Books:
Straight to Video
by Bobbie Willis
Eugene Weekly
May 29, 2003
Pornography has moved so quickly from magazines hidden in sock drawers to graphic e-mail and web sites even your children can easily access that it's timely for Northwest author David Loftus to explore the motivation and response that men have for the genre.
In Watching Sex, Loftus lets 150 men say what they think about pornography, a perspective that hasn't been explored much, given the reams of anti-pornography study that's been done. Loftus points out that much feminist writing against porn unfairly judges the male perspective and experience without finding out what that perspective and experience actually are.
Loftus tells us right up front: "This is not a scientific survey. It will not introduce you to 'the average American male' or tell you what he thinks and does. The men in this book chose in advance to participate in the project — they 'self-selected' as the social scientists put it — so they do not constitute a random sample."
So, you can't really look to this as a definitive study on men and pornography. But you can see it as a resource that explores what men think about pornography and how the material makes them feel. The book's greatest strength lies in giving voice to the one perspective we haven't heard.
However, when Loftus and the interviewees try to connect anecdotal, emotional responses to a larger sociological landscape, the book loses its steam. A chapter on sex and violence feels hesitant. The violence is abstracted and isn't dealt with head-on. Interviewees express sentiments from, "No, there really isn't violence in porn" to "Violence doesn't really turn me on," and yet some anecdotes support the opposite position.
This chapter makes it clear that this is not a fair cross-section of men who use porn, a wrinkle that farther reveals itself in an interesting chapter titled, "The Public Debate: What Did Everyone Get Wrong About Men Who Use Pornography?" Again, it's difficult to determine what the public is getting wrong based on information from a self-selected group of interviewees.
In spite of the study's loose structure in places, the book as whole is compelling. It opens up the discussion to include an important and previously unheard group of voices.
Interestingly, Loftus has had trouble getting his own voice heard to promote Watching Sex. There was controversy as to whether a bookstore in Eugene — Loftus was born here — would allow him to do a reading. In an April 10 news installment on his website (www.david-loftus.com), he writes that he finally landed a Eugene appearance: "It's been a puzzling and frustrating process trying to find someone who would host me, because Eugene has such a reputation as a liberal, even radical, college town … . A string of bookstores turned me down because they were afraid of offending their clients, whether mainstream or orthodox feminist, while one bookstore's events coordinator said the book was 'not controversial enough — you'd just be preaching to the choir here.' That one certainly left me nonplused."
In any case, you will be able to hear Loftus read and speak at 7 pm June 19 at Barnes & Noble Bookstore.