IN his book on evolutionary psychology and the sexes, Steve Moxon argues that pornography is benign and actually serves a useful social function. He writes in The Woman Racket:

The male desire for a variety of novel sexual partners is insatiable, and for almost all men this cannot be met by actual sex. Masturbation to endlessly varying images of women is the harmless solution (now that we know it doesn’t make us blind). The basic fear about ‘pornography’ is that it ‘depraves and corrupts’ to the point of encouraging sex crime, but in fact it produces the opposite effect. Conversely, dangerous sex criminals are found to have been exposed to little if any erotica, and generally to have had a sheltered existence regarding sex.

Anti-male prejudice, he maintains, underlies many of the laws and social attitudes regarding pornography:

The law against ‘child pornography’ is used against men who have in no way, however indirectly, harmed a child; and this betrays that the law is really about the hatred of male sexuality.

While I agree that anti-male bias is apparent in the feminist critique of pornography, especially in hysterical claims that viewing pornography is tantamount to rape, I disagree with Moxon’s conclusion. Pornography is not harmless even if it doesn’t encourage sexual crime or result in actual adultery or involve any coercion or “objectification” of women who appear in sexual material. Just because a desire is insatiable and natural doesn’t mean it is good. And given that a very small minority of men do prey on children, and even kidnap and kill them, intolerance of sexual interest in children and the trafficking of sexual images of children is healthy and right.

Moxon argues that romance fiction is female erotica, satisfying similar biological urges in women that sexual imagery satisfies for men. This is an excellent point. Not just romance fiction, but movies and music sometimes stoke the desires of women to such a degree that they serve the same function as pornography for men.  The book Eat, Pray, Love stimulates romantic longings utterly detached from reality and some women do mistake this kind of fantasy for real life. Moxon makes the point that female erotica has not been stigmatized in the same way as pornography, and this is true. But that doesn’t make pornography good.

There is a reason for the ninth commandment. Desire for what we cannot, and should not, have is not harmless. If Moxon is correct and pornography actually replaces more harmful activities than we should have seen a noticeable drop in adultery and sexual crime in recent years given the wide availability of pornography on the Internet. There is no evidence of this decline. Pornography does not make a man a potential sex criminal. The sex drive in men is powerful, but male sexuality can be controlled and sublimated. Masturbation has not been deemed illicit in the past simply because people believed it caused blindness.

                                         — Comments —

Stephen writes:

You are right to raise the topic of sex offenders. This summer I have been working with sex offenders who are eligible for civil commitment as sexually violent persons. In other words, these are repeat offenders who show signs of re-offending and are therefore not released on parole after serving their prison sentences. Based on the psychological reports I have seen, you are correct that pornography does not make a man a sex offender. A man does not simply start raping women because he has viewed pornography. If that were the case, there would be a lot more rapists out there. 

Nevertheless, everybody in this field recognizes that pornography is bad for sex offenders. (Psychologists are certainly not infallible, but they do recognize the obvious here.) Many a sex offender, when he is honest with his psychologist, will admit that he is addicted to pornography. This is important to admit, because addiction to pornography will make him more likely to re-offend. The reason why this is so is not difficult to understand, for at least two reasons. First, the sex offender must admit that his paraphiliac urges and desires are disordered (in many cases paraphilia means rape fantasies, but it can include pedophilia and other deviant sexual desires), but if he is feeding his disordered desires with pornography, he is simply undoing any progress he may have made in sex offender treatment. Second, one of the key factors in assessing a sex offender’s risk of re-offending is whether he has appropriate and meaningful relationships in his life. (A man without such relationships is naturally a greater risk to re-offend.) Pornography impedes a man’s ability to develop and sustain appropriate and meaningful relationships, especially with women. 

In short, Moxon’s idea that pornography and masturbation serve as harmless outlets for a man’s libido is utter nonsense. I will not even mention his loathsome ideas about child pornography.

Laura writes:

Pornography impedes a man’s ability to develop and sustain appropriate and meaningful relationships, especially with women.

That is well said. Pornographic images invade a man’s mental life like a silent parasite. The damage will eventually show.

John E. writes:

It seems that Moxon is being influenced to justify pornography use based on its pervasiveness, rather than a universal concept of good and evil. If so many people are using it, it must not be all that bad; in fact, it’s probably good somehow – let me demonstrate… Based on his argument, he does not seem to be able to imagine a society that is not overwhelmed with pornographic images, and despairs of any meaningful resistance. Rather than acknowledging his despair of being able to resist evil, he instead justifies the evil, at least in part, as something good. 

I don’t exactly know the best way to fight against such ideas, except perhaps to demonstrate that a world in which the use of pornography is reasoned as something good, pales as an embarrassing banality when compared to a world where matters regarding sex retain a mystery, beauty, and order.

A. writes:

Laura wrote, Just because a desire is insatiable and natural doesn’t mean it is good. 

But, is that even natural? Don’t think so. Think that is rationalization from a man who has moved from normal to common. So that impulse is common, but not normal and therefore not natural.Only the normal is good. And only when we know what is truly human, do we know what is normal.

Matthew Creek writes:

In the book The Woman Racket, you mention Steve Moxon as saying “The law against ‘child pornography’ is used against men who have in no way, however indirectly, harmed a child; and this betrays that the law is really about the hatred of male sexuality.”

It is my opinion that the notion that people who view child pornography have in no way harmed a child is complete rubbish. Consider that people who view such materials often purchase it. That is, they create a market for people to peddle it. It is the existence of this market (rather than the actual viewing of the child pornography) that is damaging to children.

Mr. Moxon separates and treats independently two very obviously related things: (1) one’s viewing of child pornography, and (2) one’s contribution to the market for child pornography. Taken separately, (1) does indeed not harm children, as he claims. However, (1) does not exist without (2), and (2) is clearly harmful for children.

Laura writes:

There is a third way in which child pornography is harmful and that is when children who are not involved in the pornography market see these images, as is very possible with the Internet. A child’s  view of himself as essentially non-sexual in the eyes of adults, and as protected by adults, is shaken in this way. Children who are sexualized are prime for exploitation. They are psychologically scarred by these shocking images of other children.

Thus if all child pornography images were created without real children, through computer simulation, it would still be profoundly harmful to children.

Postmodern Antiquarian writes:

There is value in pursuing virtue. Without temptation, there is no virtue.

David writes:

Stephen writes, “Pornography impedes a man’s ability to develop and sustain appropriate and meaningful relationships, especially with women.”

This is something I would tend to accept but I would like to understand it better. How does a man who regularly views pornography impair his ability to relate to women? How will his relationships with women change for the worse?

Please note that I am not asking these questions in an effort to undermine the claim Stephen makes, and with which Laura has expressed her agreement, but rather as someone who would agree himself but would like to understand better why it is true.

Stephen, if you are willing, I would especially like to hear your thoughts on this subject. You seem to know what you’re talking about.

Laura writes:

The more a person habituates himself (or herself) to solo sex or imaginary sex the more he is incapable of dealing with the complexities, unpredictability, disappointments and rewards of reality. 

Stephen writes:

I should first make clear that I am not an expert, but merely have gained some exposure through my work to an unpleasant aspect of our society, one which needs to be better understood. I should probably also add that the men with whom I deal are extreme examples, and so the harm caused by pornography in their cases are extreme. However, this tendency of pornography to cause harm, I believe, exists in other men; it just would not necessarily result in rape.

Pornography harms a man’s ability to forge meaningful relationships with women because it replaces the reality of hard work with the easy self-indulgence of fantasy. Any indulgence in a fantasy for an extended period of time will distort the way a man sees reality, and thus how he deals with it. Fantasies about sex, though, are particularly powerful and destructive simply because the sex drive is so powerful and so integral to a man’s personality. (One need not be a Freudian, by the way, to accept this fact.) The reason why sex is so powerful is that sex is a liminal experience, where men (and women) experience transcendence and ecstasy in the original Greek sense of ekstasis, “standing outside oneself.” Indeed, sex, as James Matthew Wilson pointed out a few months ago in a brilliant article at Front Porch Republic, is the last faint glimmer of transcendence, ekstasis, and ultimate meaning for many people today, thus making the allure of pornography all the more powerful.

Because sex is about transcendence, it is necessarily about openness: to the other person involved, to the potential for a new life, but also to the gift of love that comes from God. And love must be personal and focused on another, or else it is nothing but self-indulgence. Pornography, by separating the pleasure of sex from any relationship with a real person, turns what should be an open act into a self-centered act utterly devoid of openness to transcendence. Pornography perverts what has the potential of being a transcendent experience into a mockery of the divine. Corruptio optimi pessima. 

Please follow and like us: