On Porn

This was originally going to be called "Ode to Porn" because I think that the poetic form most accurately encapsulates how I feel about pornography. But you know that I don't write much poetry, and I tend to shy away from things that are challenging from me. This is why I didn't take math my senior year of high school and why I try not to go food shopping alone.

A porn poem was a nice idea, though. There are lots of words that rhyme with "porn."

born
corn
adorn
forlorn
horn
bjorn (with the slash through the "o", of course)
mourn (what I would do if there was no more porn)
torn
Pete Yorn's last name totally rhymes with porn

See? A poem probably would have been no sweat. I mean, if you look at the word "poem" really quickly while squinting your eyes a little bit and jamming your fingernail into the back of your left ear, it even looks like the word "porn." That, bitchlettes, is how easy writing a poem about porn would probably be.

Note the word probably. Pornably. I just can't take the chance that it might actually be hard.

Hahahahaha. Hard.

So, there are people out there who are offended by porn. I understand that, I suppose. It's hard to imagine seating an 87-year-old Amish grammaw in front of a laptop, showing her Tommy Lee tattoo-fucking Pamela Anderson on his boat and having her not be offended. I mean, I kind of know how she feels. I'm offended that Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson even exist.

But, the Amish aren't normal, so normal laws-- just like taxes-- don't apply to them. When a normal person gets offended by pornography, it raises a red flag in my pants-- book. Sorry.

Are they offended-- or are they grossed out?

Are they grossed out-- or are they weirdly fascinated, inwardly ashamed of that weird fascination, and then, out of sheer embarrassment and guilt, take to the streets with big posters featuring the word "VAG" with a red line through it?

You know who you are, you red vag slashers, you.

The complaint I hear most about porn is that it "dehumanizes women." I don't know about that. First of all, I probably shouldn't comment on this at all, you know, because I'm not a woman and, sometimes, especially in the morning before coffee has been surgically inserted into my bloodstream and bone-marrow, I'm probably not especially human, either. However, I challenge porn-opponents to present empirical data that pornography has been directly responsible to one, just one, incidence of a woman being turned into a vole, a 1987 Ford Taurus GL, a poplar tree, or a public park drinking fountain.

Dehumanizing? Show me the evidence. Preferably in a locked room with lots of tissues.

I don't like the "dehumanizing" argument for another reason besides the lack of hard (hee-hee) evidence: it's always used in reference to women.

Um-- hi. There are guys in porn. Who do you think is always fucking them in all those annoying, shitty, 1 minute-29-second-long clips that are just long enough to pique your interest but you have to watch on loop on Windows Media Player just to be able to sustain a halfway decent erection but then it just gets annoying to listen to the stupid bitch saying, "No-- that's the wrong hole" seven times in the space of six minutes?

So, if porn dehumanizes women, shouldn't it also dehumanize guys? Funnily enough, I don't think I've ever heard of a male porn-star complain that porn "dehumanized him." Actually, I don't know that I've of a female porn star claiming that either. Seems mostly to be uptight poly-sci majors.

(Uh-oh-- let me get my helmet and my Taser X12 to prepare myself for the onslaught of saucy comments! Last time I took a gentle barb at English majors on this blog I was probably burned in effigy on Vassar's quad.)

Oh, porn-- you couldn't offend me if you tried. There is, however, lots of porn that I just won't watch.

Porn featuring

* midgets, dwarves, munchkins, little folks, ever-teenies, hydrant-people or whatever the P.C. term for Weebles is these days.

* members of the animal kingdom-- furry or otherwise. I mean, if I really wanted to watch that, I could just turn on "NOVA" or book a flight to Juarez, Mexico and see a "really good show" featuring "la virgin y la vaca. Todos se mojan!"

(Look that up if you have to-- it's gross.)

* talking. Charlie Chaplin was right-- talkies will be the death of the Tramp. And tramps. Girls in porn should never be permitted to speak anything other than "Fuck me!" because, when they do, well, it's straight to Flaccidtown. I would say that porn starlettes should all have their tongues removed, but then they wouldn't be nearly as fun-- and I'll bet some poly-sci major would be offended by that.

* copious amounts of what appears to be salad dressing being poured into a woman's gaping asshole. I mean-- why?

* plots. Please don't pretend to be fixing the rich peoples' dishwasher while the babysitter is home with, inexplicably, no baby around anywhere. Just fuck. On the table-- and put a tarp down, for Christ's sake.

* chicks or dudes dressed up as Nazis. I mean, come on. Who thinks that's a good idea?

* gynecology offices/tables/instruments. Gross.

* conjoined twins. I mean, regular twins is okay. You know-- I have some standards. Actually, maybe conjoined twins would be okay, too, depending on where they're connected, of course.