Name: Alex
Gender: male
Age: 19
Location: Indianapolis
I noticed from your bio, dr dick, that you are a pornographer. How do you justify that? Isn’t pornography basically an insult to human sexuality? How do you square that with being a sex therapist and believing, as you say, that you affirm the fundamental goodness of sexuality in human life, both as a personal need and as an interpersonal bond.”
[W]ow, Alex, you actually took the time to read my bio? I’m impressed. You bring up a very interesting point, albeit with a bit of a jab. You’re right, I am (or more properly, was) a pornographer, if that’s the only word you can come up with to describe what I did at Daddy Oohhh! Productions. I like to think that the adult material I produced was not in conflict with my basic, over all philosophy about human sexuality. BTW, thank you for quoting it as accurately as you did.
Admittedly, porn is a thorny issue in our sex-negative culture. Lots of people are hostile to the notion that there could actually be something uplifting and life affirming about the depiction, in any medium, of sexual behaviors. Lots of people believe that even nudity, let alone full-blown sex, is bad and that it corrupts the consumer, especially if the consumer is a youth.
I don’t happen to share that perception. But this is such a hot-button issue for most people that it’s very difficult to have a civil discourse about the place pornography has in our, or any other culture. Since we find it so difficult to talk about sexual things in the public forum, it’s no surprise that pornography, the public exposure of sexual things, continues to be a big bogyman for even otherwise enlightened people.
I hasten to add that, for the most part, the adult entertainment industry richly deserves the dubious reputation it has. There is an enormous amount content in the marketplace that degrades, dehumanizes and exploits. And I’m not just talking about the stuff that doesn’t suit my tastes. Because there’s a lot of good stuff out there that doesn’t particularly appeal to me.
Therefore, I caution you in your youthful zeal not to reject everything that depicts sexual behavior as worthless just because a good portion of it is indeed shameful junk. That would be like discarding all religion because a good portion of its practitioners degrade, dehumanize and shame those who don’t share their belief system.
You apparently also think there is an inherent contradiction between being a sex therapist and a pornographer. I don’t agree. For over 25 years I’ve been involved in all sorts of cutting-edge sex education and sexual enrichment projects. So why not attempt to bring a fresh, healthier perspective to adult entertainment. Sounds like the perfect role for a sexologist to me.
Besides, humans have been depicting sexual behavior, in one fashion or another, since we were able to scratch images on the walls of our caves. Some of these depictions are intended to titillate, others to educate, even others to edify, but all are expressions of the passions of the person who scratched, painted, wrote or committed to videotape the images they did. I think that if you were really interested in getting to know my thoughts about pornography, you’d do well to check out some of my work. And let’s not forget that in more sex-positive societies than our own, sexual practices were and are integral parts of worshiping the deity.
Porn, like most forms of human expression, can be both gold and dross. And maybe, just maybe, we need the 
crap in order to appreciate the treasure. The definition of what is ‘pornographic’ changes with the times. Community standards also play a part. A lingerie catalog that showed women in bras and panties might be ‘pornographic’ in one place, but be no big deal in another. Also today’s porn maybe tomorrow’s art. A lot of stuff that hangs in the Louvre museum today was, in its day, considered scandalous and pornographic. Happily, we evolve.
I argue that there is a purpose to sexual depictions, smutty or otherwise. I mean, why would such depictions be so pervasive and appear in every culture and in every age. And it’s not just because it’s art. Most pornography, by its very nature, is decidedly not art. So if it ain’t art, per se, what is it? Most pornography is simply designed to arouse sexual desire. And that, generally speaking, is a really good thing. It’s precisely this very pursuit that probably brought you, young Alex, to my site in the first place. Am I correct?
Sexual desire can stimulate an array of thoughts and behaviors from tender, intimate, and passionate to raw, fierce, and cruel. The mood of the consumer also plays a part. If your libido is raging, you might find a certain depiction stimulating. While the same depiction can cause disgust when your hormones are more in check. Porn tends to show what people fantasize about, rather than what actually happens in the lives of most people. And just so you know, everything is exaggerated in pornography, body parts, sexual situations as well as sexual responses. Everything is staged and a lot of it is faked. Exaggeration is a time honored way of calling attention to something that is otherwise pretty mundane…like sex itself.
In the end, Alex, you will have to decide for yourself what merits pornography might have in our culture. I suggest, however, that you approach porn with a slightly more dispassionate eye than you are currently using. You may find that it has something to teach you about yourself and your culture and the history of human kind.
Good luck