David J. Ley - Ethical Porn for Dicks: A Man’s Guide to Responsible Viewing Pleasure

Tristan Taormino

Im really glad you found this book. Why? Because there is so much hand-wringing, shame, guilt, pain, and panic surrounding porn in our culture. Anti-porn crusaders on the left and the right want to convince us that all of societys ills would be cured if we just stopped watching so much porn. Porn has always been a convenient target and scapegoat for our collective freak-outs about sexual desire, power, and freedom. Young people dont have a clue about the realities of sex? Blame porn. Sexually transmitted infections on the rise? Blame porn. Couples have communication troubles, performance anxiety, and so-called sexual dysfunction in the bedroom? Blame porn. Monogamous marriage deeply unsatisfying for many people? Blame porn.

We desperately need an antidote to the morality police and the junk science behind these panics, and that antidote is Ethical Porn for Dicks. Dr. David Ley cuts through all the bullshit and writes candidly about a topic that, for all its raw nakedness on screen, gets overdressed in lots of fancy adornments in the name of public health and decency. He brings an important conversation out of the closeteven out of the privacy of a therapists officeand into the light of day. He demystifies all the hype about how porn is rewiring our brains and destroying the fabric of society. And, very importantly, he reveals the extreme bias and very shaky research behind some of the most popular declarations and statistics we hear about porn again and again. He challenges said research and exposes it for what it really is: the moral policing of pleasure. In this book, he breaks down false binaries with gems of wisdom. He is so straightforward, so unabashed and unapologetic that your brain will feel re-wired after reading this bookin a good way.

When people feel ashamed, lost, conflicted, or confused when it comes to sex, they look for simple explanationsand theres porn with its cheesy lighting and predictable plotlines, ready to stand in for whats really bothering us. Weve all read the headlines: porn ruins marriage, porn is coming between you and your partner (ironic, right?). Whats actually happening is this: we have internalized puritanical and negative ideas about sex, we have no models for honest sexual communication, and we rarely see diverse depictions of sexuality in any media. As a result, weve all got hang-ups, misinformation, and insecurities, and we are afraid to admit we have them or look at why we do. So when someone else demonizes porn, we can latch on and say, yeah, theres the culprit. Then we dont have to look at our unrealistic expectations about love and sex, our isolation and fear, our untreated mental health issues, and our outdated relationship models.

In fact, we have lost the ability to look at this medium called pornography as just that: a medium, one kind of pop culture consumed by the masses with highs and lows that reflect the culture in which it is created and imagine possibilities beyond it. Instead of looking at porn alongside television, Hollywood films, music, video games, the Web, magazines, and other media, we relegate it to its own dingy corner on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. We project our insecurities and fears onto it, making it into a face-fucking boogeyman. But the truth is that porn is not one monolithic thing. Just as no one says, All television is bad, or, All movies are good, we cannot look at porn and make a blanket judgment about it. Porn comes from multi-million-dollar corporations and from independent producers. Its part of the big capitalist machine and its on the fringes of the art world. Its luxurious, cheap, tacky, stylish, wild, weird, boring, sloppy, enlightening, groundbreaking, stupid, smart, offensive, repetitive, experimental, one-dimensional, sexist, feminist, political, realistic, unbelievable, racist, anti-racist, sexy, off-putting, universal, niche, celebratory, scary, amusing, serious, fantastical, educational, mind-numbing, thought-provoking, stimulating, off-putting, and any combination of these descriptors. The point is this: porn is complex, and our attitudes should reflectnot reducethat complexity.

Our sexual culture and ideas are always changing. Sexual norms and taboos have continually evolved as time has marched on. Until the early 20th century, women could only get a vibratorwhich replaced time-consuming manual treatment (hand jobs)from a doctor after they were diagnosed with hysteria or frigidity. Gay people were considered mentally ill by psychologists before homosexuality was completely removed as a disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1987. Going down on your partner was illegal in many places in the US until the Supreme Court ruled on Lawrence v. Texas in 2003. Lots of sex acts we think of as normal and ordinaryincluding oral sexwere deemed racy and unconventional (and even illegal) at one point in time. So while change itself is nothing new, the advent of the Internet and new technologies have sped up the process. One clear example is the dramatic shift in the production costs, distribution, accessibility, and diversity of pornography. Never before has there been more porn or pornmakers.

Nowadays, seemingly everyone has their hand in the porn pie. The Kardashian empire we know today was launched by the widespread popularity of then-little-known Kim Kardashians sex tape. Celebrities returned to the spotlight with their own home movies (Oh hi, Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson). Steven Soderbergh made The Girlfriend Experience, proving that even acclaimed filmmakers could get in on the game. Why has porn proven to be a successful vehicle to get people talking and increase visibility? Because its a medium that reaches a ton of people from all walks of life. It crosses lines of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, geography, ability, and religion. Because we cannot get enough of it.

Speaking of enough, the amount of porn we watch has been positioned as a measure of our characters. While anti-porn movements have been around for decades, a relatively recent phenomenon is how porn consumption has been easily conflated with addiction models by a growing part of the psychological/therapeutic industry. This new problem of porn addiction, which is often linked to sex addiction, is a way for society to further police our sexuality. Equating porn with addiction has proven to be very easily marketable. Sex and porn addiction serve as both a shorthand people can understand (Hes an addict! He needs help!) and a get-out-of-jail-free card, especially for public figures (Majority celebrity headed to rehab for porn addiction). Its also proven to be very profitable: sex and porn addiction specialists found a way to capitalize on peoples anxieties about sexuality and make tons of money off it. There are no solid statistics on exactly how much money is generated by sex and porn addiction treatment, but its part of an overall addiction rehab industry that raked in $35 billion in 2014 alone.