Cheap Sex by Mark Regnerus

Author:Mark Regnerus [Regnerus, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2017-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Pornographic Double Bind

Another mating-market casualty of pornography is the relationship that begins but fails to thrive, done in by revelation of pornography use.49 That is, porn use prompts an end to an unknown number of relationships.50 Breaking off a relationship because of pornography use can be a rational and moral reaction to someone’s predilection for peering at nudity online—but few recognize that such actions contribute in ways not often noted to the broader retreat from marriage and significant relationships about which many claim to be concerned.

I recently observed an online dispute over the matter of men, marrying, and pornography. A crestfallen young woman discovered her boyfriend “struggled” with pornography. I am never quite sure what “struggling” actually means, since it can be code for anything from shame at taking pleasure in women’s unclothed beauty all the way up to addiction to hardcore porn. (There is a difference. Without the former, the human race is doomed.) This young woman elected to remain in her relationship, but she was counseling other women to consider the “path of least resistance,” that is, leaving. Departing, she suggested, is the best option.

It was not the first time I had encountered this. Not long before that, I sat around a campfire with a couple dozen enthusiastic young adults, listening to the women recount their list of relationship deal-breakers—porn use was a common one—while the men sat by sheepishly. Although I am sympathetic to the women’s concerns, the numbers just cited on porn use suggest widespread departures would likely backfire on women (as many things tend to do in the domain of relationships), who would leave for pastures that may well not be any greener.

I would never dream of telling anyone—devoid as I am of information about particular situations—what they ought to do in such a situation. However, I have no trouble or qualms in declaring that collectively a categorical call to leave relationships because of the other partner’s pornography use makes little sense if you value a social world marked by the normative presence of committed relationships. By the numbers—41 percent of never-married 18- to 39-year-old heterosexual men report past-week pornography use—this would rule out a great many men as unworthy marriage material for women. Heck, one in three married men age 60 or under said they’d looked at pornography in the past week. (What are their wives supposed to do?) If so many men are off limits, a comparable number of women will not find themselves in a committed relationship at all. (And, of course, the remaining men would seize the advantageous position, as outlined in Chapter 2.) This is the pornographic “double bind,” wherein women find themselves stuck between unhappy scenarios—the unwanted porn use of the man they are with, the elevated odds of the same among the men they might leave him for, and the risk of being alone. On the matter of men and pornography, the data suggest you may not be able to flee far enough.

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