Porn: it’s what’s for dinner

So porn is the new black. Once it was taboo, then it became trendy, then it should have passed on to that purgatory between trendy and quotidian, to happily coexist with It bags and speed. But something went awry. Instead of becoming an unremarkable hobby, porn went straight to becoming a religion. And I’m not talking the “we were brainwashed by aliens and forbid yelling for blue murder as a whole person is ripped from tender orifices, but are richer than god and therefore expected to act crazy” type of fringe religion. I’m talking the mainstream, Inquisition torture chambers, assimilate or die kind. Apparently, resistance to porn is futile. And dangerous.

I talk to women every day who try their utmost to convince me - and clearly at the same time themselves - that it is perfectly acceptable that their husbands go out for lap dances every weekend and spend hours at night examining the cosmetically enhanced, severely shorn vaginas of porn film superstars.

Men have cleverly tried to silence the old criticisms by turning porn films, strip clubs and lap dances into socially acceptable recreation, and have gone a step further by turning their characteristics – the bodies, the sexual positions, the loud, ejaculatory female orgasms – into minimum, expected behaviour in their own bedrooms. Porn stars are now the standard to which all women are subject. And the message from men is: assimilate or be replaced by more capable machines. It’s the Pornographical Revolution; pornifization: much like the Industrial Revolution or globalization – only with a lot more chafing.

But it’s not just men who are demanding this assimilation. Women don't realize what we have become a party to. We have traded being voiceless on the issue for being forced into having the same voice: one that says "we submit". Because failure to submit means being dismissed as prude, difficult, unsophisticated – by men – and worse and more savagely, by other women. And so, following their partners, hordes of women march chagrined but silent (or with fake enthusiasm that they have convinced themselves is real) to strip clubs, singing the same refrain of "He's just being a man. All men need porn." They do this in order not only to appease men, but to outdo other women who might voice their disapproval, a constant rivalry that men – in both public and private life – encourage and reward.

Now. Before the onslaught begins, let me make the obligatory disclaimer: I am not a Puritan; sex is delicious; women’s bodies are exquisite; and similar things. But decisions about sexual expression should still be ours to make, and if there is anything that gives us pause, insecurity or fear of attack should not force us to submit in silence. You can hate porn. You can like erotic films and hate lap dances. You can have a Brazilian before your holiday, but not feel the need to repeatedly rip every hair from your vulva and surgically restore your hymen. There are degrees. And they’re all up to you.