of free material on the Internet because....
...there's pornography on the Internet!
Those of us that have traveled to more sexually enlighten countries have found that...
...where pornography is readily available...
...and not condemned as some sort of an ultimate evil...
...the citizens pretty much ignore it.
In fact, I'm told that in these countries, there probably wouldn't be much of it for sale at all...
...if it weren't for American, Canadian and Japanese tourists.
Interestingly, in the United States the areas of the country that try the most to repress sexual materials....
...end up setting the records for the most X-rated video rentals...
...not to mention a proven preference for the most "sexy" TV shows.
Countries that have a much more lenient attitudes about sex...
...have far less sex crime than we do in the United States.
Our misguided, sex-paranoia has created something of an obsession with it.
Repression creates obsession, as the truism goes.
This repression is now spawning some pretty sick stuff...
...stuff that goes far beyond images of freewheeling, lascivious sex between consenting adults.
Repression also creates fear.
And because of this obsessive fear, we have people with some pretty warped ideas about sex...
...heading efforts to eliminate pornography...
...and influencing sexual attitudes.
Two women seem to be in the forefront of this are...
...Andrea Dworkin and Katharine MacKinnon.
In their books and articles they explain their views about sex...
...even simple, loving, missionary position, sex between married men and women.
According to Dworkin, "...conventional heterosexual behavior is the worst betrayal of our common humanity."
Betrayal?
How did she think she was conceived?
In a 1988 book Dworkin essentially equates marriage and romance with prostitution and rape.
MacKinnon's ideas of sex are not much different.
She says, "the major distinction between intercourse (normal) and rape (abnormal) is that the normal happens so often that one cannot get anyone to see anything wrong with it."
It's also alleged that women who enjoy sex are deluding themselves; they have simply been brainwashed into believing that it can be enjoyable.
I feel sorry for these women.
So do a lot of women I've talked to...
...whose kindest response was...
..."it's too bad; they apparently have never had a decent, loving, heterosexual relationship in their lives."
What's disturbing is that man-hating, anti-sex women are a major force behind sex-related legal thinking in Canada and the United States...
...plus, their anti-porn efforts have made them the darlings of many religious-right groups...
...which, if you will remember, were a major force behind the Bush election...
...or "appointment," if you prefer.
Of course, you don't have to take my word for all of this.
A well-researched, extensively documented, eye-opening book on this subject is...
...Nadine Strossman's, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights.*
Ms. Strossen has been a leader in women's rights...
...and her views are far more rational and well-reasoned than the man-hating, all-sex-is-rape views of some of her feminist contemporaries.
But her views and the carloads of studies showing that nonviolent pornography is benign...
...don't feed the obsessions and fears...
...that pervade right-wing politics and religious-right rhetoric...
...which are at the root of the sexual jealousies, debilitating guilts, and legal and ethical moils...
...that more enlightened societies—past and present—haven't had to struggle with.
* [Editor's note: Equally good, if not better, is the well-reviewed book by Wendy McElroy: XXX—A Woman's Right to Pornography. This book explodes most of the myths about pornography.] | 
