Lonely together

A recent issue of New York Magazine featured a cover story on Internet pornography. In the pages within, Naomi Wolfe reveals the ironic outcome of decades-old dire warnings against pornography: erotica has, as warned, become near commonplace, but has not, as feared, led men to be sex-crazed beasts. Rather, pornography has simply drained them of their sexuality and left them for dead. How is this so?

It certainly begins simple enough. A man finds himself very pleased by the beauty of a woman, and so he seeks that beauty out wherever he can. There is an undeniable thrill when he first finds it, but when once found, the thrill starts to fade. Pictures aren't enough; the man must see action. But very soon the action becomes a bit too "normal." So the man is led further and further out by the ever-increasing demands of an ever-diminishing pleasure. He is compelled into ever more novel, ever stranger pornography just to recapture that old thrill, which still never quite returns.

The man wonders why his girlfriends do not share his interests, and his interest slowly turns from them. Real sex has become, as Wolfe puts it, "just bad porn." Pornography so dominates the mind that, of his first time having sex, a college student told New York Magazine, "my first thought as it was happening was 'Oh, this is pornography.' It was a kind of out-of-body experience. I was really uncomfortable with sex for a while."

What could he mean by an out-of-body experience? Why would he feel his self separated from his body? Perhaps because pornography has first severed sex from his soul. Consider what sex has meant in our best love stories. In sex, each partner is completely vulnerable in front of the other. They say, "Here I am, I hide nothing from you, I keep nothing back."

She knows that he will not abandon her in the morning, or any morning. He knows she will never give such trust to someone else. Each stays with the other. Sex is the outward expression of the inner reality that the lover and the beloved want to give all of themselves to the other -- body, emotions, and life itself. It is not merely a physical act because we are not merely physical bodies. Nor are we ghosts or brains in vats. We are creatures physical and spiritual, and when we have sex of whatever kind we are connecting ourselves on both those levels with a partner in the deepest intimacy imaginable. The bond created between partners can seem so strong that it's even made them into one person, for in their mutual promise they have lost themselves in each other.

Pornography has no partner. There is no person in pornography. There is only a slab of pixilated flesh. Pornography rips the pleasure of sex away from a committed relationship with a vibrant person and attaches it to an ownership of a lifeless image. You do not need to bother with all the messy things that come with real love, like patience or self-denial or saying you are sorry. The thrill is easy and tragically cheap. Tragic because it is obvious you are not getting what you really, in your heart, desired. What you wanted was someone who was willing, really willing, to let you, and you only, into the deepest, most intimate areas of their life, because they loved you. And of course free, public, meaningless pornography can never give you that. So you are trapped.

British professor of English C.S. Lewis says it, like in so many things, better than I can:

"Masturbation sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides he is always adored, always a perfect lover; no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed upon his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself."

When a man has locked himself in that prison, his real relationships become empty motions. Even when he has sex, he is not really with her. He and his partner are still lonely when together.

True sex involves making love, not faking love. Pornography demands much, promises everything, and gives nothing. Lasting pleasure can only be found in lasting love. When you make love to the one and only person you have promised yourself to, you do not think about pornography -- you do not think about yourself! You think about them. Jack Grimes is a senior majoring in Philosophy and Political Science. He can be reached via e-mail at grimes@tuftsdaily.com.