Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff, reacting to the recent Internet craze over Britney Spears crotch photos, offers this “truth” about men:
The alternative sexual universes men create for themselves via pornography are fueled, not by sexual lust primarily, but by feelings of hatred and vengeance towards all women, but in particular, beautiful, successful, women who are untouchable, unreachable, impossible to personally dominate, something most men find intolerable. It’s not about desire. It’s not in any way about appreciation for beautiful women. It’s not really about sex, either.
The problem with this “truth” is that it is not true. While I’m sure there is a high incidence of pornography use among men who hate women, porn is simply ubiquitous in our culture. As technology has made access to porn easier and, more importantly, taken the stigma out of it by increasing privacy levels, it has become nearly universal–so much so that companies are having to install filters to keep employees from looking at porn instead of working.
Unless we are going to define “misogyny” in such a way as to include a goodly portion of the men in our society–and virtually all of our teenage boys–feminists should disabuse themselves of the notion that porn is primarily about a secret desire to harm women. As Freud observed, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Hat tip: RightPundit “McCain”
