Eine Vagina ist nicht mehr genug – wie Pornos den Marktwert von Frauen verderben

Der Kampfspruch, mit dem Alice Schwarzer und andere Feministinnen gegen Pornos zu Felde zogen – einige von ihnen warfen auch schon mal Brandbomben in Videotheken – lautete: „Pornographie ist die Theorie, Vergewaltigung ist die Praxis“. Die These dahinter war, dass wenn Männer sich erotische Filme anschauten, daraufhin ihre Neigung stieg, Frauen Gewalt anzutun. Dass sich diese These in der Forschung nicht als haltbar erweisen hat, habe ich in „Sind Frauen bessere Menschen?“ ausführlich dargelegt. Jetzt erklärt die bekannte amerikanische Feministin Naomi Wolf, warum sie Pornos trotzdem für eine Katastrophe hält:

But the effect is not making men into raving beasts. On the contrary: The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as “porn-worthy.” Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention. (…) For most of human history, erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn. (…)

When I came of age in the seventies, it was still pretty cool to be able to offer a young man the actual presence of a naked, willing young woman. There were more young men who wanted to be with naked women than there were naked women on the market. If there was nothing actively alarming about you, you could get a pretty enthusiastic response by just showing up. (…) By the new millennium, a vagina—which, by the way, used to have a pretty high “exchange value,” as Marxist economists would say—wasn’t enough; it barely registered on the thrill scale. (…)

I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. “Can’t I even see your hair?” I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. “No,” she demurred quietly. “Only my husband,” she said with a calm sexual confidence, “ever gets to see my hair.” (…) And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair. She must feel, I thought, so hot.