Ridge W.
Given our recent class discussions about pornography and this blogs focus on sex in relationships I deemed it appropriate to talk about the intersection of the two. For many people, pornography is something that only certain people outside of relationships watch or enjoy. I wanted to find out whether this is actually the case, and what affect porn has, whether present or absent, on relationships in general.
To gather a sense of how most people perceive the effects of porn in relationships, I did a quick google search and was astonished to notice that the first five responses thought that porn was essentially single-handedly ruining relationships. They had titles such as “Does porn hurt your relationship?”, “A pornography habit destroys relationships” and “Men’s porn use linked to unhappy relationships”. Before delving into why there is such a stigma against porn use in a relationship, I should ask “why are people watching porn in the first place?” and “how does watching porn affect a relationship?”
Perhaps the most basic reason for watching porn is for sexual release, which may have evolutionary roots.
As Joshua Scott argues, “Pornography solves a primal problem for men: It offers easy access to commitment-free sex with multiple partners. Throughout human evolution, a man's reproductive success increased if he inseminated as many women as possible—ideally those who were young and beautiful, since both qualities signaled fertility and health.” In other words, if men traditionally and evolutionarily have had a stronger drive to have multiple partners than women, pornography could be used as a sort of compromise between the evolutionary urges and societal influence. Obviously every has their own reasons for watching porn, and most men, I imagine, don’t consciously do it to satisfy their subconscious evolutionary urges, but why does this cause a problem in relationships? And does it matter whether the relationship is between a heterosexual or homosexual couple? Does the gender of the offender matter? Is it pornography itself that is supposedly ruining relationships, or is it specifically masturbation? I cannot hope to answer all this questions at once, but I thought I would at least propose them to provoke some thought.
Although I would be very interested in finding out how the impact pornography use in homosexual relationships differs from that in heterosexual ones, if it does at all, I could find very little on the issue, and as a result will focus mainly one the impact it has, supposedly, on heterosexual couples. Some studies suggest that women with partners who watch more porn are less happy because it leads to feelings of self-doubt or self-consciousness, they feel that they aren’t good enough for their partner, otherwise he would not have to watch porn. However, I would argue that this is not always the case, based on what Scott argued earlier (i.e. the evolutionary drive behind watching porn).
Perhaps there’s more to it than just that, however. Some argue that pornography is ruining relationships because of its derogatory nature towards women, and because it increases violence and sexual violence. One New York Times article sites a survey of the top 50 rented porn movies, in which it was found that physical aggression occurred in 88% of the films, and verbal abuse towards women occurred in 48%. Although the article describes the survey as extensive, I would argue that it is not fair to base the content of all, or even most porn, on the top 50 most rented porn movies. Even if that is the case, however, is it fair to assume that porn containing physical aggression increases the likely hood of the viewer then causing physical or sexual violence in real life?
I would also argue that watching pornography in most cases is a harmless act, and can even be beneficial to relationships. For instance, if one partner is much more sexually driven, he or she can use porn and masturbation as a form of sexual release, without pressuring his or her partner into unwanted sexual acts. Furthermore, it can provide an outlet for certain fetishes that one partner in the relationship may not wish to become involved in. I believe that the vast diversity of the pornographic world allows porn to be used in a variety of ways and for numerous purposes, and that it is therefore unfair to presume that pornography as a whole is ruining relationships. What do you think?
