消费与创造
感觉，这里还可以推广到更多地方。比如各类创造。
After the spot of adolescent fun taken with Armed Liberal’s benevolent prescription for Kenneth Branagh, he (that would be Armed Liberal, not Kenneth Branagh — someday we are going to hire a writer!) pointed out an old post of his about porn.
在 Armored Liberal 对肯尼斯·布拉纳的仁慈推荐中，那个青少年时期的乐趣之地之后，他（指的是 Armored Liberal，不是肯尼斯·布拉纳——总有一天我们会雇佣一个作家！）指出了他关于色情片的一篇旧帖子。
Turns out he’s agin it. In part because it makes us passive consumers of our lives instead of active participants. It’s better, he tells his sons, to “hold hands and smooch with a real girl than to jerk off to pictures of someone you’ll never meet, much less get to go to bed with.” Or, as he explains:
原来他反对。部分原因是，这会让我们成为生活的被动消费者，而不是主动参与者。他告诉儿子们，“和真人女孩牵手接吻，总比对着一个你永远不会见面、更不会上床的人的照片自慰要好。”或者，正如他解释的那样：
“So instead of buying p0rn[sic], go meet someone and ask them out. Instead of watching the NBA finals and tying your identity to a team of mercenaries, go down to the park and play some hoops.”
所以，与其买色情片，不如去认识一个人，约她出去。与其看 NBA 总决赛，把自己的身份和一支雇佣兵队伍绑在一起，不如去公园打篮球。
This is great advice, for normal folks. But it’s very exclusionary of the fringes of society — the folks who aren’t athletic enough to play hoops down at the park, or the guy who isn’t attractive enough to get a woman to go out with him. Do we say that professional basketball is bad because playing basketball at the park is more fun and better for you than watching hoops on television? If so, that’s pretty hard on Crutches Boy. “Basketball on television is bad, because it keeps you from getting so desperate for sports fix that you’ll go down to the park and try to play basket ball with the kids who can walk, even though they won’t pick you for their teams and you’ll go home humiliated and frustrated every damn time you try.” Great advice. Thanks. Crutches Boy will be back for more good advice later, bank on it.
这些建议很棒，适合普通人。但它对社会的边缘群体非常排外——那些不够健壮无法在公园打篮球的人，或者不够有魅力无法吸引女性约会的人。我们是否因为公园里打篮球更有趣、更健康，就说职业篮球不好？如果是这样，那对拐杖男孩来说就太苛刻了。“电视上的篮球不好，因为它会让你极度渴望运动，以至于你会去公园尝试和能走路的孩子一起打篮球，尽管他们不会选你加入他们的队伍，每次尝试你都会灰溜溜地回家，既沮丧又受挫。”这些建议真棒。谢谢。拐杖男孩稍后还会回来寻求更多好建议，这是肯定的。
On the sex side this problem is worse for younger people, who often don’t have the perspective or maturity to figure out exactly why they can’t get find anyone willing to touch them, much less have sex with them. Most people figure out how to get laid eventually, but it can take a while and a fair percent don’t manage it until fairly deep into adulthood. (There’s also the unfortunate percentage who have genuinely unfixable strikes against them, like general ugliness or unresponsive obesity, that make the project even longer and more painful than it is for the kids who are merely callow and clueless.)
在性方面，这个问题对年轻人来说更严重，因为他们往往缺乏视角或成熟度来弄清楚为什么找不到愿意触摸他们的人，更不用说与他们发生性关系了。大多数人最终都能解决性关系问题，但这可能需要一段时间，而且相当一部分人直到成年后期才成功。 （还有不幸的一部分人，他们确实有无法弥补的缺陷，比如普遍的丑陋或无反应的肥胖，这使得这个过程比那些仅仅天真无邪、一无所知的孩子所经历的更加漫长和痛苦。）
Worse yet, we tell our young people, for lots of strong reasons, that for the first five to seven years after their bodies are sexually mature, there is absolutely no socially acceptable way for them to have an orgasm with another person. Is it really better, for that long span of time, to “kiss and cuddle” without orgasm, than to masturbate and fantasize, which is what porn is mostly about? Perhaps a balanced life has room for both.
更糟糕的是，我们出于许多重要原因告诉年轻人，在他们身体性成熟后的头五到七年里，他们完全没有在社会上可接受的方式与他人达到性高潮。在这段漫长的时期里，与伴侣“接吻和拥抱”却无法达到性高潮，真的比自慰和幻想（这是色情作品的主要内容）更好吗？或许平衡的生活可以容纳两者。
In short, Bacchus thinks that there are a hell of a lot of people for whom porn makes the world a better, brighter, or at least more tolerable place than it otherwise would be. This is arguably quite sad — Bacchus finds women a lot more fun than porn, when he finds them — but it’s still true.
简而言之，巴克斯认为有很多人觉得色情作品让这个世界变得更美好、更光明，或者至少比没有色情作品时更可忍受。这无疑是相当悲哀的——巴克斯发现现实中的女性比色情作品更有趣，当他遇到女性时——但这仍然是事实。