(Warning! This article contains adult content of a sophmoronic nature, with itchy double entendres and scandalous pseudo-references to sex, although no actual sexual activity was used in its making... much to the author's dismay.

Double Warning!! The adult content herein is as harmless as an anesthetized baby seal compared to the billions of graphic images not more than a mouse click away anywhere else on the Internet.)
 

     I received an unsolicited e-mail today with the provocative title listed above. I think they call it 'spam'... wonderful Spam, to quote Monty Python. Take my word for it, the contents of the message had nothing to do with hospital patients receiving a deep-facial scrub from non-professionals... if you know what I mean.

     Shifting uncomfortably in my silver-studded, black-leather recliner, I didn't know quite what to make of it. Was this a random assault of the ubiquitous Internet porn industry, or was somebody trying to tell me something? In all honesty, I couldn't decide which scared me more.

     Like many of you other tongue-clucking degenerates out there, I also have seen my share of pornography on the Internet. I'd be curious to know how many residents of Cyberland still haven't connected to sites like "Insatiable Amateurs," "Dirty Debutantes," or "Celebrities Exposed!" (If you haven't, please don't send me an e-mail to share... and if you have, well let's just keep that your little secret.)

     I once heard that something like 80 percent of all websites on the net are pornographic. Why, even a site with the central theme of info for expats living in Pusan (hint hint) is rife with spicy, true-life adventures of locals and foreigners that are of a frank and explicit nature. Sex sells, and with a gazillion pages out there, many webmasters believe the key to getting us to log on is to appeal to our basest instincts. I guess the old PR trick that worked so well for National Geographic is still alive and well: breasts move merchandise.

     But not everyone is enamored with all these electronic images of the old slap-and-tickle. A persistent criticism of pornography expanded to its proliferation on the Internet is the demeaning way it depicts the gals, what feminists label the 'objectification of women'. It's doubtful that some sex kitten more surgically enhanced than Frankenstein's monster in a pileup of latex-clad albino she-males sporting hand puppets---all twisted into positions that would make a master contortionist envious---was exactly what women had in mind as an image of empowerment.

     But for me, this also raises a related question: I wonder how many women are actually dropping by the smut sites? I'm sure it's far fewer than men, and not nearly as frequently. Most women probably take a peek or two, just out of curiosity, but I seriously doubt that it's the same kind of 'gratifying' experience that it is for the gents. We all know the boys certainly aren't locking the door on the computer room for hours on end because they're reading articles on transmission repair. It's what a friend back home, who earns a perfectly good living as a suit-and-tie type, complete with trophy wife and 'wunderkind' daughter, affectionately likes to call being "down in the jack room shining the 'ween'." What a positively off-colorful colloquialism. I must remember it the next time I see the deadbolt rattling.

     Gender differences related to Internet usage might have something to do with divergences in the primordial predilections of both sexes. I read somewhere that men and women differ in which of the six senses was most important for sexual arousal. Men are visual creatures while women are tactile, which explains why a 90-year-old billionaire can hook a blonde bombshell like Anna Nicole Smith, a perennial darling of the 'nude celebrities' pages. The old geezer feasted with his eyes (and little more) on Anna's hot-air-balloon-sized baby-feeders, while she tried to put the touch on some of the antique gasbag's fortune. Although in fairness to Anna, she continues to swear---several years and a multimillion-dollar legal settlement after her husband's death---that grandpa was a real tiger in the sack. Ain't love kooky.

     But whether women go all soft for a man with the Midas Touch or guys get hard up for a girl with 'that porn-starlet look', it's undeniable that both sexes are baring---and sharing---it all on the Internet. Based on what little I've seen (HA!), I'd have to say that women AND men... and marsupials, plumbing supplies, even bowling pins, are being reduced to nothing more than objects of lust on the triple-X pages.

     You just have to wonder about all those people posted on the web with their asses hanging out. Why in the E-world would anyone want the rest of the planet to see them for the rest of eternity making the "Oh, Oh, Oh" face with a leaf blower stuffed up their tukis? There are certain parts of my anatomy that I wouldn't want my girlfriend to see, let alone my grandmother. I can almost hear the conversations in kitchens of Soccer Moms across America:

     "What do you think of Mom's money shot, Dad?
     "Well son, Dad's not too proud of Mom's reckless past ever since the boys at the water cooler discovered the 'Dripping Honeys of the Midwest' homepage."

     Sex on the Internet, as in many other commercial ventures, is all about selling fantasy: marketing dreams of beautiful people who seem to be little more than caretakers for their superhuman sex organs, doing things that the rest of us don't have the coordination, lack of shame, or pain threshold to pull off. Still, I kind of wish that a lot of these 'secret desires'---of the viewing public, anyway---stay secret... or at least safely buried in a repressive culture that dictates, "Good folks just don't do those sorts of things." Maybe it's revealing too much, but I get the willies when I think the people I shake hands and share side dishes with are engaging in transsexual sado-masochistic animal orgies in their spare time. I'd like to think I'm broadminded, but I hope that farm girls performing fellatio on Old MacDonald is never replaced by pederasty with barnyard critters on the sexual popularity charts, "Ee-eye, ee-eye, oh!"

     But while many of us so-called 'adults' have window shopped, what's probably got people particularly edgy about pornography on the Internet is the general ease of access for the kiddies. I mean, how net savvy do you have to be when a keyword search of something as child-friendly as "clowns" can pull up a website like "Rimming Bros. and Back-Alley Babies Circus"?

     Which brings me to Asia (had to slip it in somewhere... no pun intended... in order to qualify under the 'relevant topic' rubric of a webpage devoted to all things Oriental). Maybe some of you have noticed that the male fantasy de rigueur here in the Far East was schoolgirls. Care to try a test? Punch in a keyword search for "Asian" and "schoolgirls" then watch that ol' search engine begin to swell up to the point of blowing out the pixels on your 17-inch monitor (mine's only 13 inches, giving rise to a phobia-inducing case of 'screen envy').

     Yep, fellas around these parts seem to have a rather bad case of the 'Lolita' complex... although few would deny that a sizeable number of Western Humberts also are pointing and clicking. No question about it; dudes here like their females gussied up in the uniform of matriculation, the sailor suit.

     Now in Korea, schoolgirls haven't quite captured the fetishistic imaginations like they have in Japan. Across the pond, those boys are downright loopy with carnal desire for an adolescent doll dressed like Popeye. How bad is it? Well let's just say that if I were 20 years younger with smaller breasts and absent a strategic appendage, I could foot the college tuition bill for myself and graduating class by emptying out my underwear drawer and taking my soiled skivvies down to the nearest second-hand clothing store. That's right, salarymen will pay top yen for an authentically skid-marked-up pair of high school girl's panties, which only further adds credence to the old adage that a pervert and his money are soon parted.

     Unfortunately, playing 'Bugman' with a nymphet's undergarments isn't the only thing Uncle Ernie-san is up to (although, in point of fact, this also is a problem that transcends race, ethnicity, religion, country of origin, and, would you believe it? sex.)

     Last semester, I had students write an essay on the dangers of the Internet. To get them prepped and pumped up for the homework, I threw the question out to the class and this precocious little girl with the cherubic face of an angel blurted out, "Sugar Daddies!" I don't know which made me more uncomfortable: one of my students possessing knowledge of this obscure colloquialism, or a girl who looks like she belongs in daycare knowing that the Internet has spawned the ugly practice of middle-aged men showering money and gifts on too-young girls for sexual favors. My students strike me as being about as naive and wholesome as a Barney the Purple Dinosaur Christmas special, so it really threw me to hear that they were in-the-know about the harsh, depraved realities of our prurient interests. For me, it conjured up an image of Shirley Temple smoking crack, working a street corner, and swearing like a truck driver with Tourette Syndrome. Innocence lost... mine, unfortunately, not theirs.

     A recent example---of the 'life-imitating-art' variety---involves the Korean television-slash-movie star Lee Gyeong-young, who was the feature actor in the TV drama Pureun Angae ("Blue Fog") about a middle-aged man who leaves his beautiful wife and daughter to pursue a dancer in her early twenties. Lee, who headlines a soon-to-be release Korean remake called Miwodo Dasi Hanbeon ("I Hate You, But Once Again---2002"), was arrested last week for having sex with a 17-year-old. Allegedly, the 42-year-old actor used the old casting couch ploy of promises of movie stardom, plus a couple of hundred thousand won, to make himself irresistible to the teenager.

     But that's only the meatus of the story. I did some investigative reporting---albeit employing my tried-and-tested perfunctory method of grilling the first person I find who knows more than I do... either that, or one of my students---to discover whether Lee had connected with and seduced the girl through the Internet. He hadn't... once again, allegedly.

     At this stage of the legal case, everything is hearsay and conjecture, but I got the dirty lowdown from a couple of Korean friends and students privy to all the insider gossip. And they told me, aping the claims Lee himself made, that the actor was introduced to the femme fatale by a mutual acquaintance in the film industry who believed the girl was 'of age'. You see, the faux ingenue, who was also a runaway, had cut her theatrical teeth in the 'adult' movie Su-jeong II. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask whether her clips were accessible on the Internet. No doubt they will be.

     The story of her dangerous liaisons with Lee became public knowledge after police, who were searching for the missing girl, stumbled upon the teen working in a room salon, those pricey dens of iniquity where businessmen let their hair down with modern versions of kisaeng (yesterday's female 'entertainer').

     So who's the victim here? Or rather, have all parties been victimized? It's a toughie.

     I broached the subject because right now back in the States, the topic is at the center of a rather steamy debate on the sexuality of children. Coming on the heels of ghastly revelations concerning the prevalence of pedophilia among American Catholic priests, a new book by journalist Judith Levine is offering recycled arguments in support of adults taking a more hands-on approach to 'educating' kids about the birds and the bees. According to Levine's Harmful to Minors: the Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, the problem isn't intrinsically within the 'child-pedophile' relationship; rather, psychological damage comes from parents and social norms informing young'ins that this type of relationship is both heretical and abominable.

     Levine further argues that children have sexual 'rights', one of which being the right to make their own decisions about who they have sex with... including grown-ups. In addition to such sympathetic groups as the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), the author also gets support from such other less-likely places as the American Psychological Association. Although the APA recently has distanced itself from the so-called 'Rind' report, this 1998 study published in the association's Psychological Bulletin concluded that children who consented to sex with adults were not harmed by the act itself. Pedophiles seized on the findings to push for decriminalization of consensual "intergenerational intimacy"---a term favored by man-boy lovers.

     Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that big people have a whole slew of 'rights' denied rugrats. Where I come from, you have to be 16 to drive a car, 18 to vote, and 21 to drink alcohol. So these quacks think I should swallow claims that youngsters can put their hands on Chester the Molester's privates but not on a steering wheel? Or, that kids can make informed decisions about sex---ones that involve risks of pregnancy, venereal disease, and even life or death---but they can't be allowed to choose between Candidate A and Candidate B for garbage collector? And furthermore, that children should be allowed to swap fluids, but they can't ingest the firewater that fosters so many sexual encounters? Welcome to the Dollhouse!

     Apparently, for these Ivory Tower chuckleheads from the psychological community, the real issue appears to be 'consent'. Where it gets dicey is the area of 'coercion'. But a major problem with this rationale---among many others with the arguments generally---is where to draw the line. If it's an authority figure, like say a teacher, priest, film star, or parent, isn't force implied? Doesn't that perspective underpin attitudes toward incidents of sexual harassment between bosses and staff, such as when the head honcho manipulatively entices an employee to talk about advancement in the company at his/her hotel over drinks? "Oh, and by the way, wear something pretty."

     Still, I find myself feeling a bit chafed by what I perceive to be a double standard. Most of us outside the clergy, NAMBLA, or trailer parks probably find pedophilia between adult men and young boys or girls pretty icky. But what about the 'Mrs. Robinson' scenario? I'd be especially curious to know how many women are disgusted by the idea of an adult woman taking a young boy under her wing, a situation that appears to be happening with greater regularity. From this side of the isle, I'm reasonably confident that most men would log this one in the fantasy file, and furthermore, would find the idea of punishing the woman with incarceration utterly ridiculous.

     I'm asking this question not to make a point about some logical fallacy in the argument against child abuse, but rather, to try to understand why I myself feel this way. Why do I find one sexual relationship (Men-girls or Men-boys) unseemly, and the other (Women-boys) to be an incredible stroke of good luck? Am I just naturally assuming that any lad old enough to get an erection would jump at the chance to drive Ms. Daisy, while the other way around only conjures up images of fang-toothed predators salivating over petrified prey? Perhaps, perhaps.

     What does this rant have to do with the Internet? Well, the web is an increasingly sticky place where sexual spiders trap disaffected pubescent flies. But then again, in Korea, in Japan, in America, everywhere, larger numbers of young people are using the net to make love connections---frequently for money---with bargain-hunting, well-heeled old fogies of either sex. My response to this ugliness strongly suggests that I must be getting older. I feel that the Internet is encouraging kids to grow up too fast, and adults not fast enough. Of course, for those of you who find these sexual conundrums too confusing, the Internet does offer an alternative. You can always follow the advice of those personal-growth gurus who constantly implore us to, "Learn to love thyself!" Just make sure you check the deadbolt.