BY Lux Alptraum
June 5, 2007
140 views
0 Comments

The Wichita Eagle has an interesting (if poorly written, and a bit confused) piece on girls, the Internet, and sex. I say “interesting” mostly because I think it’s fascinating to see what people across the country are thinking about sex, the Internet, and, yes, girls. Of course, if this article is an accurate depiction of what the people of Kansas are thinking… well, let’s just say it’s a little depressing.

To sum up: girls post scantily clad pictures of themselves on MySpace! This lady who hates porn sees this as a sign of our culture being totally infused with sex, 24/7! Also, she can’t watch TV without seeing sexsexsexsexsex! And some psychiatrist thinks that girls are using the Internet to express their sexuality in potentially destructive ways!

Yeah, it’s totally Pulitzer material.

Now, I know that MySpace is the new porn (at least in terms of traffic rankings), but using the fact that girls post scantily clad pictures of themselves on MySpace as an example of the “pornification” of our culture seems a bit, well, intellectually lazy. And making a direct jump from a nineteen year old who posts pin up style, non nude photos (and claims to feel totally fine about it — she’s “confident with [her] body” [sic]) to an argument about how girls are pressured to act like porn stars (and are suffering greatly for it) seems tenuous at best.

I don’t believe that it’s good for teenage girls to be “hypersexual” or to act sexually because they feel like they “should,” or because someone else wants them too. Basing your sexuality on someone else’s desires or standards is never a good thing, no matter how old you are, whether you’re male or female (or neither), or how often you log on to MySpace.

At the same time, I know full well that teenage girls are going to explore their sexually — sometimes in harmful, dangerous ways — and that they’ve been doing this for years, long before the Internet or MySpace or porn stars getting their own reality shows. This whole Internet/sex on television/porn stars are everywhere sex panic has the feeling of, well, a sex panic: more an indication of cultural fears about new technology and sexuality than of an actually harmful trend.

Lastly: what really, really gets to me is the fact that, for all the whining and complaining and hand wringing about the Internet and sex, people seem pretty lax about coming up with solutions. Because, of course, it’s not about solutions. What are we going to do: ban the Internet? Ban sex?

Yeah, that’ll work.

Maybe we could try to, say, develop a culture in which sex is viewed as something healthy and good, where teenagers are given permission to explore their sexuality in safe, healthy ways without society losing its head and going into panic mode.

Yeah, that’ll totally happen.

[p.s. Want an actually interesting, well written, and informative look at ladies, sex, and the Internet? Check out Naked on the Internet by Audacia Ray, who did a lot more research than the Wichita Eagle (and is a whole lot funnier, to boot!).]