Pornography: an obsession with sex... or death?

(First Things) - Pornography degrades women (those cocksure feminists who claim otherwise have fallen for the biggest male confidence trick of all time). It alters the neural pathways of the brain and literally changes the way its consumers think. It hinders men from developing mature emotional relationships with women. It reinforces and supercharges the notion that sex is a commodity over which the consumer has complete control. Further, if an article by Cosmo Landesman in this weeks Spectator is to be believed, it is impacting the middle-aged as badly as it is affecting the younger generation.

The strangest thing about the article is that the author clearly takes personal advantage of the phenomenon which he claims to find so disturbing. Yet perhaps we should not judge him too harshly on this score. Maybe the honesty, the refusal to gloss selfish sleaze as virtue or freedom, is refreshing even if the attitude itself is disturbing.

One might take the article as more evidence that sex has lost all meaning, becoming divorced not only from procreation but from any relationship. Yet the article also suggests that in a certain sense sex has gained greater meaning than ever...

Complete article here.