Navigating Elusive Facts in a Porn-Saturated World

LOS ANGELES—Today in the Women's section of HuffPo, a writing instructor at Columbia University named Sarah Thomas published a piece entitled 5 Ways to Navigate a Relationship in a Porn-Saturated World. It's a first-person rumination ripped from the pages of a relationship Thomas had with an old boyfriend who looked at porn from time to time. Trying to explain her general perspective on the subject, Thomas writes, "We have the vast capacity to both love and fear things, to be both titillated and disgusted, to be excited and threatened, angry and liberated and so forth. Human sexuality is complex. And porn is a facet of it that still incites ambiguity in me—I don't have it all figured out. So, in the spirit of exploration, I've decided to share some strategies that I learned from that relationship for how to find peace in the T&A-laden world in which we now live." Her strategies are few in number (5) and easily encapsulated: face reality, do a self-inventory, figure out what kind of relationship you can have with porn, take action and acknowledge the fantasy. Thomas elaborates sincerely on these in the piece, though savvy individuals won't need much more than the headers to get the gist of what she wants to impart. But what is striking, and what we have seen in pieces like this before, is the unfortunate fact that the writer holds out as the foundation that supports salient contentions made in the piece, so-called data-driven facts that have long since been exposed as made-up nonsense. That's right, once again the dreaded Online MBA infographic has been indirectly pulled out as the source of all things porn-factual, long after—years after!—the allegations made in the infographic from hell have been thoroughly discredited as "statistics laundering" of the worst sort. Again, this was not a conscious act on Thomas' part, who probably took for granted the due diligence of the sources that came before her, unaware that the trail of data references trailed off into nothingness. It's kind of like that old $12 billion dollar number that stalked the land as the incontrovertible revenue data point for adult entertainment. Originating at AVN, the figure was always one that has been pulled straight from someone's anal cavity, and except for video sales figures supplied from what used to be the Video Software Dealers Association, never had the support of verifiable data to back it up, especially regarding novelty and magazine sales, not to mention strip club door fees, but that has not stopped the mainstream press from repeating it ad nauseam for years after it may have been credible, no matter how many times they were told it has become embarrassing rubbish with little relationship to reality. People obviously need numbers, even if they are made up, but sadly, that need often extends to our own relationships, the intimate details of which we apparently also need to evaluate next to what everyone else is doing, even if it's all made up!