"Wives have the right to forbid their husbands to watch pornography!"
Or so says Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, an American-based relationship expert who is hailed as one of the world's best authorities on the topics of love, sex and marriage. According to his controversial advice, women shouldn't be shy to "police" their men when it comes to the sexually-charged issue of watching pornography. Really?
Yep, Boteach says porn portrays women "as the libidinous man's plaything, not an equal to be respected but a subordinate to be used" and that this causes all sorts of problems in relationships … and should be stopped pronto.
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But is porn really causing marital strife? Are men really losing interest in their women thanks to their penchant for downloading airbrushed images off the internet while their wives or girlfriends wait patiently in the connubial bed? And surely if women attempt to "police" their men, they'd encourage them to want to act out even more so?
"Women must wake up to the fact that they do have a right to nip this behaviour in the bud," says Boteach. "Pornography is destructive not only because it is insulting to one's wife, but because it takes one's erotic focus away from one's spouse. In this respect, the principal harm it inflicts is not radically different from adultery."
Hmm. (So women can't watch porn on their own either? Probably not if Boteach had his way.)
When I ask a bunch of women how they feel about their boyfriends watching porn, the answers I hear are mightily mixed. Some tell me they know it's normal, that they accept their partner is into it and that they would never even bother doing anything about it.
"As long as it's not every day," one said, "then I don't see anything wrong with it."
Others admitted they were shocked to find their blokes' stash and admitted they thought differently about their guys afterwards.
Says Jackie: "As far as I'm concerned, an interest in porn is a deal-breaker. So is any guy who can't control his own impulses. Been there done that! Never again … "
The male ask readers have slightly differing views. But there's a fine line between whether a man is using it as "rejuvenation and sexual voyeurism to inspire a desire in his wife, or whether he's using it to escape from her".
He says that if it's as an escape route, obviously there's a problem.
Luke says that Boteach has it all wrong. "If women ban porn as part of their policing then they can't wonder why their husband goes out and has an affair."
But Donnie concurs with Boteach's sentiment. He surmises that there should indeed be a place for such "policing" because porn is a drug.
He writes: "Porn is addictive for some, recreational for others and comes with possible side effects. Satisfaction from porn depends on the user and their reasons for the use. Yes, 'policing' MAY be required for certain men and I would encourage women to do it."
Are women to blame for men increasingly watching porn?
Policing sounds like a rather incorrect word when you mention it in the same sentence as "porn". And how would you implement such policing anyway? Either way, Shaun reckons he has a solution.
"I would take a huge bet that 99 per cent of those guys would have rather preferred to be sexual with their partners. However, the girl was most likely not interested in being with them at that point in time. Hence their need for self satisfaction. Hence if a girl is open to the guy's sexual needs and doesn't push him away – he will most likely not even bother watching it."
My male friend reckons that it's a big cop-out to blame a man's addiction to porn on the woman. "It's got nothing to do with a woman's lack of sexual activity," he tells me. "It's not a woman's fault. A guy is either into it or not. And the problem is that once he gets into hard-core porn, there's no going back."
Does every man watch it anyway?
There was a hilarious stat last year which came out after researchers from the University of Montreal were conducting a study comparing the views of men in their 20s who had never been exposed to pornography with that of regular users.
The problem with the study was that the researchers actually couldn't find any blokes who hadn't consumed porn. Instead they found that, of the men they polled, single ones watched an average of 40 minutes three times a week, while those in relationship watched an average of 20 minutes 1.7 times a week. But here's the catch: the scientists also found that pornography didn't have a negative effect on a man's sexuality.
"Not one subject had a pathological sexuality," said head researcher associate professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse. "In fact, all of their sexual practices were quite conventional … Pornography hasn't changed their perception of women or their relationship, which they all want to be as harmonious and fulfilling as possible."
As feminist writer Naomi Wolf wrote in New York magazine: "The whole world, post-internet, did become pornographised. Young men and women are indeed being taught what sex is, how it looks, what its etiquette and expectations are, by pornographic training - and this is having a huge effect on how they interact."
Do men really get that affected by porn?
I once held a debate with a bunch of men on what constitutes "sex appeal" when it comes to women. One half of the men – the ones who never got laid at university and felt women were too hard to understand and even harder to date – viewed porn stars and strippers as the ideal girlfriend - the perfect 10. The other half - who had beautiful women falling at their feet and constantly had girlfriends - viewed pornstars and strippers as a 3 or 4 at best. I'm not exactly sure what this finding has to do with the topic, but either way I still find it fascinating the way different men view different women and what causes their fetishes to grow.
But anyway, back to the issue at hand. Sure, sometimes porn can be educational and a major turn-on. In fact sometimes it can help couples grow closer and become more sexually experimental. But sometimes men can go too far and start to watch twisted, weird stuff. And then these men will start to want the twisted, weird stuff in their relationships ... all the time. And when it gets to the point of no return, perhaps "policing" really is the only solution ...
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