Both L.A.-based Coopers writing about sex now

L.A. writer Natasha Vargas-Cooper has created a cultural stir with her piece in The Atlantic on the effect that easily available amateur web porn is having on sex between real men and women — and on web porn itself. Her perspective is that of a younger, post-feminist woman who enjoys the myriad pleasures of sex while acknowledging the repulsiveness of some desires. The piece has been out awhile, but now her father, the L.A. journalist Marc Cooper, has joined the conversation. First Vargas-Cooper, the author of "Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America."

Pornography, with its garish view of male sexual desire, bares an uncomfortable truth that the women’s-liberation movement has successfully suppressed: men and women have conflicting sexual agendas.

Pornography neatly resolves the contradictions—in favor of men.....And for women peeping in on the Web, an important lesson—one that can’t be gleaned in a sex-ed class where condoms are placed over bananas, nor from poring over the umpteenth edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves—is that sex can be a bitter, crushing experience, no matter how much power you think you have.

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It seems like almost every teenager in America—and hardly just the teenagers—has heard of or taken a dip into sites like RedTube and YouPorn, which alone account for roughly 2 percent of all daily Internet traffic. These are free, open, enormous sites, in which anybody can upload, distribute, and view whatever porn they please; even porn in which they star.....

It’s largely a grim parade of what women will do to satisfy men...The new face of pornography [is] a pale, naughty, 19-year-old with A-cups and a bad haircut, her face illuminated only by the bluish glow of her Mac.

Marc Cooper blogs tonight: