Mary Elizabeth Williams uses the rancor over the tenth anniversay edition of a young adult novel, Speak, which features a teenage girl's rape and which has been derided as "soft pornography," to discuss the dumbing down of the term porn itself:
Is it entirely possible that someone out there reading a fictional account of a rape could become aroused? Could its descriptions therefore be used for sexual gratification, which is what porn does? Sure. But if we're going to decide that "porn" is anything capable of inciting a boner somewhere, we might as well apply it to every damn thing in the world, from the Victoria's Secret catalog to ComicCon.
2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan