James Joyner posts this interesting statement from feminist Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff:

The alternative sexual universes men create for themselves via pornography are fueled, not by sexual lust primarily, but by feelings of hatred and vengeance towards all women, but in particular, beautiful, successful, women who are untouchable, unreachable, impossible to personally dominate, something most men find intolerable. It’s not about desire. It’s not in any way about appreciation for beautiful women. It’s not really about sex, either.

Do some men use porn as a way to facilitate their fantasies about women who are unobtainable for them?  Undoubtedly, but I think the reaction most men have to porn (or just to pretty women in general) is more primal in nature than anything having to do with hate or domination.  Most men are simply “hard wired” to react to attractive women with lust.  That’s just how it works.

If you don’t believe me ask yourself: Why are men fascinated by breasts?  From an objective point of view they’re little more than lumps of fat on the chests of women, so why all the fuss?

I’m anthropologist, but I once read that in the dawn of human kind breasts on female were the most obvious indicator that she had reached sexual maturity and was ready to breed.  Thus, early man’s reaction to breasts was a desire to copulate and perpetuate the species.  Is it really so hard to believe that man’s fascination with breasts remains essentially the same - in that they inspire in us a desire to have sex - even into modern times?  Granted, our sexual desires and fantasies have progressed well beyond a simple desire to breed, but then humans have gotten more complex socially and physically on all fronts since the proverbial “cave man days.”

Porno isn’t about domination fantasies and woman hating, it’s about certain instincts and primal urges that have remained with us from the days when we were just a step or two above apes, and there isn’t anything all that sinister about it.