The Case Against Pornography

Just before the coronavirus began to ravage the world, Politico magazine published a major feature on then-Senator, now Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’s crusade against revenge porn.

As Politico reported, in February 2015, Harris, then the California attorney general, summoned Silicon Valley leaders to discuss the devastating effects of “revenge porn” — the distribution of sexually graphic images of individuals without their consent. At that meeting, “Harris made the point that this had nothing to do with love affairs gone wrong, and it wasn’t online mischief. It wasn’t even about sex, really. It was a crime, the way domestic abuse was a crime.”

According to Politico, the meeting was incredibly effective and netted immediate results. “The next month, Twitter banned nonconsensual intimate photos and videos from its service. That summer, Google began stripping explicit photos from its search results at victims’ request. Next, Microsoft said it would block links to intimate content on its Xbox Live gaming service.”

Harris is right to focus on the catastrophic effects of revenge pornography on women, a point echoed by New York Times’ columnist Nicholas Kristof’s recent and powerful takedown of a website that featured revenge porn. But even the everyday, garden variety of porn consumed in its millions by, mostly, men is incredibly destructive.

Yes, I’m aware of the arguments pointing out that porn is watched by women and can help increase erotic interest between them. But these arguments in favor belie the fact that the overwhelming consumers of pornography are indeed men. And proponents ignore that the positive effects of watching porn are undermined by couples’ growing dependence on strangers to remain erotically interested in each other.

Those who constantly feed their minds with porn will find themselves hard-pressed not to lose respect for women. Much of pornography falsely depicts women not only as sleazy and vulgar but as greedy and parasitical. The man watching porn never forgets that some of the women stripping for him are doing so for financial reward. The not-so-subtle message is that there is little women aren’t prepared to do for money.

Those who constantly feed their minds with porn will find themselves hard-pressed not to lose respect for women.

This is a message that television and social media needs to be mindful of as well. The female “gold digger” trope has deep roots in modern American media. Indeed, the reality TV show “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire” was premised on the claim that most women would trade their hearts for a man’s wallet. That show was followed by “Joe Millionaire,” “For Love or Money” and other reality TV shows dedicated to the same ilk. Fast forward twenty years to Netflix’s hit show “Bridgerton,” launched last month, and you can see that while some British aristocracy married for love, they were the exception to those who schemed and lied to marry for money. It’s an entertaining series, and we Americans love watching British royalty, but why have no female viewers found some offense in the premise that so many women are looking for a title and a country mansion, not love?

The problem is widespread. Some estimates claim that about 30% of the internet is dedicated to porn. And with the “gold digger” idea becoming so widespread with so little outrage from women, it should not come as a surprise that in 2000, the New York Times reported an increase of 1500% in husbands making their wives sign prenuptial agreements over the previous decade because men were becoming so suspicious of female avarice.

Our culture ought to wake up to how this consumption is affecting our assessment of women. Because pornography portrays women as existing to serve men’s lascivious needs, it causes men to have contempt for women. It invites them not merely to sexualize women but to view them as a means rather than an end.

The harms of porn are not abstract phenomena. I have seen this degradation of women myself, in the marriage counseling sessions I host:

For married men, excessive exposure to a variety of naked, female bodies contributes to their penchant of feeling perennially dissatisfied with their wives. When husbands are constantly barraged with pornographic images — which predominantly features airbrushed images of the “perfect” female body — their own wives become ordinary by comparison. When a man sees his wife’s naked body, his eye will be immediately drawn to her flaws rather than to her beauty. Not only does this lead to the degradation of his wife, but it also hinders his ability to find sexual satisfaction.

Indeed, with the single standard of beauty generally cultivated by porn, it is nearly impossible to be satisfied with the variety of body types that exist in the real world. Unable to find true contentment with their wives, many men look elsewhere, becoming more addicted to porn. Moreover, men who are used to looking at pornography are rarely contented with a single image of perfection. Notice how Playboy Magazine rarely repeated playmates in multiple centerfolds. Even “Miss June’s” seemingly flawless form is not good enough to win her the “Miss July” or “Miss August” centerfold. Once she has been seen and digested, she is no longer captivating enough to be seen again. Variety for men becomes necessary and essential.

More than simply providing the “ideal” measure by which to judge women, pornography hinders a man’s attachment to a single woman because it impairs his ability to build deep relationships. Sexual intimacy should bring a couple together on emotional and mental planes. Once a man feels removed enough to judge his wife by external comparisons, he loses some of his excitement for her and mistakenly believes that a more perfectly formed woman would provide him with the physical titillation he craves.

After a while, pornography becomes an addiction, in which the viewer needs more stimulation to achieve the same level of arousal. This effect is perfectly illustrated by studies showing the range of pornographic viewing on the internet. While most men will start looking at adult websites for an average of fifteen minutes, within months, they are online for hours. In the beginning, it only takes a short hit to achieve the desired effect, but with time, these quick glances are no longer enough.

Once pornography enters into a relationship, women become subordinate because they have been objectified and commoditized. In the world of pornography, women are generally portrayed in three ways: as the mindless playmate, the insatiable nymphomaniac or as one who craves pain. And once women are degraded and lose their equal footing, men find themselves looking for validation in bragging rights by being able to boast to their friends about their conquests of multiple women.

King Solomon declared in Proverbs that “He who has found a woman has found goodness.” But in the age of the fraudulently-depicted vulgar women of the pornographic universe, we might modify the aphorism to read, “He who has found only fantasy woman has compromised his ability to appreciate goodness.”

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the author of the international best-seller “Kosher Sex,” recently published “Lust for Love,” a critique of pornography, co-authored by Pamela Anderson. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @RabbiShmuley.