Calico Rudasil is a feature columnist for Sssh.com, the award-winning porn site for women & couples. With over 18 years’ experience under her belt, writing about and for the adult entertainment industry, Calico qualifies as something of a Web Porn Dinosaur; similar to a tyrannosaurus, only with far more attractive arms and a less pronounced overbite.
As you’ve probably heard, Pamela Anderson and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach published an anti-porn opinion piece on the Wall Street Journal website this week, in which they (among other things) proclaimed that “porn is for losers.”
In the same article, the pair cite statistics claiming porn consumption rates range “between 50% and 99% among men and 30% to 86% among women.”
With slightly less than half the world’s population being female, these two claims add up to meaning the woman who made the most popular celebrity sex tape of all time thinks somewhere between 40.44% and 93.24% of the earth’s adult population is comprised of losers.
Is This Why Trump Is Always Going On About ‘Losers’ On Social Media?
As someone who doesn’t generally have the highest opinion of my fellow humans, part of me is tempted to say this sounds about right – but then I start looking around at my friends, family, peers, coworkers, and assorted other humans I come across and 93.24% seems way too high.
Granted, my personal hand-counted approach to counting the earth’s loser proportion isn’t nearly as scientific as citing a porn-consumption statistic which isn’t particularly well-sourced in the article where it originally appears (the article vaguely references “various international studies;” presumably these are cited in greater detail in the Vol. 2 of The APA Handbook of
Sexuality and Psychology), but it does strike me as somewhat more fair than deciding everybody who watches any kind porn is a loser.
Another approach to estimating the world’s loser population, of course, is to extrapolate from data supplied by another very credible source: Donald Trump’s Twitter account.
Not surprisingly, Trump’s loser list is very long, indeed. Of course, one could argue because Trump regularly changes his mind about things, some of these people may have been merely temporary losers, like John McCain, who Trump has decided to endorse for reelection, despite his stated preference for people who have never been captured.
I suppose the best way to settle the question of McCain’s loserness (or should that be loserdom?) would be to find out whether he watches porn, or if he’s part of the 1-50% of men who don’t watch it. Of course, this line of inquiry would very likely lead me to try to involuntarily envision McCain watching porn, something I’d really rather avoid – so let’s change the subject now, before that has a chance to happen.
How Did Marijuana Come Into This, Exactly?
In crafting their “argument” about porn’s ruinous effect on society, Anderson and Boteach also reach for the familiar porn-as-addictive-substance argument, taking a rather odd route to making their point.
“Nine percent of porn users said they had tried unsuccessfully to stop,” they write, “an indication of addiction that is all the more startling when you consider that the dependency rate among people who try marijuana is the same —9%.”
Sure, because as we all know, when someone thinks of highly addictive drugs, the first one which comes to mind is pot, right?
While we’ve all heard the tales of tortured marijuana junkies eating as much as two bags of Doritos in a single sitting, or forgetting how to tune their guitars halfway through band practice, if I were going to try to scare the current generation off of using porn, I might have gone with a comparison with a more negative connotation, like methamphetamine, or heroin, or something which makes you want to eat another person’s face.
Of course, if I did that, I might find myself citing a statistic which tends to undermine fear of addictive substances more than it improves my anti-porn argument – like the one cited by Anderson and Boteach about cocaine, to which 15% of users allegedly become addicted.
Wait; only 15% of people who do coke become addicted to it?
All of a sudden, I feel like I want to go back in time to college and hang out more with a particular ex-boyfriend. Sure, he was a lying, no-good psychopath, but he was a generous lying, no-good psychopath, some of whose offers I apparently turned down for no good reason!
Last But Not Least; What Actual Evidence Is There Weiner Watches Porn?
I’ve helped run more than a few porn websites in my time, and being the stats-obsessed weirdo I am, I’ve spent countless hours looking at purchase and viewing trends, mostly to enhance my understanding of the viewer/customer, so the site in question can better serve their needs and interests.
One of the things I noticed a long, long time ago was the highest volume users of the live cam section of a site tend to be members who didn’t spend a lot of time watching ‘canned’ video streams, or looking at pictures.
When we sought feedback from the people who preferred the live feeds, the reason they gave was pretty simple, really. The (mostly male) members who clocked the most time on the live feeds were in search of interactivity, not just passive consumption of sexually explicit video.
In other words, they wanted something closer to sex – including the intimacy and interactivity of conversation with the model/performer.
My hunch is, if Anthony Weiner has been spending time on “porn sites,” his preference is for one-on-one live shows. Such shows are expensive (several dollars per minute, typically) and hard to hide on a credit card bill, however, which might explain why Weiner’s known cyber-dalliances haven’t included paid webcam models.
I’m not saying there’s no chance Weiner watches a lot of porn – but I am saying if Anderson and Boteach are going to proclaim his behavior to be “proof” of the damage caused by porn addiction, they should have to present some evidence he actually watches the stuff.
The good news is there’s a word in English for people who make extreme claims and personal accusations without any proof – and it starts with ‘L.’
Calico Rudasil is a Sssh.com (@ssshforwomen) columnist and Sssh will be on Peeperz for fun times again in the near future, meanwhile why not check us out:
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