I knew pornography had become mainstream when I saw an episode of Friends in which Joey and Chandler are mistakenly getting the porn cable channel for free. They refuse to turn off their TV or even turn the channel for fear that somehow they will lose this magnificent gift. None of their friends finds this the least unusual or, well, creepy. In fact, it's taken to be kind of funny. After all, these are our "friends," and we are asked to see Joey and Chandler's obsession with porn as something amusing, rather than as a sign of moral failure.
Maggie Gallagher has more insights (hat tip Julie Ponzi) on what happens when fetish goes mainstream. As she laments, doesn't anyone want illicit sex anymore? I mean, if it isn't a little dangerous, it isn't fun. Oddly enough, pornography, rather than stimulating eroticism, is the death of the erotic. Eroticism thrives on mystery and danger, the quest of discovering something new. As David Amsden and Naomi Wolf point out, those (mostly men) who consume large amounts of pornography have a hard time "performing" when they find themselves with a real human being. So leave aside the moral arguments against porn. In one of life's great ironies, pornography is bad for your sex life.
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