Does viewing Internet porn amount to adultery? In his column at the Atlantic, Ross Douthat says yes, it does. Basically, Douthat argues that hard-core porn is not fantasy and that the privacy offered by the Internet allows a degree of intense and personalized interaction that could not happen in the good old days when men stashed a magazine or two under their mattress:
Over the past three decades, the VCR, on-demand cable service, and the Internet have completely overhauled the ways in which people interact with porn. Innovation has piled on innovation, making modern pornography a more immediate, visceral, and personalized experience. Nothing in the long history of erotica compares with the way millions of Americans experience porn today, and our moral intuitions are struggling to catch up. …Masturbating to a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model (like Christie Brinkley, once upon a time) or a Playboy centerfold is a one-way street: the images are intended to provoke fantasies, not to embody reality, since the women pictured aren’t having sex for the viewer’s gratification. Even strippers, for all their flesh-and-blood appeal, are essentially fantasy objects—depending on how you respond to a lap dance, of course. 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. The whole point of a centerfold is her unattainability, but with hard-core porn, it’s precisely the reverse: the star isn’t just attainable, she’s already being attained, and the user gets to be in on the action.
I’m not convinced. I have other problems with porn. Most of it objectifies women while being trite and frankly not very sexy, in my opinion. I’d have a problem if a partner neglected me in favor of a tete-a-tete with his computer. I would definitely be squicked if a partner was into barely-legal porn, or fetishes that would gross me out in real life, or the gonzo stuff that implies women get great pleasure from men destroying their orifices. But even then, while it might be represent a serious problem for our compatibility, it would fall far short of what I’d consider adultery.
To my mind, sex by any reasonable definition has to involve more than one person. It has to involve some sort of reciprocal interaction. Otherwise, masturbation would be cheating – and that’s just silly.
By this definition, yes, it’s possible to have sex online. But Douthat is not talking about cybersex, or phone sex, or any sort of interactive encounter. In porn, the only people interacting are on screen. The guy (or gal) at home is still a viewer. It’s not like he’s giving the actors direction. It’s not like he can say, “Mmm, move a little to the right so I can get a better view.” All he can do is open another browser window if the images aren’t doing him right. No interaction – no sex.
I don’t think porn is adultery. I don’t even think it’s virtual adultery. Porn is just porn.
I’m curious what you think. Are there any instances where porn would amount to adultery in your book? Please tell me in comments.
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
Porn could definitely be a sign of other issues, and I would not be terribly happy to walk into a room and find my boyfriend having a good old time with a website. My problem with porn is that it is so skewed to male preferences, warps the idea of women’s preferences (ladies, really, do we all beg for anal sex with racehorses, or five men coming on our faces?), and reduces women to another sex toy instead of a participant worthy of her own pleasure.
Is it adultery? Hmmm. Not really, but depending on the circumstances, it could be almost as upsetting.
Agreed. I’d have a big issue if I walked in on any mate, past or present, who was viewing something that I found deeply, deeply offputting. The “barely legal” stuff would be high on my list, as would anything involving, um, racehorses – I’m not Catherine the Great reincarnated. (This is not an exhaustive list, mind you!) The problem is that so much porn does reduce women to a sex toy.
I’d have a problem if a mate appeared to prefer porn to me, too – I don’t know how common that is, but it’s also not vanishingly rare.
I agree with you. But I’m liberal on this front – I give my husband a pass on going to strip bars. We’re talking once or twice per year with the guys. Whatevs. Life’s too short to be repressed,
Mmm. I’d be a little uneasy about strip clubs as a regular feature. My mate doesn’t seem much interested in them, nor are his male friends (as far as I know, anyway!) so it’s a non-issue. But for me there’s a distinction between having a live body gyrating right in front of you, and looking at one on the screen. Again, it’s the possibility for interaction.
I couldn’t play the strip club. There’s a respect for women issue there that I’m not willing to give a free pass for. How many female bonding events revolve around reducing men to things and objects as a matter of course? Life’s too short…to contribute to a view of women I don’t support.
Yeah, the issue of objectification in strip clubs is fairly similar to the issue in porn.
My own very limited experience visiting a Chippendale type show for someone’s bachelorette party was really off-putting. I felt like everyone was reduced to an object – dancers and viewers alike – and it was just the opposite of sexy. I think there certainly are less objectifying ways of lusting after people near and far, but that experience definitely wasn’t it.