August 19, 2002 | 12:28 PM

So this weekend I thought a lot about pornography. I�ll get to why in a bit.

And I�m ambivalent. For a lot of reasons.

It�s a shame.

Pornography should be a beautiful thing. Erotic sculpture, painting, and fiction have a special place in my heart. The depiction and description of sex is a major potion of great literature and art. But the depiction of actual sexual intercourse and acts associated with it (aka �hardcore pornography�) on film or in magazines is monumentally cheesy and offensive for the most part. Why must hardcore porn be so... infantile and base? Why does 99% of pornography insist upon degrading its subjects as par for the course? Why must porn as a rule be either blatantly or subtly anti-women?

Women generally don�t like porn that much. By which I don�t mean that women are turned off by watching sex on film. Rather that women dislike and are made uncomfortable by a medium that continuously perpetuates the myth that women are �sex objects�.

What�s wrong with being a sex object, you may ask. I think the term has been wildly misused and misunderstood. To be an object means to be acted upon, inanimate, and non-participatory. A chair is an object and it is sit on. The chair does not participate in the experience. It has no feelings, wants, needs, or desires.

In pornography, women have the same function as a chair. They are a means to an end. They are objects. They are not participating in sex. They are being �sexed upon�.

And this is why I think women dislike porn so much.

Now, don�t get me wrong. I am not saying that pornography in order to be made palatable and inoffensive to women should look like a Merchant Ivory film. Not at all. I am not in the least saying that pornography should be �tasteful�. Women get off on hardcore visuals just as much as men do. We want to see erect penises and blatant fucking. We want to see sweat and cunnilingus and orifices opening and closing like hot house flowers.

But what we don�t want to see is some overly made up, hairsprayed, plastic breasted blow up doll robotically moaning and pretending to enjoy herself while some sleazy jerk sexes himself upon her. We don�t want to see a woman degraded and debased and used. It�s ugly. And it�s pathetic. And there isn�t anything sexy about it.

Why is there no foreplay in porn? And please don�t tell me that it�s because men don�t like foreplay. That�s bullshit. I don�t buy it. If men don�t like foreplay it�s because they have been conditioned to not like it the same way that women have been conditioned to not like certain more blatant sex acts. Don�t tell me that men don�t love to kiss and fondle and lay in bed and explore a woman�s body for an hour or so before consummating the act. Any man that doesn't enjoy those things is sorely missing out and has serious hang ups about intimacy.

One of the tragic myths in this culture is that men are only interested in sex to achieve orgasm. That the act of love is a means to an end. How insulting is that to men? The other great myth is that women are the opposite�that for women, orgasm or �getting off� is a by product of having close personal intimacy and not really necessary or the goal of participating. So women are only interested in sex because of love and men are only interested in love because of sex? What a load of crap.

Pornography is skewed towards this belief system. And as porn is pretty much the first right of passage that men go through in sexual development, they are taught to identify with this misrepresentation. Women in turn are taught to be disgusted by sex because the only depictions of sex they are exposed to portray them as being powerless and violated.

Maybe this sounds a little old fashioned. �Haven�t we already gotten past all this?� you may be thinking. I doubt it. I think that like many other serious social problems, this conflict has only become more complex, and vague�like racism or classism. On the surface we pay lip service to it being solved. But the further we delve into the problem the more rotten the subtext.

So why was this on my mind all weekend?

(Deep breath)

At the tender age of 19, yours truly was paid 600$ to pose for a porn mag. No joke.

I don�t feel victimized by that decision at all. It wasn�t a horrible traumatic event in my life. I made a choice and I don�t feel ashamed or embarrassed at having made that choice. I don�t think there�s anything wrong with taking your clothes off and I�m a bit of an exhibitionist so I found the whole thing rather titillating. I would even go so far as to say that I enjoyed the actual experience of being photographed, although the reason I did it had nothing to do with wanting to be a porn star and everything to do with needing to pay my rent.

What I didn�t enjoy was looking at the magazine when it came out and reading the �interview� I supposedly gave and the various captions to the photographs. I�m not going to quote them because they were just so ridiculous. The pictures were graphic, which was fine. But the words were ridiculous and derogatory and violent.

I had read it all before over the course of many years looking at porn, and had never noticed how sick and derogatory those words were until they were actually applied to me. Why hadn�t I noticed? Because I was seeing those girls as objects, not people. And now I was the object. That drove it home.

The point seems clear. Pornography assumes that in order to be sexually attractive, you must be stripped of your humanity. That sex, to be enjoyable must be divorced from emotion or connection.

What a sad sad commentary on the state of things.