"Without porn, the world would be a better place"

"Without porn, the world would be a better place"

That may be true, but without porn, the world would not be the world.

Porn has always been part of human culture, probably since we were first able to tell stories and draw pictures, but the single most dramatic change brought about by the internet is the easy universal accessibility of even the most graphic material. When I was a kid, you couldn't even see naked bodies, except in National Geographic, or in a copy of Playboy that had been passed from hand to hand after being commandeered from some dad's collection. I never saw a naked woman in motion until I was 13 or 14, when my friend and I thought we were quite the sophisticates by bluffing our way into an art theater to see Romy Schneider's breasts in Boccaccio 70. When I was an older teen, it was possible to go into used bookstores and see nudist magazines if we didn't linger too long. It was also possible to buy Grove Press versions of (non-illustrated) erotica like My Secret Life and Tropic of Cancer in such establishments. But hard-core porn? No way.

Hell, even in the 1990s, when I was already approaching 50, even soft-core material was difficult to obtain. I had to go into porn shops just to buy copies of Celebrity Sleuth, and I hated the experience. Those were foul-smelling, ill-lit places full of seedy characters buying magazines and video tapes from sweaty, cigar-smoking clerks that always seemed to look like "Porky."

The internet changed that. Now any child of any age can see any foul act he cares to see. The teens have probably seen sleazy things that I still haven't even seen, because I wouldn't care to go looking for them.

I can't defend that situation, and I think the feminists are right in that it probably does have a negative impact on society, but I don't know how to get control of it. I think the internet has opened Pandora's ... er ... box, and I don't see any way to stuff the porn back inside.