Watching Porn Is Not Cheating
Watching porn is not cheating. Of course it’s not. But as GirlOnTheNet says, it’s hard to formulate actual arguments in support of this proposition that don’t boil down to (her words) “What the ACTUAL MENTAL FUCK ARE YOU ON ABOUT?”
I once wrote:
Some women object to porn the way wives object to the idea of prostitutes, and for the same reason: it means they have to use actual sex, rather than their erstwhile monopoly over the possibility of access to sexual stimulus, in order to maintain and enjoy the sexual attention of their men. Women who want to have that attention without having the actual sex for which most men will cheerfully trade it are teases, in all the negative and none of the positive senses of the word.
GirlOnTheNet suggests it’s more about jealousy:
But it’s cheating in the mind, right?
No. Because what you’re describing there is a thought crime. If watching porn is cheating then writing slashfic is a form of rape.
I think this comes from female (and it is usually female — I’d like to see how men react to the idea that their girl watching porn is ‘cheating’) worries about not being adequate, and their partner being sexually interested in other people and things. It’s ‘cheating’ because he’s getting off to something that isn’t you, and that taps into a fairly primitive female jealousy about boys leaving their girlfriends for younger/prettier/thinner/more-willing-to-do-anal models.
Well, it probably sucks for these girls to hear this but he is interested in other people. Sexually. No matter how stunning or sexually adventurous you are, you are not the only thing that makes your man’s dick hard. Nice though you might think that would be, it’s not practical, nor even desirable. Many of his best moves have probably come from things he’s seen while doing some one-handed browsing during an idle moment.
She also points out something I’d never noticed, which is that the visual nature of men’s arousal processes makes us much more open and vulnerable to having our fantasies discovered and judged:
But what he watches is so disgusting and degrading
Hahahaha.
Haha.
No, seriously, stop it — you’re killing me.
It’s so much easier to demonise men for the porn they watch because men tend to require more visual stimulation than women do to get off. In short — you can watch theirs too whereas yours is probably locked away inside your head. Saying that their fantasies are ‘degrading’ and ‘disgusting’ is really easy to do when your own fantasies aren’t exposed for all to see, at the click of a mouse on the 3 a.m. section of your Chrome history.
Ain’t that the truth?
Thanks to Adele Haze for the link.
Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=7890
Read this article a few days ago:
http://www.thef...urbs/
Tell me those scenes aren’t pornography. But it’s published by a major label and is socially acceptable. But the dialog is right out of something from Vivid Entertainment.
I once told my then partner that I’d stop watching porn when she stopped watching chick flicks with impossible plotlines, characters and events. Didn’t go over that well, but the point is it’s all fiction.
An awful lot of today’s women’s “pornography” is the erotic romance novel.
http://www.eloi...5.jpg
Many women stuff these paperbacks into plain generic book covers so they can read them on buses, trains, planes, etc. Other women nowadays don’t even bother to conceal what they are reading in public because the practice is so much more acceptable than it is for a man to be reading a “girlie” magazine such as Playboy.
Black and white appears to be so much more acceptable than full color…
The so-called “romantic plot line” in these novels is basically merely a vehicle for the detailed descriptions of a series of sexual encounters, that in turn make the reader’s panties wet.
The Internet has allowed women to anonymously write “publish” and read even more taboo story lines, that many print publishers wouldn’t previously accept. BDSM, ephebophilia, fetishes, and rough lesbian sex are extremely common themes among female fantasy fiction writers.
The works of writers like Anaïs Nin, Nancy Friday, and Anne Rice (When she was writing under the pseudonyms A. N. Roquelaure), and Anne Rampling), are every bit as explicit as the writings of male pornographers.
http://en.wikip...ilogy
http://www.harv...love/
…and from http://www.msna...omen/ we find the following quote:
“In 2001 Professor Michael Bailey conducted research into what kind of audio visual content women found arousing. He tested 29 straight female volunteers at Northwestern University, showing them a variety of hetero and lesbian porn and testing their physical reactions via a vaginal probe. He found that his volunteers became aroused no matter what kind of porn they were viewing and concluded that women would respond sexually to any kind of erotic material, not matter what their sexual orientation.”
…and also this:
“Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine in California found that women became fully aroused within two minutes of watching a sexually explicit film — faster than the average man. Twenty female volunteers aged between 20 and 30 were each shown a 22 minute erotic clip featuring two different hetero couples having sex, while their breathing and genitals were monitored. It didn’t matter whether the clips had sound or not, the women still became aroused.”
What women say about porn, and what they do with it, are two entirely different things. Once women could buy or rent porn, in a relatively private and safe manner, they outdid the menfolks in video commerce.
I support the contention that this highly vocal minority of women’s main problem with porn, is the competition with it for men’s attentions with respect to their insecurities. I think it’s hypocrisy. If men are “cheating” with their Playboys, then women are “cheating” with their Harlequins and soap operas…
I watched a woman reading an Erotic novel next to me on the exercise bikes at a public gym one day. I could tell that she got much more out of the work out then I did. But I thank her for letting me share the ride, it was hot.
Well, yes, but… If a woman is lying upstairs, horny and her guy is whacking one out downstairs to Zoe Voss because he’s too lazy to bother with foreplay and figuring out what another person wants is so much more hassle than watching Zoe Voss get railed and anyway she doesn’t look as skinny and young as Zoe Voss… well, I can forgive that woman from seeing the situation as “He’s cheating on me with Zoe Voss”.
Sure, the real problem is located between the ears of her partner, not between the legs of Ms Voss, but to me there is something different between that situation and him neglecting her sexually because he’s building a blogging empire late into the night.
@ Meijiman: I read your link and –after looking at some reviews of the book on Amazon– was surprised to find that the book was actually originally a “Twilight” fanfiction.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised considering how raunchy the “Twilight” fandom can be…
Twilight is a entry drug, Twilight to Interview with a Vampire, from there to the Sleeping Beauty Series.
I’m not sure if this is a bad thing.
Dear Eros Blog:
The problem with the ‘porn is cheating’ mantra is that the women who recite it don’t believe it. How do you know? Easy!
Porn and cheating both elicit some negative reactions; but those reactions differ widely depending on WHICH act is in question.
Any number of behaviors can be substituted in the place of porn which entail mental and emotional play. Romantic music, poetry, fine wine, a sweet letter, etc. The possibilities are endless.
If all of these things are the ‘same’ as cheating, why would cheating be such a singular outrage?