It's about as difficult as finding a spire in a haystack, but Bill Bennett has been reading the New York Times and discovering evidence of cultural decline. In a CNN.com essay, he picks up on recent columns by Maureen Dowd and Frank Bruni and reaches the conclusion that, as the headline puts it, "Hookup Culture Debases Women."

Dowd's column, Bennett writes, "looks at E.L James's 'Fifty Shades of Grey,' a trilogy of erotic, bondage-themed fiction":

Dowd cites the remarkable success of the trilogy among Generation X women--the contemporaries, allies and beneficiaries of the modern feminist movement. And yet, the narrative flies in the face of women's progress. For example, a contract that the girl signs with the man stipulates that "the Dominant may flog, spank, whip or corporally punish the Submissive as he sees fit, for purposes of discipline, for his own personal enjoyment or for any other reason, which he is not obliged to provide." If this is progress for women, what would regression look like?

Bruni's column is more meandering, but he begins with a similarly themed TV program, HBO's "Girls." As Bennett explains: "In this unglamorous, dull version of 'Sex [and] the City,' [Lena] Dunham stars as a contemporary, twenty-something woman playing second fiddle to the bizarre, dominating sexual fantasies of her boyfriend":

Bruni goes on to grapple with Dunham's loveless sex scenes and wonders whether today's onslaught of pornography and easy sex has desensitized men to the point where they view women, to recall the words of an earlier day, only as objects. Even the act of sex itself is boring to some men unless it is ratcheted up in some strange, deviant fashion--all at the expense of the thoroughly humiliated and debased woman.

In the act of degrading women, men are also degrading themselves.

Now wait just a second. How does an essay about "Fifty Shades of Grey" and "Girls" turn into an anti-male screed? Both are written by women for women. Dowd notes, but Bennett omits, that the real first name of author E.L. James is Erika. As for "Girls," Bruni points out that Lena Dunham "is not only its star but also its principal writer and director." And if it's anything like "Sex and the City," no heterosexual man will ever watch it except as a favor to someone of the opposite sex.

We don't dispute Bennett's contention that pornography is degrading to women, but it takes no courage or insight to say so. "Fifty Shades of Grey" and "Girls" sound degrading too, but Bennett seems to shy away from confronting the fact that this degradation amounts to female pornography--produced by women for the entertainment of other women. In postfeminist America, it's so much easier and safer to scapegoat men.