The Porn Myth, an article by the author of the well known ‘Beauty Myth‘, Naomi Wolf is a commentary on sex, as in the act of sex, in the internet age. Wolf recounts early criticisms of pornography, most notably Andrea Dworkin’s Radical Feminist criticism of pornography as being violent toward women and that it would ultimately breed a society that treats its women as passive ‘receivers’, ‘instruments’ or ‘objects’ of sex.

By Wolf’s lights, pornography and easy access to pornography has molded our view of sex as much worse than violent, it is instead objectified to the extent that the ‘market’ of sex is over saturated.

Pornography is addictive; the baseline gets ratcheted up. By the new millennium, a vagina—which, by the way, used to have a pretty high “exchange value,” as Marxist economists would say—wasn’t enough; it barely registered on the thrill scale. All mainstream porn—and certainly the Internet—made routine use of all available female orifices. The Porn Myth, Naomi Wolf

The Myth is that explicit and open sexuality has become the main interest in the prospect of relationships. Promiscuity and vulgarity is what has become valuable in looking for a female companion. Women are forced in to unreal and impossible expectations and men are discouraged by the female’s lack of ‘perfection’.

Today, real naked women are just bad porn. The Porn Myth, Naomi Wolf

Wolf makes the case that in other societies, ones that promote less promiscuity or explicit behaviours, there is healthier and richer sexual lives of it’s participants. By covering one’s head and body is to conceal and protect those things that are reserved privately for a partner. In doing so, sex itself is given a standard and a cultural weight of importance.

Although in many ways I can see this criticism of sex and gender roles as valid, however I would be more concerned that when presenting solutions, Wolf is still offering a view that ultimately objectifies sex itself. How is it that we ought to find answers to our sexual oppressions by choosing one side of the dichotomy of public or private sex. Which one makes a better society? The answer is neither. There is no ‘freedom’ in promiscuity, and there is no ‘purity’ in being celibate.

It’s not a question of how much or how little we should make available our bodies or our sexual interest, it is how we understand what a sexual relationship means to the parties involved. We cannot focus on relationships as a play between powers. Wolf treats the sexual relationship in this way, a relationship that is founded upon the assumption that we enter in to a kind of contract of mutual objectification. By objectifying one another, and utilizing one another for one another’s benefit.

Although there may indeed be this kind of exchange of mutual utility in a relationship that is sexual, it ought not be the only dynamic to it. Is there not something else between the exchange of two people?