I am not a big Larry the Cable Guy fan, but I like the bit he does where he asks the audience whether or not any of them have ever called a 900 number, or sex chat line.  When he gets no response, he says something like, “Right.  It’s a ten billion dollar industry, and I’m the only pervert.”

The humor in this line depends on two things about porn: that we stereotype users as perverts, and for that and other reasons few people will admit to using it in public.  This post, at The Thinking Housewife, brought this to mind.

The Housewife, who writes under the name Laura Wood, challenges Steve Moxon’s claim, in The Woman Racket, that pornography may serve a valuable social purpose: satisfying the “insatiable” male desire for novelty sex partners.  I have not read this book, and can therefore not evaluate the larger argument he makes therein: that because people evaluate each other based on mate value, low-status men, not women, are the victims of historical prejudice.  But I’m not sure that men have an innate and insatiable desire for novelty sex partners.  It is in fact pretty clear that not all men do.

That aside, Wood challenges Moxon by arguing that male sexuality should be “controlled and sublimated,” which means that pornography is bad whether or not it leads to adultery, sex crimes, and unhealthy relationships, precisely because of the effect Moxon claims:

“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.” (Emphases mine.)

Wood is saying that male sexual desire leads to wanting something men should not have, and this in itself is a bad thing.  Males should therefore work to keep their sexuality “sublimated” because simply thinking about sex is antisocial.

Commenter John E. says:

“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.” (Emphasis in the original.)

Pornography is objectively evil, you see, and therefore bad, whether or not it may actually help some people.

Anyone who has read much of this blog probably knows that I do not believe in objective good and evil.  We have certainly constructed normative frameworks which define what we as a society consider morally “right” and “wrong.”  But variations in the definitions over time and across cultures suggest that these constructed ideas have no natural (or for that matter supernatural) basis.  Even mass murder is evil only because we think of it that way, not because of any objective quality independent of our notions of human value and the justice claims arising from them.  And the fact that we are not born knowing the difference–we have to be socialized not to hurt others or to steal–suggests social, not natural, structure.  Depending on religion for definitions of evil strikes me as especially problematic, given that religious stories of all kinds include mass destruction and murder at the hands of the Almighty.  This suggests that context matters.

Not to make Wood responsible for her commenters’ views, but one named Stephen clearly makes this a religious question by associating sex with transcendence, and therefore God:

“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. “

This at least gives a reason for thinking about pornography as evil: it mocks God by limiting the transcendent nature of sexual activity, whatever that means.  Since mockery requires intent, and I don’t imagine many men who use porn do so in an effort to make fun of a deity, this makes for a weak argument.  I would also point out that humans have had sex and reproduced long before the current notions of God existed, meaning they did so without opening themselves to God’s love.  But Stephen reveals his real meaning when he characterizes sex without another person as self-indulgent,  and reveals the real reason for his distaste: someone is having fun in a way that does not involve God or other people.  Making yourself happy for its own sake is bad.

I would challenge both Moxon and Wood on these grounds: pornography in neither good nor evil in any objective sense.  While it probably helps some men (and women) by enhancing their sex lives in some way, it also hurts a lot of people, including the children discussed in the post and comments.  We should therefor regulate it, as we do many other things, in ways that maximize healthy use of these materials (e. g., prohibitions on using children to make them).  This is not about good or evil–or even about whether particular individuals can include porn in a healthy sex life–but about how to fit pornography into our socially constructed normative frameworks about sex, religion, self-indulgence, and pleasure.  Some people think that sex is about touching God and fulfilling his purpose; others think of it as a pleasurable activity for people who find each other attractive and want to take ownership of their bodies and their happiness.  The latter group may be able to use pornography to enhance this experience.  That others find this distasteful means that it does not fit their normative preference–but does not make it evil.