MCLEAN, Va. — National newspaper USA Today has published a sensationalizing report about Halloween costumes, claiming that “scandalous sexual encounter fantasies reign in pop culture and pornography.”
The shaming piece, penned by USA Today’s David Oliver, is salaciously titled, “Your Sexual Fantasies May Be More Problematic Than You Realize,” although the version indexed by Google shows the originally-published title was “Sex, Sexual Fantasies, Role-Play: Porn Sets Unrealistic Expectations.”
The article begins with a catalogue of clichés, listing “the schoolgirl in a plaid miniskirt and pigtails. The nurse wearing a too-tight white dress and matching cap. The librarian with her perfect, polished hair up in a bun.”
These sexual fantasies, Oliver suggests, “are part of our cultural lexicon and there is no shortage of lingerie, and even Halloween costumes, to enable these scenes to become realities. But when does role-playing cross a line? When the partner of the sexy schoolgirl or scantily-clad flight attendant, for example, fails to heed their partner’s sexual boundaries or when we sexualize the people around us who embody these real-life roles.”
The article then quotes Gail Wyatt, a clinical psychologist and faculty member at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Behavior, who claims that when role-playing, “most people don’t bother to get consent and a fully knowledgeable consent. And when you do that to someone, you introduce the opportunity to be misinterpreted or misunderstood, or to frighten your partner.”
Oliver then cites unnamed experts to justify his assertion that “it’s impossible to discuss most sexual fantasies without talking about porn since the two are so closely intertwined.”
Oliver also claims that it is pornography, rather than individuals or society, that has “created these tropes — sexy schoolgirl, nurse, librarian — that can be demeaning to women.”
Wyatt’s recommendation, Oliver reports, is that “everyone stop watching pornography — though she recognizes how entrenched it is in society and how difficult it would be to eliminate it.”
Wyatt told USA Today, “Porn is probably one of the most destructive current influences on human sexuality that we have because it’s worldwide, and it’s well-established.”
