Asymmetrical Information

I believe the term is "imperfect substitute good."
Like a school cafeteria burger for filet mingon.

"Like a school cafeteria burger for filet mingon."

If you're attempting to make the analogy I think you're trying to make, you have it wrong.

It should be: A homemade burger for a *picture* of a chain restaurant filet mignon.

Not the analogy I would make anyway.

The explosion of amateur pornography posted on the Internet, and generating page views and profits, suggests that more and more women are deemed "porn worthy," not fewer and fewer as Wolf suggests.

These "young women on college campuses" might want to consider the idea that if they can't compete with porn for their male counterparts' attention, perhaps this says something about them.

No, I stand by the original analogy. A vastly inferior, easily available and convenient experience accepted as a substitute only because the preferred good is completely unavailable at the time.

Naomi Wolf acolytes having trouble getting picked up by red-blooded American boys?

Yeah, it must be pornography's fault. Only explanation, really.

I find the decline of talent in the NFL is due to too many guys playing Madden NFL. Thinking back, the plague of unharrassed, barrell-tossing apes in the '80s was surely due to the vicarious pleasure of virtual ape-harrassing meted out by Donkey Kong, satiating our ape-harrassing desires.

I believe that Ms. Wolf is using porn as a scapegoat to explain men's lack of interest with woman/womyn who think like her.

Or to put it more eloquently
"And it doesn’t matter how much people are offended by what I say, either. I’m just the messenger, and the message is: men are sick of the Feminist Revolution, and the changes wrought in women by it.

One of my favorite lines in movies is Charles Grodin’s description of Robert De Niro’s character in Midnight Run: ”You have two moods: silence, and rage.” If women want to learn a little lesson, they could do a whole lot worse than understand that this description, admittedly somewhat over-simplified, pretty much describes all men.

And I foretold this in Pussification: at some point, men are going to get sick of all that feminist nonsense, and the nannying which is used to enforce it. Well, hostility has been ruled out—we men are all by now intimately familiar with the rules governing that emotion and behavior.

So to all you Grrrls out there: say hello to indifference, men’s ultimate, and unbeatable weapon."

To expand on Njorl's comment, just think of the generations of spinsters who have failed to find their Mr. Darcy.

I can't believe I'm about to defend Naomi Wolf, but I am. Not from any ridicule coming her way for what she's written or said, but from the charge that she "continues giving feminism a bad name...." That may be true. She may still be giving feminism a black eye, but the link is to an article Ms. Wolf wrote back in 2003 -- almost four years ago. I'd say what Naomi did four years ago shouldn't count as something that she's currently doing -- no matter how laudable or lamentable that thing shed did was.

Not to live up to my name, but I do not see how you can give identity politics a bad name.

If you start with a desire for liberty, justice and apple pie, you will sometimes find that some advances towards these primarily benefit people from group X. And at other times, mainly group Y will benefit from an advance.

Identity politics starts with a desire to benefit group X, and then looks for arguments to justify doing this. Equality, Liberty, Fraternity, Christianity, the Senate and People of Rome, the Sun God, whatever is fashionable at the moment.

The requirement to start with the conclusion, and then try to find arguments to link it with the justification, is the reason for such daft arguments.

Yeah. Yglesias was commenting on this 2003 article too. What's the reason people are all of a sudden interested in a 4-year-old article?

Also, what is the antecedent for "such a person" in the parenthetical: "(Would I actually want to date such a person? No; it would bore me to death. Which is the other reason that I don't see pornography substituting for real life any time soon.)" Is she talking about "a partner who immediately fulfills your every desire without asking anything in return"? She would be crazy not to want to date such a person - I mean, just for a little while, at least?

Squid:

That was a wonderful remark!

The explosion of amateur pornography posted on the Internet, and generating page views and profits, suggests that more and more women are deemed "porn worthy," not fewer and fewer as Wolf suggests.

One:

Expanding your argument to include all the sites on which people post their personal pics and video where visitors look at them for free, it also puts the lie to the idea there no REAL woman who wasn't being PAID and EXPLOITED would actually ENJOY doing THAT.

Of course, you could have also learned that by overhearing most conversations between groups of middled-aged women who've been drinking and have forgotten that there's a man in the next room, but most boys don't have as much access to that experience as they do to websites.

Two:

Even before the internet, porn offered up a lot more different female body types as attractive than did Hollywood, TV, or the newspaper. How often did the latter present a fat woman as a sexy, desirable female lead? Midgets? Amputees? Paraplegics? Porn had 'em all.

Porn may actually enhance the libido. But men will always prefer actual women, for deep evolutionary reasons. Guys who never view porn can come up with some pretty crazy scenarios in their brain anyway.

Jane,

Aren't you and at least some of the commenters making the same mistake that you are accusing Wolf of?

You say, "I don't know anyone who has that problem, thusly, it must not be a problem."

I would think the more likely reason for that is that you do not run in circles where the phrase "I spent 32 hours this weekend watching online porn" would be considered acceptable.

So while porn addiction is a problem for some people on the fringe and it is growing, chiefly I suspect, because it is cheaper and more easily attainable than ever before, neither you nor Miss Wolf give evidence to support either position.

FWIW- I think the country is over-sexed and one of the side effects of that to some men is that it causes the problem Wolf described.

(Ha! I accused Jane of using the word 'thusly'!)
(Ha Ha! I called her "Miss" Wolf!)

I'd say what Naomi did four years ago shouldn't count as something that she's currently doing -- no matter how laudable or lamentable that thing shed did was.

Why not? Feminists are still complaining about stuff that happened forty years ago. As near as I can tell, a bunch of them don't think there have been any substantial changes since the 60s.

If it's sauce for the gander, it's sauce for the goose- something many many feminists have forgotten.

Squid's comment has, thus far, the highest insight-to-length ratio.

As a guy, I was exposed to a lot of porn over the years. The Internet simply made porn usage easier. Over that time I began to notice something which Wolf doesn't bring up. I found that within about a week or two of viewing fairly hard-core porn I would find myself angrily frustrated. Even when getting lots of physical sex with a real woman, I would find myself in these peak periods of anger. The real relationship suffered from it. It took me a while to figure out this had anything to do with viewing porn, but once I did, I eliminated the porn, the anger went away and my real-life relationship greatly improved. Since then, the real-life sex has never been better.

Whether Wolf is onto real competition or not is irrelevant - porn has a negative impact on both sexes, but we're not real, nor mature enough to not only talk about it, but also change our national appetite for it.

UNK...
so your aregument is that because it happens to you that way, it must happen to everyone? The very reason we are having the discussion is the strange relationship americans have with the subject. In most other parts of the world, particularly europe, they don't regulate the industry nearly as much, and that's why you have page 6 girls. On the other hand, they do have a problem with violent content, and regulate that far more. You would think that objectors would savage the EU for not having regulation, but no, let's worry over the US, since paradoxically they are such prudes...

As my brother explained it to me once long ago, the difference between pornography and reality is "you can only eat a picture once..."

so your aregument is that because it happens to you that way, it must happen to everyone?

You mean, the well-known fact that narrow and stylized media presentations of "n" tend to impact our perception of "n" in the real world, and more so in proportion to consumption of said media? What's so surprising about that?

In particular, you can't reduce one of humanity's most basic and intimate instincts to a series of toybox images and not expect some sort of consequence, although the degree will obviously vary in each individual.

Has she ever seen porn? Real women tend to look a lot better.

Millions watch football and other sports on TV, that doesn't keep them from going to the live versions of sporting events. Expensive beer and hot dogs, as well as long lines for bathrooms doesn't stop them from paying good money to see them live, often from seats where players are little more than dots on a field of grass.

Simply put, social contact is more appealing than pixelated beauty in the long run for most everyone.

I find Naomi Wolf's argument to be complete bullshit. For one, "real" college girls aren't having a problem competing with porn because they are increasingly participating in it! Even if they aren't having their picture taken, they are quickly changing to be more like porn stars. For example, porn girls have been going "bald" for years now, and among young women, that trend is being mirrored. Same with erotic piercings, tacky hair extensions, and bisexualism.

Think about the "Girls Gone Wild" phenomenon in which college girls are thronging for the chance to show their goods to the world in exchange for some plastic mardi-gras beads or a t-shirt. Or College Fuck Fest, in which college girls get gang-banged in the middle of frat parties and it's posted on the internet, and get NO compensation for it.

What Naomi Wolf is really lamenting is the choice of many young women to reject her brand of feminism in favor of that exemplified by Paris Hilton (lampooned by South Park as Stupid Spoiled Whore feminism).