But back to the original question: does porn screw up young men's attitudes towards women? Well, young men's attitudes towards women have ALWAYS been screwed up, one way or another. But we are rational creatures, and inherently disposed to, at the end of the day, love and respect the women in our lives. So if it does screw you up (and I concede the kind of spew being produced these days as the race to the bottom in the industry continues), men can and usually do grow out of it. Unless they are already damaged beyond repair.

So have young women's attitudes towards men; and so many 'angry men' here seem to think this is a direct result of feminism (as if feminism had invented any of the misconceptions about men and male desire that have existed since time immemorial...) -- just look at the posters here who think things are now totally going downhill (either because of porn, or feminism, or both).

The truth is (as a fellow grad student once put it to me) that men and women are such obvious groups with such obvious connections to each other, they'll always develop stereotypes and false ideas about each other ('screw up' their opinions about the opposite sex).

So yes, I agree, porn isn't going to change this (since it didn't even cause it to start with). To me, the way out is to understand better what male and female desire is, how they operate, and try to find better ways of establishing bridges. And since I'm an individualist, I'll encourage the use of concepts like 'male desire' or 'female desire' in abstracto and research on them only inasmuch as they help you understand the specific desire and needs of the people you are involved with -- men are also all different from each other, just as women are -- not to pontificate about and pigeonhole other people.

I also think that 'objectification as disrespect' is an oxymoron -- because too many people (not only feminists, though they did formulate that as a theory) have thought that the former leads inevitably, or is the same as, the latter.

As a guy whose ideas on philosophy (though not politics) I tend to like (Prof. Ross at www.friesian.com) said about pornography and eroticism, we all want both to be liked/loved as persons and to be lusted after as sexual objects. We want our lovers to both see us as real people they can talk to and have a good time with, and as sources of raw sexual lust driven by whatever you find interesting in sex -- looks, bodyparts, motions, sweat, smells, touching, imagination, roleplay, whatever.

I think we do want our lovers to think of the taste of our vulvae (and penises). I think we do want to think that we inspire desire in them. Just as I think we also want to think they love us, that we inspire positive thoughts in them, that we are like rocks where they can rest and feel safe, and so are they for us.

Hey, we want the whole Cinderella deal, don't we? :-)

So I don't see any contradiction between (as you put it) thinking graphically about a person and respecting this person. That a logical connection was assumed between these things is, I think, a sad mistake.

You're probably right that the problem is (in part) a result of desire for power (no less than Nietzsche himself considered the will-for-power to be the driving force in human actions). Instead of thinking of sex as simply a fun activity, we think of it as a way of establishing dominance hierarchies: I have you, you are mine, I am the boss, I am in control, I have the power. Not as BDSM play, but as social/interpersonal relation.

Sad. Hopefully this will change.

Decades ago (to use your own kind of generalizing half-truths without much evidence to support) people often lived lies as far as sex was concerned, and the rate of actual sexual/emotional happiness in these marriages was as dismal as a batting average of .100, so I'm not sure if much has changed in this area.

Men and women have always hard a difficult time understanding what it is that they want from each other. That they can at least now talk freely (though, alas, they aren't free from prejudice and stupid ideas) I consider a plus. I'd encourage them to go beyond the 'little pool of friends with superficial ideas about the other gender' and try to understand who and what they are, and why the heck they want sex and/or relationships (aka love).

I have always been nice to women, RealConservative, and believe me this has gotten me an avarege way above .100. I think the poor schmuck you mentioned, along with trying to apply the latest advice from how-to-win-a-woman articles in crappy magazines, also forgot to develop a backbone -- which is something not only women, but men instinctively react negatively to. So I was nice and considerate, but I also knew who I was and what I wanted, and I made that clear. That helps.

So many people think "nice" means "without a backbone". That's a wrong assumption.

I haven't become cynical: I have gotten married and I now have a daughter. My suggestion to men: have a life (so that you don't obsess about your stats with women), develop a backbone (so that you don't do anything just to get 'the cookie'), and be nice and considerate (i.e. don't forget the women you interact with are also people with all kinds of good and bad things in their personalities -- treat that with respect, don't take them for granted, remember they're human like you).

That's all. No big secrets here.