Pornified and Female Chauvinist Pigs  Is Porn Really
Transforming Our Sex Lives? New books dissected over email.
Sept. 20 2005 2:56 AM  Pornified and Female Chauvinist Pigs   Hi
Wendy and Meghan,  We're supposed to grapple over two new and
pretty alarmist books on the state of sexual culture in America:
Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our
Relationships, and Our Families, by Pamela Paul; and Female
Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, by Ariel
Levy. There are a lot of overlaps between them: Both describe
the dire effects the rising cultural acceptability of porn has
on male-female relationships and on female self-esteem. Paul
presents a parade of dismal male porn addicts who can't relate
to real women; Levy focuses on young women who've decided
(wrongly, she thinks) that porn and its motifs can be empowering
for gals. Both paint a depressingly disconnected world, like
Sartre's No Exit for the porn age: Women want intimacy with men,
men want fantasy sex with porn stars, a