I’ve been commenting on internet porn for nearly 10 years. One reason is that as someone who graduated high school in the spring of 1995 I’m probably in the very last cohort of American males for whom pornography was an item subject to scarcity. Those who are 2-3 years younger already experienced a totally different world. The furtive quest to find a friend of a friend whose dad was less than vigilant in guarding his porn stash was a rite of adolescent male passage in my cohort, but would seem totally laughable by 1997. There’s a lot of commentary on the effect of porn on society and sexual relations, but from what I can tell nothing much has really changed between then and now, except that hardcore porn has become harder. Before I see hard data I’m skeptical that American males accept more perversion because of watching porn. Read the Kinsey Reports; farm boys long knew some farm boys lost their virginity to animals.
All this must be kept in mind when reading pieces tinged with moral panic, such as this one in The New York Times, So How Do We Talk About This?, which details the reaction …