Paleo Retiree writes:
I’ve been spending some time recently marveling at paleoconservatives, and particularly at the traditionalist-Catholic crowd. Now, I’m sympathetic to a fair amount of the cases they make, and the paleo/traditionalist critique of modernity is one of the most eye-opening things I’ve run across in recent years. (You can get a good taste of it by exploring Jim Kalb’s site and/or by reading my four-part interview with Jim: Intro, Part One, Part Two, Part Three.) My own blogging has occasionally elicited appreciative and brainy comments from serious and intelligent paleo/trad/Catholics. I’ve learned a great deal from my encounters with this crowd.
And then there’s the issue of porn …
Porn is an issue on which I’ll never see eye-to-eye with them. To many of the paleoconservatives, the traditionalists and the especially the trad-Catholics, porn seems to be the work of the Devil. It’s created by the wicked, the damaged and the depraved, and it destroys lives and undermines Western Civ. The idea that many of the producers and performers might be semi-rational people making their own decisions seems inconceivable. As far as I can tell, it’s a deeply-held assumption for the paleo/trad/Catholic crowd that nobody in his/her right mind would choose voluntarily to have sex for money on camera. So, inescapably and almost by definition — and no matter what the actual evidence reveals — porn performers aren’t in their right minds. QED, right? The idea that many millions of people manage to enjoy the occasional look at sexy imagery — even the extreme stuff — without having their lives wrecked by the experience seems like a hard one for them to wrap their brains around. And the further idea — one that I hold — that racy erotic pleasures are a redeeming feature of civilization really seems to flip them out.
Incidentally, I agree completely that the ease-of-access-to-porn that the digital universe has brought about is a concern. Is it really desirable for pre-teens to be running across the material that, for instance, Kink.com puts online? (Kink.com the company is extremely responsible, but a quick Google Image search on Sex & Submission or Hogtied.com will demonstrate how much of their content has escaped into the wild.) Still: Given the fact that online producers who are criminalized in one country can instantly relocate their businesses to another country, I don’t know practically speaking what can be done about it. And even if there is something practical (law-wise) to be done about it: I revel in the roughhousing, Wild-West, everyone-gets-to-have-an-opinion cosmos that is the internet. Thanks to it, many voices that wouldn’t otherwise be heard — my own, for instance, but also those of the paleo/trad/Catholic set — are able to get out in front of the public. For the sake of gaining greater control over porn, would I be willing to give up some of these benefits? Hell no.
FWIW, here’s the sense that I make of porn. For one thing: It’s a branch of erotic entertainment, a field that also includes pole dancing, fashion, romance novels, special bikini issues of sports magazines, ballet, striptease, and many foreign movies. (If you think ballet is out of place in the above list, I suggest you read the work of the former ballerina Toni Bentley, who makes it quite clear how sexually driven — and erotically-intended — much of ballet is. It’s supposed to be, among other things, a high-class turn-on.) To me, all of the above entertainment forms are potentially enjoyable, even potentially transporting in a religio-aesthetic way. For another: porn is an adult pleasure analogous to booze, which means: potentially dangerous, sure. Some people are going to have serious trouble with it, sure. And some lives will get wrecked. But many can handle it fine, and in a general way it’s one of the rewards of civilized life. Besides: Are you really in favor of Prohibition?
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
See this…
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Interesting, tks for the link.
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I imagine that, when it comes to sex, there will *always* be some American religious people who will be in favor of Prohibition. It seems a part of our DNA.
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I’m sure that to the Paleo/trad/Catholic crowd, porn is just another form of decadence. And decadence is bad.
Ross Douthat did an interesting opinion piece last Sunday:
Then a more interesting follow-on piece on his blog:
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/dont-mention-the-decadence/
It’s a compelling argument that I refuse to accept because I may resemble that argument. In other words, I’m with you Paleo.
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“I’m sure that to the Paleo/trad/Catholic crowd, porn is just another form of decadence. And decadence is bad.”
That strikes me as a shrewd hunch. The trad/paleo/Catholic crowd seems to favor a life where ALL energy is directed to worship, baby-making, and fighting in defense of Western Civ. Me, I savor a little decadence, and wouldn’t bother with civilization at all if I couldn’t enjoy some of the kinds of leisure, indulgence, and opportunities for self-exploration that it offers. If their picture of how things oughta be included some room for boho experimentation I’d find it a lot more simpatico.
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And of course, this raises the larger question; can you generally agree with the Trad critique of Modernity, and still retain your attachment to some of the things you love about modernity? Can we have a trad society, with porn (and other modern vices) as an open part of it, or is it either/or? Or would erotic art actually be more appealing and exciting if it were forced “underground” the way it was in the ’50’s? Bettie Page and Candy Barr were actually more exciting and appealing because they were (luscious, exotic) forbidden fruit.
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>>And of course, this raises the larger question; can you generally agree with the Trad critique of Modernity, and still retain your attachment to some of the things you love about modernity?
Sure, why not? An across-the-board intellectual consistency is stultifying, don’t you think?
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As a general thing I’m on Blowhard, Esq’s side here. Patchwork, eclectic, trial-and-error, seat-of-the-pants, and winging-it seem to me like sensible (and maybe inevitable) ways to make it thru life. It’s still an interesting set of questions, though. In my case I’m probably just too old to be much tempted by the trad critique. I like a lot of it, it’s trenchant and stimulating, etc. But I also find the positive side of it unbearably stuffy — it’s not a vision, let alone a life, I could ever embrace. The critique/vision that shook me and appealed to me when I was still impressionable (and still figuring things out) was the eco/anarchistic/smaller-is-beautiful/nature-vs-civ one. Dropping-out vs. participating in civilization (and then, if/when civilization is the choice, deciding on what terms to participate) … Now that’s a drama I’ve really lived out. In my inner life, I still wrestle with it daily, in fact. But I’ve loved encountering the paleo/trad vision, and I love tracking its flourishing on the web. That “Dark Enlightenment” thing that’s happening often reminds me, maybe bizarrely, of how the Beat movement took hold back in the ’50s. More about that later, I hope.
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Bettie Page and Candy Barr were actually more exciting and appealing because they were (luscious, exotic) forbidden fruit.
The problem with most mainstream porn today is that it’s boring. Sure, it provides for cheap thrills initially but after a while it becomes so repetitive. It’s gynaecological emphasis leaves nothing to the imagination. So perhaps heightened eroticity is achieved by leaving something to the imagination. I’ve always found something like this (Probably NSFW) far more arousing than half an hour of Bang Bros.
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Not generally a fan of Bang Bros.-type porn myself. Too dumb, crude and literal for me, at least most of the time.There’s a lot of lot of stuff out there though in the region where soft-core-erotica and hardcore porn start to merge. And there’s arty-yuppie alt-porn too. Beautiful Agony, anyone?
http://www.beautifulagony.com/public/main.php
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Sam Francis was one of the Original Paleos, and there’s this more nuanced view:
I also seriously respect Catholic conservatives, though of course nobody should take Catholic arguments too seriously. But how about this conservative position: Porn is just fine, but the pornification of society that started with the invention of the VCR is not just fine.
Like, wasn’t there a Blowhard who waxed (sorry) poetic lamenting the disappearance women’s “glorious natural pelt”? Porn!
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These days, I sometimes can’t figure out what the point of being pro or anti porn is. So long as we have the internet there’s going to be tons of porn around. Seems more useful, and (god knows) fun, to take note of it (and of how it’s affecting life generally) …
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I agree, instead of pro or con, there’s critique. It would be nice to have a paleocon critique or pornography, but there isn’t any, unless you count the Catholic catechism. I’m somewhere between paleocon and Paglia-con, but on this topic I think the paleocons have the most to learn.
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Blowhard, Esq, I think you hit the nail on the head.
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About Douthad and his nonsense, I left a comment over on his article that they published, but sans the links to my blog…
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At this stage it’s almost risible to refer to porn as “adult” entertainment, because kids are overwhelmingly consumers and there’s not a damn thing to do about that. What’s striking about this is how different the real-world effects seem to be from the alarming predictions that we’ve been hearing forever. For the longest time, it seemed reasonable to wonder whether early exposure to pornography might be a trigger for sexual aggression or psychopathy or demonic forces unknown, but it now seems (as the above-linked TED conference illustrates) that the most measurable effect is ED …. and ennui.
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Dennis Mangan, a traditionalist but an atheist traditionalist, has put up some thoughts on the bad effects of porn:
http://mangans.blogspot.ca/2012/06/food-and-porn-as-supernormal-stimuli.html
http://mangans.blogspot.ca/2012/11/the-social-costs-of-pornography.html
http://mangans.blogspot.ca/2012/12/paleos-and-porn.html
Read the comments too.
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Indeed. He’s probably wrong, as seen in the comments… 😉
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Here are some more of his writings on the subject:
http://mangans.blogspot.ca/search?q=pornography
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Thanks. Dennis is really smart and I always enjoy reading (and occasionally dueling) with him.
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