Porn vs. Intimacy
Rob Weiss authored a post for Huffington Post about sex as a topic of film in our current age.
He does a good job tracing the history of it. And the basic question he raises is also really valuable; namely, “What does this sudden interest in sexually-themed stories mean?”
He then explores a related question:
Is this sexualization of the American zeitgeist a passing phase, or have we permanently discarded our puritan roots?
My personal thought is the latter. i don’t see how the sexualization of our culture, especially our entertainment, could simply be a passing phase. Usually, once you cross a boundary — particularly those of the sexual kind — you don’t go back.
Weiss has a good deal of expertise given his credentials and he examines the role things like pornography have had on us with clinical precision. For that i am very grateful.
So i was disappointed by his closing sentence:
The simple fact is human beings are profoundly sexual creatures, and being able to witness our fantasies (or someone else’s fantasies) on screen and then discuss what we’ve seen with an intimate partner afterward is a great way to not only spice up our sex lives, but to build and enhance relationship trust and emotional intimacy.
i understand why a clinician might say something like this, but the reality is that viewing porn is not a way to build intimacy, it’s a way to destroy it. Ultimately, porn or erotica literature will replace intimacy between real people. Fantasy has that sort of power because it’s pristine, without error, untouched by the flaws that real people have.
The more sexual fantasy a person indulges, the more disconnected that person becomes from actual people. Even if, as Weiss suggests, sexual partners discuss their fantasies and the porn they watch together, intimacy will be negatively affected.
Intentional Warriors 
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