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The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

Debating Porn: Where's The Evidence?

By The Daily Dish
Jun 30 2010, 7:54 AM ET

A reader writes:

Regarding your post about porn and whether or not it's destroying sexuality, I'm calling bullshit. This entire argument seems ridiculously tired to me. First, these books describing the crisis of sexuality in America often rely on one-on-one interviews with very little qualitative data. I've yet to see any serious studies showing that men or women are enjoying sex less, are less satisfied with their partners, etc. The interview with Gail Dines is one anecdote after another. The only thing this woman convinced me of is that she's got shoddy methodology and her kids must spend an inordinate amount of time rolling their eyes.

The sexual data points we do have suggest positive sexual trends: that younger women may be delaying vaginal sex with safer forms of sex (oral) and that women are delaying childbearing (suggesting greater reproductive power), among others. And I'd be willing to bet that women have greater agency in their sexual lives today than ever before. Who do you think was/is more likely to speak up about sex they don't like: your grandmother or your sister? (Sorry to bring your theoretical grandma and sister into this.)

Gail Dines, in the NSFW video above, makes her case against pornography in graphic detail but without the data this Dish reader requests. Amanda Hess has more clips of anti-porn activists speaking at a recent conference in DC.



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