(Warning! This article contains adult content of a sophmoronic
nature, with itchy double entendres and scandalous pseudo-references
to sex, although no actual sexual activity was used in its making...
much to the author's dismay.
Double Warning!! The adult content herein is as harmless as an
anesthetized baby seal compared to the billions of graphic images
not more than a mouse click away anywhere else on the Internet.)
I received an unsolicited e-mail today
with the provocative title listed above. I think they call it
'spam'... wonderful Spam, to quote Monty Python. Take my word for
it, the contents of the message had nothing to do with hospital
patients receiving a deep-facial scrub from non-professionals... if
you know what I mean.
Shifting uncomfortably in my
silver-studded, black-leather recliner, I didn't know quite what to
make of it. Was this a random assault of the ubiquitous Internet
porn industry, or was somebody trying to tell me something? In all
honesty, I couldn't decide which scared me more.
Like many of you other tongue-clucking
degenerates out there, I also have seen my share of pornography on
the Internet. I'd be curious to know how many residents of Cyberland
still haven't connected to sites like "Insatiable Amateurs," "Dirty
Debutantes," or "Celebrities Exposed!" (If you haven't, please don't
send me an e-mail to share... and if you have, well let's just keep
that your little secret.)
I once heard that something like 80
percent of all websites on the net are pornographic. Why, even a
site with the central theme of info for expats living in Pusan
(hint hint) is rife with spicy, true-life adventures of
locals and foreigners that are of a frank and explicit nature. Sex
sells, and with a gazillion pages out there, many webmasters believe
the key to getting us to log on is to appeal to our basest
instincts. I guess the old PR trick that worked so well for National
Geographic is still alive and well: breasts move merchandise.
But not everyone is enamored with all
these electronic images of the old slap-and-tickle. A persistent
criticism of pornography expanded to its proliferation on the
Internet is the demeaning way it depicts the gals, what feminists
label the 'objectification of women'. It's doubtful that some sex
kitten more surgically enhanced than Frankenstein's monster in a
pileup of latex-clad albino she-males sporting hand puppets---all
twisted into positions that would make a master contortionist
envious---was exactly what women had in mind as an image of
empowerment.
But for me, this also raises a related
question: I wonder how many women are actually dropping by the smut
sites? I'm sure it's far fewer than men, and not nearly as
frequently. Most women probably take a peek or two, just out of
curiosity, but I seriously doubt that it's the same kind of
'gratifying' experience that it is for the gents. We all know the
boys certainly aren't locking the door on the computer room for
hours on end because they're reading articles on transmission
repair. It's what a friend back home, who earns a perfectly good
living as a suit-and-tie type, complete with trophy wife and
'wunderkind' daughter, affectionately likes to call being "down in
the jack room shining the 'ween'." What a positively off-colorful
colloquialism. I must remember it the next time I see the deadbolt
rattling.
Gender differences related to Internet
usage might have something to do with divergences in the primordial
predilections of both sexes. I read somewhere that men and women
differ in which of the six senses was most important for sexual
arousal. Men are visual creatures while women are tactile, which
explains why a 90-year-old billionaire can hook a blonde bombshell
like Anna Nicole Smith, a perennial darling of the 'nude
celebrities' pages. The old geezer feasted with his eyes (and little
more) on Anna's hot-air-balloon-sized baby-feeders, while she tried
to put the touch on some of the antique gasbag's fortune. Although
in fairness to Anna, she continues to swear---several years and a
multimillion-dollar legal settlement after her husband's
death---that grandpa was a real tiger in the sack. Ain't love kooky.
But whether women go all soft for a man
with the Midas Touch or guys get hard up for a girl with 'that
porn-starlet look', it's undeniable that both sexes are baring---and
sharing---it all on the Internet. Based on what little I've seen
(HA!), I'd have to say that women AND men... and marsupials,
plumbing supplies, even bowling pins, are being reduced to nothing
more than objects of lust on the triple-X pages.
You just have to wonder about all those
people posted on the web with their asses hanging out. Why in the
E-world would anyone want the rest of the planet to see them for the
rest of eternity making the "Oh, Oh, Oh" face with a leaf blower
stuffed up their tukis? There are certain parts of my anatomy that I
wouldn't want my girlfriend to see, let alone my grandmother. I can
almost hear the conversations in kitchens of Soccer Moms across
America:
"What do you think of Mom's money shot,
Dad? "Well son, Dad's not too proud of
Mom's reckless past ever since the boys at the water cooler
discovered the 'Dripping Honeys of the Midwest' homepage."
Sex on the Internet, as in many other
commercial ventures, is all about selling fantasy: marketing dreams
of beautiful people who seem to be little more than caretakers for
their superhuman sex organs, doing things that the rest of us don't
have the coordination, lack of shame, or pain threshold to pull off.
Still, I kind of wish that a lot of these 'secret desires'---of the
viewing public, anyway---stay secret... or at least safely buried in
a repressive culture that dictates, "Good folks just don't do those
sorts of things." Maybe it's revealing too much, but I get the
willies when I think the people I shake hands and share side dishes
with are engaging in transsexual sado-masochistic animal orgies in
their spare time. I'd like to think I'm broadminded, but I hope that
farm girls performing fellatio on Old MacDonald is never replaced by
pederasty with barnyard critters on the sexual popularity charts,
"Ee-eye, ee-eye, oh!"
But while many of us so-called 'adults'
have window shopped, what's probably got people particularly edgy
about pornography on the Internet is the general ease of access for
the kiddies. I mean, how net savvy do you have to be when a keyword
search of something as child-friendly as "clowns" can pull up a
website like "Rimming Bros. and Back-Alley Babies Circus"?
Which brings me to Asia (had to slip it
in somewhere... no pun intended... in order to qualify under the
'relevant topic' rubric of a webpage devoted to all things
Oriental). Maybe some of you have noticed that the male fantasy de
rigueur here in the Far East was schoolgirls. Care to try a test?
Punch in a keyword search for "Asian" and "schoolgirls" then watch
that ol' search engine begin to swell up to the point of blowing out
the pixels on your 17-inch monitor (mine's only 13 inches, giving
rise to a phobia-inducing case of 'screen envy').
Yep, fellas around these parts seem to
have a rather bad case of the 'Lolita' complex... although few would
deny that a sizeable number of Western Humberts also are pointing
and clicking. No question about it; dudes here like their females
gussied up in the uniform of matriculation, the sailor suit.
Now in Korea, schoolgirls haven't quite
captured the fetishistic imaginations like they have in Japan.
Across the pond, those boys are downright loopy with carnal desire
for an adolescent doll dressed like Popeye. How bad is it? Well
let's just say that if I were 20 years younger with smaller breasts
and absent a strategic appendage, I could foot the college tuition
bill for myself and graduating class by emptying out my underwear
drawer and taking my soiled skivvies down to the nearest second-hand
clothing store. That's right, salarymen will pay top yen for an
authentically skid-marked-up pair of high school girl's panties,
which only further adds credence to the old adage that a pervert and
his money are soon parted.
Unfortunately, playing 'Bugman' with a
nymphet's undergarments isn't the only thing Uncle Ernie-san is up
to (although, in point of fact, this also is a problem that
transcends race, ethnicity, religion, country of origin, and, would
you believe it? sex.)
Last semester, I had students write an
essay on the dangers of the Internet. To get them prepped and pumped
up for the homework, I threw the question out to the class and this
precocious little girl with the cherubic face of an angel blurted
out, "Sugar Daddies!" I don't know which made me more uncomfortable:
one of my students possessing knowledge of this obscure
colloquialism, or a girl who looks like she belongs in daycare
knowing that the Internet has spawned the ugly practice of
middle-aged men showering money and gifts on too-young girls for
sexual favors. My students strike me as being about as naive and
wholesome as a Barney the Purple Dinosaur Christmas special, so it
really threw me to hear that they were in-the-know about the harsh,
depraved realities of our prurient interests. For me, it conjured up
an image of Shirley Temple smoking crack, working a street corner,
and swearing like a truck driver with Tourette Syndrome. Innocence
lost... mine, unfortunately, not theirs.
A recent example---of the
'life-imitating-art' variety---involves the Korean
television-slash-movie star Lee Gyeong-young, who was the
feature actor in the TV drama Pureun Angae ("Blue Fog") about
a middle-aged man who leaves his beautiful wife and daughter to
pursue a dancer in her early twenties. Lee, who headlines a
soon-to-be release Korean remake called Miwodo Dasi Hanbeon
("I Hate You, But Once Again---2002"), was arrested last week for
having sex with a 17-year-old. Allegedly, the 42-year-old actor used
the old casting couch ploy of promises of movie stardom, plus a
couple of hundred thousand won, to make himself irresistible to the
teenager.
But that's only the meatus of the story.
I did some investigative reporting---albeit employing my
tried-and-tested perfunctory method of grilling the first person I
find who knows more than I do... either that, or one of my
students---to discover whether Lee had connected with and seduced
the girl through the Internet. He hadn't... once again, allegedly.
At this stage of the legal case,
everything is hearsay and conjecture, but I got the dirty lowdown
from a couple of Korean friends and students privy to all the
insider gossip. And they told me, aping the claims Lee himself made,
that the actor was introduced to the femme fatale by a mutual
acquaintance in the film industry who believed the girl was 'of
age'. You see, the faux ingenue, who was also a runaway, had cut her
theatrical teeth in the 'adult' movie Su-jeong II.
Unfortunately, I forgot to ask whether her clips were accessible on
the Internet. No doubt they will be.
The story of her dangerous liaisons with
Lee became public knowledge after police, who were searching for the
missing girl, stumbled upon the teen working in a room salon, those
pricey dens of iniquity where businessmen let their hair down with
modern versions of kisaeng (yesterday's female
'entertainer').
So who's the victim here? Or rather,
have all parties been victimized? It's a toughie.
I broached the subject because right now
back in the States, the topic is at the center of a rather steamy
debate on the sexuality of children. Coming on the heels of ghastly
revelations concerning the prevalence of pedophilia among American
Catholic priests, a new book by journalist Judith Levine is offering
recycled arguments in support of adults taking a more hands-on
approach to 'educating' kids about the birds and the bees. According
to Levine's Harmful to Minors: the Perils of Protecting Children
from Sex, the problem isn't intrinsically within the
'child-pedophile' relationship; rather, psychological damage comes
from parents and social norms informing young'ins that this type of
relationship is both heretical and abominable.
Levine further argues that children have
sexual 'rights', one of which being the right to make their own
decisions about who they have sex with... including grown-ups. In
addition to such sympathetic groups as the North American Man-Boy
Love Association (NAMBLA), the author also gets support from such
other less-likely places as the American Psychological Association.
Although the APA recently has distanced itself from the so-called
'Rind' report, this 1998 study published in the association's
Psychological Bulletin concluded that children who consented
to sex with adults were not harmed by the act itself. Pedophiles
seized on the findings to push for decriminalization of consensual
"intergenerational intimacy"---a term favored by man-boy lovers.
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm
pretty sure that big people have a whole slew of 'rights' denied
rugrats. Where I come from, you have to be 16 to drive a car, 18 to
vote, and 21 to drink alcohol. So these quacks think I should
swallow claims that youngsters can put their hands on Chester the
Molester's privates but not on a steering wheel? Or, that kids can
make informed decisions about sex---ones that involve risks of
pregnancy, venereal disease, and even life or death---but they can't
be allowed to choose between Candidate A and Candidate B for garbage
collector? And furthermore, that children should be allowed to swap
fluids, but they can't ingest the firewater that fosters so many
sexual encounters? Welcome to the Dollhouse!
Apparently, for these Ivory Tower
chuckleheads from the psychological community, the real issue
appears to be 'consent'. Where it gets dicey is the area of
'coercion'. But a major problem with this rationale---among many
others with the arguments generally---is where to draw the line. If
it's an authority figure, like say a teacher, priest, film star, or
parent, isn't force implied? Doesn't that perspective underpin
attitudes toward incidents of sexual harassment between bosses and
staff, such as when the head honcho manipulatively entices an
employee to talk about advancement in the company at his/her hotel
over drinks? "Oh, and by the way, wear something pretty."
Still, I find myself feeling a bit
chafed by what I perceive to be a double standard. Most of us
outside the clergy, NAMBLA, or trailer parks probably find
pedophilia between adult men and young boys or girls pretty icky.
But what about the 'Mrs. Robinson' scenario? I'd be especially
curious to know how many women are disgusted by the idea of an adult
woman taking a young boy under her wing, a situation that appears to
be happening with greater regularity. From this side of the isle,
I'm reasonably confident that most men would log this one in the
fantasy file, and furthermore, would find the idea of punishing the
woman with incarceration utterly ridiculous.
I'm asking this question not to make a
point about some logical fallacy in the argument against child
abuse, but rather, to try to understand why I myself feel this way.
Why do I find one sexual relationship (Men-girls or Men-boys)
unseemly, and the other (Women-boys) to be an incredible stroke of
good luck? Am I just naturally assuming that any lad old enough to
get an erection would jump at the chance to drive Ms. Daisy, while
the other way around only conjures up images of fang-toothed
predators salivating over petrified prey? Perhaps, perhaps.
What does this rant have to do with the
Internet? Well, the web is an increasingly sticky place where sexual
spiders trap disaffected pubescent flies. But then again, in Korea,
in Japan, in America, everywhere, larger numbers of young people are
using the net to make love connections---frequently for money---with
bargain-hunting, well-heeled old fogies of either sex. My response
to this ugliness strongly suggests that I must be getting older. I
feel that the Internet is encouraging kids to grow up too fast, and
adults not fast enough. Of course, for those of you who find these
sexual conundrums too confusing, the Internet does offer an
alternative. You can always follow the advice of those
personal-growth gurus who constantly implore us to, "Learn to love
thyself!" Just make sure you check the deadbolt.
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