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Cary's essay is insightful but overly broad and one-sided.
1) "Porn" is a hazy, broad, confusing term. Is Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue porn? Is a brutal rape scene porn? Some so-called porn assaults; some seduces; some puts near-ideal beauty on artfully erotic display. Some porn is crack; some is a really fine chardonnay.
2) Sexuality isn't merely biological. It's rooted also in the archetypal, ideal realm -- which is why sexual desire often resembles a kind of worship. What a person desires, in all its surprising permutations, helps reveal, over time, as a kind of enigmatic mirror image, who a person is.
Why can't porn be one tool on that journey? For many, discovering what is other/opposite/attractive/completing is so complexly varied, it simply wouldn't be possible (or safe) to work it all out with actual people in real time in the physical world. At its best, porn cultures the sexual imagination. Porn helps one know oneself.
3) Yes, porn can be dangerous, but when is sex not full of dangers? Perhaps "using" others is an inextricable aspect of sex. If so, isn't using a person's image often a far less costly exchange than using her body?
