Despite our culture’s abolition of most taboos about sex, one area that doesn’t get a lot of press is pornography. This lack of press is incongruent with the historical trend of porn becoming ever more accessible — yes, pornography is a historical trend that predates Hugh Hefner and Playboy. From the printing press to magazines and finally the internet, the spread of pornography has accelerated rapidly. Today, there are more than a billion websites on the internet. Of those, Fight The New Drug, a website devoted to exposing the harms of pornography, reported that 12 percent are pornographic. The website also reported that 40 million Americans say they are regular porn users. Research for a 2007 book, "Pornified," indicated that 70 percent of 18- to 24-year-old men visit porn sites at least once a month. Considering Christianity’s strong sexual ethic, the findings of a 2014 study that 77 percent of self-identified Christian men between the ages of 18 and 30 watched porn at least once a month indicate that the current rate for the same segment of the general population is likely to be higher.
Well, you might ask, what’s wrong with that? For starters, the Atlantic Monthly reported that “only 29 percent of Americans think watching porn is morally acceptable.” People know it’s wrong. That is not to say that many of them don’t still watch porn, but it’s an important indicator as to its morality. There are two main ways I can demonstrate that porn is wrong — showing that it deviates from an objective moral standard and showing that its negative consequences outweigh its benefits. I will do both.
The first approach can be based on a religious morality or on the idea of natural law, which has its origin in ancient Greek philosophy. In brief, Aristotle believed that things, activities and people had a "telos," which the New Oxford American Dictionary defines as “an ultimate object or aim.” In admittedly broad strokes, monotheistic religions believe that things, activities and people good have a created intention, which is similar to the telos. In both these moral systems, being or doing good is fulfilling this defining purpose or created intention and being or doing bad is deviating from it. For example, a good bike fulfills its purpose of transporting its user while a bad one fails in some way to do so. In the same way, the naturally observable — or created — purpose of sex is reproduction, and any form of sexuality that inherently denies this ultimate object is thus a bad form. Because it deviates from the telos or created intention of sex, pornography is morally wrong.
Another approach to explaining why porn is wrong involves examining the negative outcomes associated with porn use. If the pros of watching porn are outweighed by the cons, then according to a more utilitarian mode of thought, it is morally wrong. While it is not necessary for this to be the case for porn to be wrong under natural law or the monotheistic ethic, studying the detriments of watching porn is consistent with these approaches because it provides verification that it is wrong. If a thing is twisted from its purpose, it should result in problems.
But do the cons of watching porn really outweigh its pros? Porn’s benefits are that it is cheap, readily available, instantly gratifying and requires no commitment to enjoy. It makes no demands on your time and has no expectations. It doesn’t spread STDs or get anyone pregnant.
And what are the drawbacks of porn? First and foremost, it upends the nature of sex as being something shared with another person. Watching porn is entirely self-focused. To the porn user, the people depicted are just tools for their gratification. It reduces a person to a body to be used for your own pleasure.
The mentality behind the disgusting comments made by Donald Trump in the 2005 video is a natural development from the objectivization of women inherent in porn. His comments reflect a belief that women aren’t really people in the same sense that he is, but rather objects to be exploited for his own sexual gratification. I can’t think of any better way to train this revoltingly sexist mindset than pornography. CovenantEyes.com reported that in a “meta-analysis of 46 different studies, if you watch pornography you have a 31 percent increased risk of accepting rape myths — that is, believing things that would reduce your empathy for a rape victim or lead you to blame a rape victim for being assaulted.” The site also mentioned a report by the U.S. Department of Justice that “men arrested for visiting prostitutes are at least twice as likely to be porn users than a random national sample of men.”
Since porn trains users to view people as a means to an end, these statistics should not come as a surprise. By no means am I saying that everyone who watches porn solicits prostitutes or sexually assaults women, but it conditions the kind of thinking that underlies these actions — a consumerist mentality of sex that rejects empathy with and denies dignity to the desired person. Dr. Gail Dines, a Wheelock College professor of sociology and women’s studies, told the Huffington Post that today’s young men “are being socialized by the culture to lose all empathy for women.” She asserts that “the biggest sex educator of young men today is pornography, which is increasingly violent and dehumanizing, and it changes the way men view women.” With the internet exposing more people to porn’s sexual reconditioning than ever before, it comes as so surprise that sex trafficking has increased. Human trafficking, largely for sexual exploitation, is the world’s fastest-growing crime and is estimated by the International Labor Organization to ensnare 20.9 million people worldwide.
We have seen that pornography is wrong under a natural law / traditional religious approach and that it fails the utilitarian test of morality. To combat this insidious wrong, we should follow the lead of the U.K. and Utah, which both recently passed legislation intended to reduce porn exposure. The U.K. law requires internet providers to make blocking online pornography the default setting that could be opted out of by people who still wanted it. The Utah laws, which call for additional research and make it a crime for computer engineers to not report child pornography, don't actually limit access to pornography but draw attention to its harmful effects. Utah’s governor said it exposed “the addictive nature of pornography and the harmful effects it has on individuals, families and society generally.” While porn is by its nature low-profile and awkward to talk about, our society needs to confront it for what it is, a harmful moral wrong, and take steps to prevent its spread.