Watching Sex
2003-07-22 03:15:29.185121+00 by
Dan Lyke
3 comments
Just finished Watching Sex: How Men Really Respond to Pornography![[Wiki]](/adbanners/lookingglass.png)
by David Loftus (ISBN 1-56025-360-6). I was disappointed, mostly because it was just a reaffirmation of what I already know, and those who most need to read it, those who've been taken in by the manipulations and misrepresentations of the anti-porn pro-censorship crowd, won't. It's based on his interviews, many done via the internet, with men who use porn, and he breaks down the book into dispelling many of the myths that have grown up around porn use, with a few chapters in the back that directly take on assertions by the usual suspects.
Handy to have on the bookshelf in case someone not quite so enlightened drops by and starts to thumb through it, but to Flutterby readers it's probably mostly a "yeah, and?"
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comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: Watching Sex made: 2003-07-22 18:15:55.715927+00 by:
Shawn
Links to the book on Amazon and Barnes & Noble are now in the Wiki.
#Comment Re: Watching Sex made: 2003-09-20 16:13:18.745674+00 by:
Dan Lyke
Got this note from the author:
From: "David J. Loftus"
To: <webmaster@flutterby.com>
Subject: your reaction to Watching Sex
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 18:58:31 -0700
Just ran across your remarks about my book, Watching Sex,
on Flutterby, dated 2003-07-21.
Sorry the book did not enlighten you by much, but perhaps that
means it wasn't particularly written for you, as you gathered. It's
all very well and good to congratulate yourself for being so
benighted, but what are we going to do about those millions of
other people who still regard pornography as dangerous, wicked,
immoral, and satanic? As you know, most of them aren't going to
read the book, but then, some of them are in a position to enact
legislation and enforce existing laws that can hurt you, me, and
other folks like us.
So perhaps your "yeah, and?" could be put to thinking about what
to do to adjust the attitudes of rest of the country, which may
outnumber us oh-so-wise ones.
At least it should have struck you as odd that while the contents
of my book may have been obvious to you, no one had ever thought
to ask a bunch of porn consumers about their thoughts and feelings
before, and what they had to say not only contravenes much of the
received social wisdom about men and pornography, but has struck
many bookstores and newspapers as so inflammatory that they have
run in fear from the prospect of giving me or my book any exposure.
We live in a very schizoid and hypocritical society. What are you going
to do to alleviate that?
David Loftus
You may place my comments on the Flutterby Web site if you wish.
To which I responded:
From: Dan Lyke <danlyke@flutterby.com>
To: "David J. Loftus"
Subject: your reaction to Watching Sex
David J. Loftus writes:
> So perhaps your "yeah, and?" could be put to thinking about what
> to do to adjust the attitudes of rest of the country, which may
> outnumber us oh-so-wise ones.
Thanks for the note. I spend time thinking about exactly this, and I'm
grateful that you've actually done something toward it. I'm also
trying to figure out how to get a '70s feminist friend with a couple
of teenage boys who *needs* to read your book to do so, but I've no
idea how to go about that. Since a few others in this circle feel the
same way, I'm trying to make sure she sees it on all of our
coffee-tables, but while she'll read fiction I suggest, she's
unwilling to have her preconceived notions altered.
> At least it should have struck you as odd that while the contents
> of my book may have been obvious to you, no one had ever thought
> to ask a bunch of porn consumers about their thoughts and feelings
> before,
Part of my perspective issue is that I live in the San Francisco Bay
area and spend a lot of time on the 'net, both places where these
questions have been asked. And in that bubble I often lose perspective
of what's happening in the rest of the country.
When writing for Flutterby, I also often forget that I'm on the net at
larger, and not just writing for a few hundred people who've been
attracted to my site as long-term readers because they have similar
backgrounds and experiences to mine. I'm always shocked when I show up
in the first page of Google results. Sometimes it takes a jolt from
the author of a book (you're the second one who's pointed out
perspective issues in my reviews) to get me to reconsider my audience.
> You may place my comments on the Flutterby Web site if you wish.
Thanks, will do. And I appreciate the reminder that when office
chatter can delve into what (if anything) various folks are wearing to
the Folsom Street Fair, I'm definitely in a bubble.
Dan
#Comment Re: Watching Sex made: 2003-09-23 16:34:25.208856+00 by:
Dan Lyke
Daze Reader had a link to a Boston Phoenix interview with David Loftus