it’s good that #porn exists, though the ‘internet porn’ phenomenon causes many problems.
the biggest problem with #pornography, actually, is that it has **too much responsibility**—must stand in for other, needed representation.
there’s *nowhere near enough realistic grownup sex* and #sexuality in contemporary popular media. porn is bad insofar as it exploits workers or spreads evil lies instead of fantasy, but telling complex truth about sex is important—too important to leave *just* to smut.
normal people’s lives aren’t ruined by smut (or ‘porn addiction’!), but by having stupid, selfish, myopic ideas about sex, sexuality, sensuality, love—and so not being able to fit the desire-play of porn into a sane framework for living.
i think of this as analogous to #EstherPerel’s argument that the main reason sex dies in monogamous western marriages is that they *also* have to be best-friendships, work-partnerships, roommate situations—what’s needed is erotic/emotional load-balancing
think of the pitiful recurring meme of being ‘#horny on main’ (expressing anything resembling sexual interest or energy on your social media account)—the way 20somethings(!!) subtly shame one another, a little ratchet-turn at a time, for expressing #desire instead of #identity—
a subtle, creepy, predictable consequence/echo of replacing ‘sexuality’ (fluid desire) with ever-more-target-marketed ‘gender’ (branding) as a primary identity-axis.
(think too of the bipartisan ‘grooming’ moral-panic…)
last night i was rereading #AngelsInAmerica and was floored by its candid, revelatory *physicality*—it’s a real achievement to write/stage such a massive, ‘epic’ work while staying deeply grounded in the most intimate, visceral details of your characters’ bodies and dreams and shared lives.
the solution to dumb distorting exploitative smut isn’t censorship by scared prudish lackwits, it’s work like kushner’s, which treats sex with the love and fear and hard scary *thinking* it deserves.
@waxbanks it really is amazing how dense yet entertaining it is, getting in not only personal drama but history as well.
“The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could reach it. That was deliberate.”
@greg_weed my wife and i watched the hbo production together and that whole experience is wrapped in this warm glow -- such intelligence and poetry and spiritual fervor and anger and love. and belize is an extraordinary figure.