Wednesday, September 17th, 2008...2:44 pm
Trying Really Hard to Get Upset About Pornography
In the latest Atlantic, Ross Douthat writes of porn:
In the name of providing a low-risk alternative for males who would otherwise be tempted by “real” prostitutes and “real” affairs, we’re ultimately universalizing, in a milder but not all that much milder form, the sort of degradation and betrayal that only a minority of men have traditionally been involved in.
I don’t consider the use of porn to be analogous to betrayal, because I don’t understand the concept of betrayal among adults absent some implicit agreement. There are relationships in which consumption of porn is disrespectful and those in which it is nothing of the kind. But, for the sake of argument, let’s grant the premise–male consumption of pornography within the confines of a monogamous relationship always entails a minor infidelity. What would this mean for women who find porn unobjectionable?
It would follow that almost all of us have experienced monogamy as a series of small treacheries and degradations of which we are barely aware. We lack the cognizance to understand that porn constitutes a breach of trust; we don’t understand the agreements we’ve entered into, their terms having been set without our knowledge. Our relationships are constantly under attack, our closest bonds assailed, and we carry on in a cloud of misbegotten contentment.
This is silly. But if you aim to shrink the acceptable space in which relationships operate, you have to convince women that every freedom gained is an indignity in disguise. Witness Eve Tushnet on the porn issue:
y’all girls who like guys, you’re abandoning a position I am pretty sure you could hold if you really tried. You can expect more.
Expect more.. what? What do we gain by making random, pointless demands that bear no relation to our intuitions about intimacy? You might say that our relationships gain some external validity, especially if we take care to notify our friends and acquaintances that our partners only masturbate without benefit of visual aid. As for costs: There is the work of policing the potential porn consumer and ginning up some hurt feelings if he’s caught out; the cost of having taken a harmless enjoyment out of the lives of people we love; the diminution of the quite limited pointless-demand quota; and the loss of freedom to enjoy porn ourselves should we wish to partake. I think I’ll pass.
34 Comments
September 17th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
[…] is suicide, the minimum wage is chattel slavery, and novels are full of lies, lies, lies! Kerry points out the insulting, should-be-obvious implication of the Douthatian position: It would follow that almost all of us have experienced monogamy as a […]
September 17th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Great post.
If you elevate a biological act into a sacred space, would the same go for bowel movements as well? I could imagine a world in which taking a shit was sanctified, with every crap, by custom, preceded a brief prayer and followed by a ritual washing of the hands in holy water. The Ross Douthats of that world might find my wish to forego those rituals on occasion an assault on the Ritual of Defecation writ large. But that would be silly, and so is this.
If Ross Douthat wants to ascribe more meaning to every single sexual act than I do, well then that’s his business. But, as with defecation, I don’t see the point.
Masturbation is can be accomplished alone. I personally don’t ascribe much meaning to every ejaculation, and I don’t think of it as in the same category as having sex with my wife. What’s more, I don’t consider every sexual act with my wife to be in the same category. And, further, I don’t suspect that when she masturbates, she’s in any way violating any kind of agreement or understanding that we have. Quite the opposite.
I could conceive of a relationship in which the understanding was that neither people would masturbate. It’s not a relationship I would want. But I don’t quite gather why the way Douthat relates to his wife cheapens (or enhances) my relationship with my wife. Other people masturbate according to their lights. I don’t spend much time thinking about it.
September 17th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
our partners only masturbate without benefit of visual aid
Don’t be ridiculous. You should be equally betrayed by the simple fact that your partner masturbates at all. Obviously.
(Great post.)
September 17th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
“If you elevate a biological act into a sacred space, would the same go for bowel movements as well? I could imagine a world in which taking a shit was sanctified, with every crap, by custom, preceded a brief prayer and followed by a ritual washing of the hands in holy water. ”
In Orthodox Judaism prayers are: “recited every time one recognizes the miracle of the body’s holes and tubes that open and close properly, so that one can have a bowel movement.”
A number of other religions have ritual requirements surrounding defecation as well.
September 17th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Analogies are terrrible, we all know, but here goes. Masturbation:sex::dining alone:dining with your SO. What’s more fun than going out to a great new restaurant with someone you love? Or staying home to try out a new recipe together?
But if he’s not hungry and you are, is it OK for him to be angry at you for eating? Does it mean you won’t look forward to your next meal together? If you need a quick something to tide you over until dinner and she’s not around, is it wrong to wolf down a Snickers bar?
September 18th, 2008 at 7:08 am
Ross Douthat is a really smart guy, an excellent writer, a man with an Obama-like feeling for nuance.
That’s what makes this piece so infuriating. In considering the other side of the argument, he fails to seriously consider the plight of the porn consumer.
He simply excavates the weakest possible argument in favor of the existence of porn and beats the tar out of it, while neglecting stronger arguments. It’s not quite a straw man, but it’s close. Porn is fun! does not elicit much sympathy.
But what about a more difficult case? Suppose a man and a woman of modest means are in a marriage that is happy in all but one way: the woman has COMPLETELY lost interest in sex. Just doesn’t want to have it. Ever. What should the man do? Coerce her into sex? Certainly Douthat would not be one to propose marital rape, would he? Should they seek expensive medical treatment? Or counseling?
All of this seems like a needlessly taxing, roundabout, and even cruel alternative to readily available, free, and utterly harmless (say it with me now) pornography.
There are an endless number of imaginable permutations on this theme.
Douthat sees the complete annihilation of a previously held standard and immediately rushes to the conclusion that this simply must be a bad thing. While Douthat does not seek to enshrine his unreflective preference in legislation, it’s as predictable as sunrise that some less intellectually gifted conservatives would do exactly that.
All of these people want to regulate the intimate relations of other people. Yes, I know that there has been a long history of regulating sex. But, you know what? Mill’s dictum that “the only freedom worthy of the name” is “the right of people to seek their own good in their own way” just happens to be correct. Sexual release without harm or cost in the context of safety and consent…yes, Ross, this IS progress.
Douthat’s tortured, sophisticated neo-Victorianism is–how to say this?–like putting lipstick on a pig.
September 18th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Here’s the problem with widely-distributed porn: it’s what kids are going to be looking at before they become intimate with anyone else.
Now, I don’t know how that’s going to affect young girls, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a good idea to show young boys images of sexual behavior that is largely determined by commercial need and/or greed.
We’re conducting an experiment now, in which our young people are the subjects. Will exposure to pornography increase or decrease their ability to experience intimacy? I think it’s probably not going to help….
September 18th, 2008 at 9:38 am
And the Social Right screamed: “False Consciousness! Women of the world: unite!”
September 18th, 2008 at 9:44 am
That’s an interesting question, Phantom, but I hope you do realize that’s not the issue people are debating here. It’s not questioning the level and effects of distribution to certain segments of the population, it’s arguing over the merits (or lack thereof) of porn in established monogamous relationships.
September 18th, 2008 at 9:49 am
To assert that it is “harmless enjoyment” is merely to beg the question.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:07 am
While I personally think that porn tends to be best as an example of what not to do in reality, to assume that everyone will take it as the same form of betrayal as Douthat does is patently absurd. Not to mention the implication that women have no interest in pornography themselves. Time to back up and remember that when it comes to private lives, it’s usually better to err on the side of letting people live the way that they want to. Couples can decide where they want to draw the line without anyone else telling them how to feel.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:22 am
I encountered porn at a fairly young age, before I had sex. When my parents found out, they had two very different ways of dealing with it. My father took the “sex is a natural part of life and it can be used to express a whole range of emotions, etc” and he’d rather me watch porn than violent movie approach, my mom gave me the “when people love each other very much, blah blah blah” speech and almost treated it as dirty. As I grew older, the more I shed my mother’s way of thinking and adopted my fathers, the better relationships I’ve had in my life. To me, the argument about porn is really the expression about how comfortable we are with ourselves and how safe we feel in our relationships. Because as I grew more confident in myself and with the relationship I’m in, the more this argument about the morality of the consumption of porn seems silly.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:32 am
“But if he’s not hungry and you are, is it OK for him to be angry at you for eating?”
What about all the wives who are “hungry,” but whose men have been sated by pornsturbating?
September 18th, 2008 at 10:36 am
“Suppose a man and a woman of modest means are in a marriage that is happy in all but one way: the woman has COMPLETELY lost interest in sex. Just doesn’t want to have it. Ever. What should the man do? Coerce her into sex?
You’re retarded. The problem with porn is that it makes the MAN not interested in sex. This has nothing to do with your sexist, misogynistic ideas about virile men and frigid wives. Welcome to this century, douchetwit.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:54 am
[…] he’s clearly horrified to learn a lot of women don’t mind men using pornography (like Kerry Howley). The question, he says, is “what sort of people we aspire to be,” and after setting up […]
September 18th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Bim Bim, you could do with a time-out. You ought to take some vitamin E if you’re so easily sated with “pornsturbating”. Men who pleasure themselves so much that they can no longer function for their partners may be porn addicts, but only to the extent that they can rattle off their orgasms quicker. That’s a function of obsession, not pornography.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:56 am
“The problem with porn is that it makes the MAN not interested in sex.”
Really? Any empirical data to back that up? Didn’t think so.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Strangely, in all three web sites linked from the Daily Dish, the idea of a married couple watching porn together and engaging in various sexual acts, alone or tegether, isn’t brought up.
And since I’ll state that at least in one case, the married wife is at least as interested as her husband in watching porn, this means it appears possible, by a certain logic, that a naked married couple, sharing a bed, can perform mutual infidelity in each other’s presence, and no one else’s, merely by each having an orgasm while watching porn.
Somehow, none of this discussion seems very realistic.
September 18th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Some women and men have higher libidos than their spouse, that’s biological and sometimes social.
Masturbation with or without porn is a way to compromise between different libidos within a marriage that underscores the distinction between sex and intimacy.
Calling that compromise adultery pretends we own our spouse, rather than share our lives with them, in the same way brutes argue that they “can’t rape their wife.”
Men who ejaculate at least once a day between 15 and 35 are at almost no risk of prostate cancer, or so recent studies indicate. “Criminalizing” masturbation doesn’t change that biological fact, it’s a smokescreen to cover up emotional insecurity due to other marital failures.
September 18th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Oh dear. My partner of 19 years and I consume porn. Together and separately. Sometimes we gratify ourselves separately. Sometimes we get a little charged up separately and then have hot fun in the sheets together. Porn for us is different from what it is for it is for others, but one thing it seems to very reliably be is a blank screen for people to project their sexual and moral thoughts on. Just for the record, I’m a man and she’s a woman. I like visual porn — still images and videos — and she likes written porn.
September 18th, 2008 at 11:28 am
If I ask some guy to give up porn for me, does that mean I have to give *my* porn up for him, too?
::considers::
Ain’t a-gonna happen.
September 18th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Thank you, Cervantes, for using ‘beg the question’ correctly!
Also: well-put, Kerry.
September 18th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Bim Bim–
You actually raise a decent point, in a way. I view porn as inherently, substantially inferior to actual sex, which is part of the reason why the idea that it could be cheating is so ridiculous to me. But, for the same reason, I barely use it at all when I’m in a relationship, and never really when sex with my partner is available (unless we watch it together). I would agree that if porn is replacing sex, there is a problem–but then, I’d say the problem is in the relationship, not universal to pornography.
September 18th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Joe Strummer:
Nice analogy with defecation. I’ll use it as an opportunity to provide one of my favorite exchanges from “Family Guy:
Peter: I’m looking for some toilet training books.
Salesman: We have the popular “Everybody Poops,” or the less popular “Nobody poops but you.”
Peter: (hesitates) Well, you see, we’re Catholic…
Salesman: Ah, then you’ll want “You’re a Naughty, Naughty Boy, and That’s Concentrated Evil Coming Out the Back of You.”
September 18th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Under what conceivable sort of healthy relationship could porn use be considered “betrayal?” Monogamy does not require anyone to pretend that they are not sexually attracted to someone who is not their SO.
September 18th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Great article; it’s time someone shut that shit down. The whole piece by Ross Douthat was based on a logical fallacy, “the on-camera copulation, and the masturbation it enables—are interdependent: neither would happen without the other.” I think that’s the crux here: Does porn cause masturbation? And if so, does that constitute infidelity? On the contrary, I think porn provokes the imagination which in turn may be necessary and is at least helpful in masturbation. But guys with enough privacy will masturbate with or without pornography.
In general, the tone of Ross’ article was too prudish to be useful in discussing this topic with any degree of seriousness. I couldn’t tell for example whether he was implying masturbation when he referred to “viewing porn” or not. His admission “I’ve looked at porn” is ambiguous at best. Is the guy looking at porn with his buddies but definitely not masturbating or even sporting an erection at the same time committing an infidelity? Who the hell knows.
In the end, I think that porn and masturbation, like almost any other activity, can be detrimental to a monogamous relationship if it interferes with time spent together and one’s partner’s wishes. But in general, I think most people would do better to feel less guilty about sex rather than more so.
September 18th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
I just wish everyone would practice what they preach, privately.
They could also preach what they practice, the same way.
One man’s porn, is another’s Sear catalog.
September 18th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
‘Is the guy looking at porn with his buddies but definitely not masturbating or even sporting an erection at the same time committing an infidelity?’
To condense a tortured path from the article -
‘ The man who lets his eyes stray across the photo of Gisele Bündchen, bare-assed and beguiling on the cover of GQ, has betrayed his wife in some sense, but only a 21st-century Savonarola would describe that sort of thing as adultery…. This seems like a potentially reasonable distinction to draw. But the fantasy-versus-reality, pixels-versus-flesh binary feels more appropriate to the pre-Internet landscape…. And it feels much more appropriate to the tamer sorts of pornography, from the increasingly archaic (dirty playing cards and pinups, smutty books and the Penthouse letters section) to the of-the-moment (the topless photos and sex-scene stills in the more restrained precincts of the online pornosphere), than it does to the harder-core material at the heart of the porn economy….But hard-core pornography is real sex by definition, and the two sexual acts involved—the on-camera copulation, and the masturbation it enables—are interdependent: neither would happen without the other.’
And here, he actually could make a decent point - the porn I enjoy doesn’t come from the ‘porn economy’ - lots of people are more than happy enough to share, and have been doing so since the old Usenet days. Not to mention the unbelievable amount of erotica that has been produced over history.
Instead, he just flakes out - as if the pornography my wife and I have made and shared is somehow related to an industry, or that the fact that we create and share is something utterly beyond his conception of how people act.
Of course, I have to admit that Douhat seems to have a lot more experience with parts of the Internet that really leave me and my wife cold, which leads to the sort of speculation which isn’t worth my time.
Especially with a phrase like ‘a porn apologist’ - which I guess describes me, and by extension, my wife. Though honestly, we are better than apologists - we are pornographers.
September 18th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I think hatred of porn is just another tool people use to manipulate their partners and make them feel guilty. It’s just more popular for women to do so, I think, because it seems that we have less of an appreciation for the need to get off with visual aid. Who knew that watching people have sex means you’re somehow the one sticking it in that vag? Please. Porn isn’t evil, but people who use it as an excuse to play the morality queen in their relationships are. I refuse to believe that anyone who has actually watched porn would be unable to see it for anything but what it is: some disturbingly high-def shots of people’s crotches and a lot of grunting. Also, perpetuating the myth that all women hate porn probably hurts the market for porn made by and for women, which is much better and doesn’t have so much dispassionate squealing.
September 18th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Why is that all Christian fundamentalists constantly whine about the physical and mental health risks posed by porn and sexual freedom yet they do nothing to address the mental and physical risks caused by excessive sublimation and restraint? How many Americans are out of shape, obese, and diabetic because they lead bland, repressed, sexless lives? Diabetes, heart disease, and depression are everybit as deadly as HIV and STDs. I am willing to be that being in good shape but sleeping around (assuming one is safe) is far, far safer than being a fat, repressed Christian nitwit who eats horribly and has an unsatisfying sex life. Do the math.
September 18th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
The viewing porn by teens insures that they at least have their facts right, which is important because society and the educational establishment have been coerced into providing them with anemic sex education that is far from accurate. Porn is a more honest look at sex than the constant flow of near porn on commercial TV. Neither deals with the emotional aspect of sex and that is where critics should focus their complaints.
September 20th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Social conservatives are supposed to care about the health of marriage as an institution. The norms that Douthat is proposing constitute a much graver threat to that institution than most of what social conservatives spend their time wringing their hands about. It’s telling to note how many of the people pushing the porn=adultery standard (Douthat and Tushnet included) aren’t actually married.
September 20th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
adultery standard (Douthat and Tushnet included) aren’t actually married.
Douthat is married.
September 22nd, 2008 at 3:23 am
So he is, since almost a year ago. I’d missed that. Cue Emily Litella.
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