This is a really good article, and just the fact that it's published in a mainstream publication like The Atlantic shows how much internet pornography has changed American sexual mores in the last few years. And I think the author makes a good case that it indeed is technology that has changed the thinking:
"When a 13-year-old girl can sit in math class, hide her Hello Kitty smart phone behind her textbook, and pull up such an extreme video in less time than it would take her to text a vote for her favorite American Idol contestant, we’ve certainly reached some kind of new societal landmark."
Given the subtitle, "The new world of porn is revealing eternal truths about men and women", I'm not sure that your interpretation is complete - as far as I can see, the author is arguing that porn reveals (and partially legitimizes) male... appetites.
I must admit to being somewhat taken aback by the "males are aggressively, dangerously sexual" undertone. Is this a common (female) attitude?
(For context: I'm male, living with my wonderful girlfriend.)
It's not really a common attitude, but many vocal feminists/leftists have that attitude. It plays well into the gender/class struggle ideology and the culture of victimhood. The article is mostly trash using opinions unfounded in data, but supported by mainstream society.
If you look at the popular videos it's all pretty benign and standard fare, the author was right in her economic analysis that decreased distribution costs have increased variety but if you look at whats being viewed its still all standard fare. It's like indie film, yes the internet has caused some indie films to do very well and increased the variety of films available, but the vast majority of people are still going to blockbuster major releases such as Avatar.
Also, if you look at what the Victorians (a notoriously conservative period of western history) had access to, or what was made by the likes of Betty Page in the 50s you can see the the internet didn't really change anything. All the internet really tells us is that lowering barriers to consumption increases demand. Hardly a revolution in economic thought.
No one seriously quotes Freud in regards to sex, Freud's opinions date to a time in psychology before statistical analysis was prevalent. They also date to a different time and culture. Freud said a lot of things and like most people, he was mostly wrong. Even Kinsey which was the definitive study with regard to male sexuality for many years has many holes in it. It's very difficult for sociologists / psychologists to tease apart nature from nurture and know what is eternally 'true'.
If porn was really causing aggressive and dangerous sexual behaviors you'd see it reflected in a variety of stats. Since there are no facts to support such a conclusion, opinion and anecdote are substituted.
I presume that subtitles in pieces like this aren't usually written by the author, so I'm not to worried if they actually agree with the sentiment of the piece.
For the "males are dangerously sexual" undertone, I think this is true but intended as historical background. My ultra-summary from an American perspective would be something like:
1960's: Males are dangerous and women must defend their honor. Betty Friedan writes about trapped women.
1970's: Males still dangerous, but women can take control of this. Feminism on the rise: Our Bodies Our Selves.
1980's: Women and males be equally dangerous, equally pro-sex. Aids causes concern all around. Anti-porn.
1990's: Feminist backlash. OK to be an effeminate metrosexual. Read Katie Roiphe and Bitch Magazine. Move toward pro-porn.
2000's: Decade is over, and now the history is being written by people like Natasha Vargas-Cooper. Porn is passe.
I too don't buy the argument that the aggressive, degrading sex you see in lots of internet porn is what every male secretly wants. My theory is that the reason lots of internet porn is extreme is the same reason as why movies revolve around unusual situations: it's good drama. It's something most people don't experience, and so they're curious about it. Here's a testable hypothesis using anal sex as an example:
In a longitudinal study, ask a group of men who watch internet porn about what sorts of videos they watch every six months for several years. Also, ask them about what kinds of sex they have had in the previous six months. From the results, pick those men who first have anal sex during the time period, and compare their porn habits six months before to six months after they report having anal sex. I predict you would find that, as a group, they will watch fewer videos involving anal sex after than before they do it themselves. It's no longer as novel, so it's not so interesting.
I must admit to being somewhat taken aback by the "males are aggressively, dangerously sexual" undertone. Is this a common (female) attitude?
Are you thinking there is no aggression whatsoever in your sex life? Aggression and power are complex things. The way they play out can be quite subtle. Many things men consider to be "human" or "neutral" are in fact norms that exist to reinforce male hegemony. And those things play out in the bedroom.
I don't see how this is relevant. In my experience, women are sexually aggressive on occasion as well. The presence of some minute level of "aggression" (which is a pretty large brush by itself) is not enough to say that male sexuality is characterized by it and therefore dangerous.
Generally, in the context of gender studies anything that results in another person to making an economic decision will be regarded as 'aggressive' and reinforcing male 'hegemony', especially if the group in question is known to make really poor decisions when confronted with that question.
For example, lets say men are known to take more risk in their investment portfolios. Investments that have high risk and hence create higher returning male portfolios would then be regarded as reinforcing male hegemony.
As part of the societal trend towards equality of the genders, there's a tendency to take the standard or model for men, say that women are now allowed that standard or model, and declare equality to have been achieved. Saying these standards "exist to reinforce male hegemony" is an exaggeration, for the most part men aren't actively trying to oppress women, they're just not succeeding in achieving true equality. From a women's perspective, it's the same result, although sensationalizing doesn't really help their cause.
As a somewhat abstract example, when women are compared to men in the workplace, they're usually seen as cautious or passive. Now, this is true, that the average female is more cautious or passive than the average male (leaving aside nature vs nurture for a second). But that bolded part is critical--most people, when making the observation that women are more passive, don't realize that they're using a male standard as a basis for judgment.
It's important to note, that the differences attributed to women are not necessarily bad ones. One could just as easily say, men are rash and compulsive. And, this would also be true, in exactly the same fashion: the average male is rash and compulsive compared to the average female. But, because of historical male hegemony, the average male is taken as the ideal or the standard. Difference from this standard, even when neutral or situationally advantageous, tends to be perceived first as a deficiency.
Here's a slightly more concrete example, which I don't know if it's true but it could be: until recently, men drove cars and women were mostly passengers (this is still true in other countries). Cars were physically designed around the average male body. When women started driving, that meant that they were allowed in the driver's seats, but those seats were still designed for men. The pedal and mirror placements were sub-optimal for their generally smaller bodies. Even though women have achieved nominal equality in the area of driving, until car makers update their design constraints, women operate cars at a disadvantage because they must conform to a standard that was designed without them and that does not fit them. On the one hand it's unfortunate, but on the other hand it's inevitable, because it's not a good business decision to design a car for people who don't drive (until they do).
But that bolded part is critical--most people, when making the observation that women are more passive, don't realize that they're using a male standard as a basis for judgment.
Thist is an important insight, but one should be careful with it. Taking it too far leads to the exact same kind of backwards thinking where (taking race instead of gender) reading books is "acting white". If one group in society (men, whites, etc.) is dominant, and society continues to function, then obviously the dominant group is doing something right, and forcing or pressuring the oppressed group into doing something wrong. In the racial case, that "something" is education. Whites oppressed blacks; whites were educated while blacks weren't. The answer is to educate blacks and stop oppressing them; it isn't to tear down education itself as an artifact of white oppression.
Back to your example, sometimes someone in a traditionally male occupation has to be assertive. It's hard to imagine a passive salesperson or a passive Prime Minister being very effective, male or female; agree or disagree with them, Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir were not passive women by any stretch of the imagination.
(Thatcher and Meir may have certainly been bad PM's in the sense of doing bad things, depending on your political views; I don't want to argue it either way. But they were certainly effective; if one agreed with and wanted to pursue Thatcher's agenda in the UK 30 years ago, Thatcher would undoubtedly be the best candidate for PM. Likewise, one can be an extremely effective salesperson while selling useless crap no one really needs.)
The only problem is, I am not aware of an actual Hello Kitty smartphone; otherwise my wife would have asked me to buy it for her. Perhaps this is a regular phone with a plastic skin or a themed download?
If I wanted to be cynical and/or pretentious, I might draw a parallel between the infant-like nature of Hello Kitty products, the Freudian childhood wish that might indicate, and the fact that her asking you to buy something rather than buying it herself portrays an interesting father/daughter dynamic. But that would be truly weird, and wait, are we still on HN? OK I'm disoriented now.
Seeing as my wife and I share all funds, it would not be "me" buying "her" something, as us having a discussion as to whether this was an acceptable purchase.
HK is huge in Asian countries especially, which is where my wife is from- I readily admit to confusion over HKs appeal.
BTW did you know that HK is the weight of 3 apples and the height of 5 apples?
She can also swing a string of solid double entendres, "The difficulty of acquiring this material may have hinted at a great, and therefore pent-up, demand. Then, technology produced the Second Coming: the Internet. And then the Rapture itself: broadband."
It's really well written in the sense of flowing well and constructing narratives, and as an exposition of the author's point of view it's pretty well constructed.
Unfortunately, the quality of ideas is a lot more uneven; while I can readily accept the idea that male sexuality is typically dominating and aggressive, the article is otherwise filled with the type of crap you'd write in school to make a banal thought about The Great Gatsby stretch out to ten pages.
Sometimes the article reveals more about the author than about the purported topic:
Hard-core porn...is undoubtedly extreme. But how is sex, as a human experience, anything less than extreme? ...the sex that occurs in between relationships—or overlaps with relationships—where the buffers of intimacy or familiarity do not exist: the raw, unpracticed sort. If a woman thinks of the best sex she’s had in her life, she’s often thinking of this kind of sex, and while it may be the best sex in her life, it’s not the sex she wants to have throughout her life—or more accurately, it’s not the sex she’d have with the man with whom she’d like to spend her life.
...
Never was this made plainer to me than during a one-night stand.... He couldn’t stay aroused. Over the course of the tryst, I trotted out every parlor trick and sexual persona I knew....in a moment of exasperation, he asked if we could have anal sex. I asked why.... He answered, almost without thought, “Because that’s the only thing that will make you uncomfortable.” This was, perhaps, the greatest moment of sexual honesty I’ve ever experienced—and without hesitation, I complied. This encounter proves an unpleasant fact that does not fit the feminist script on sexuality: pleasure and displeasure wrap around each other like two snakes.
And it gets even worse when she starts talking about male desires:
ONE OF THE most punishing realities women face when they reach sexual maturity is that their maturity is (at least to many men) unsexy. Indeed, we now have an entire genre of online smut politely called “Lolita Porn.”
...
Indeed, porn stars no longer look like porn stars. The image of Jenna Jameson, America’s most famous professional porn star (and a best-selling author)—with her comically huge breasts, overextended blond extensions, and artificially tanned skin—has been supplanted by the new face of pornography: a pale, naughty, 19-year-old with A-cups and a bad haircut, her face illuminated only by the bluish glow of her Mac.
If you actually look at the most viewed or top rated videos on a porn aggregator site, the actual evidence doesn't bear out her assumption here. Yes, there's a wider variety of porn available. There's a wider variety of everything available; it's remarkable enough to write about that, even though the subject has been thoroughly covered by now. But the minute you've hinged your article on the argument that men don't like big tits anymore, you've disengaged from reality entirely.
I think the writing is quite bad--pretentious and essentially sensationalistic. She manages to pack in pseudo-science, pseudo-psychology, AND pseudo-sociology. This is an example of a uniquely pathetic style of rhetoric that only an intelligent person is capable of.
It's basically intellectual pornography for people who are predisposed to her prejudices.
"When a 13-year-old girl can sit in math class, hide her Hello Kitty smart phone behind her textbook, and pull up such an extreme video in less time than it would take her to text a vote for her favorite American Idol contestant, we’ve certainly reached some kind of new societal landmark."
The writing is solid and bold. I'm impressed. Author's website is here: http://www.natashavc.com/?page_id=62