Foxnews.com says that viewing hardcore pornography is akin to cheating. Libertarian blogginghead says that's absurd. The Atlantic bloggers weigh in - Ross Douthat says that actually it's not so far-fetched here, here, and here, and Andrew Sullivan says Ross is wrong here.
I share twenty minutes worth of links because I'm suprised to find myself so aligned with the conservative argument here. Pornography's made for strange pairings on the far right and far left for decades, and I've always been sympathetic to the feminist case against an industry that, on the whole, has been so exploitative of women, but I'm usually content to agree to live and let live.
But Ross' point that watching pornography (meaning of the hardcore variety, not fuzzily-lit Playboy pictures) doesn't equate to cheating but exists on the same continuum seems almost knee-jerk to me. He explains:
"I don't think all that many spouses would be inclined to forgive their husbands (or wives) if they explained that they only liked to watch the prostitute they'd hired. And hard-core porn, in turn, is nothing more than an indirect way of paying someone to fulfill the same sort of voyeuristic fantasies: It's prostitution in all but name, filtered through middlemen, magazine editors, and high-speed internet connections."
The response, at least from one corner, is pretty harsh - the assumption being that only a Puritan with Stone-Age views about sex could see this connection. So here I sit, trying to quell my inner Wendy Shalit, and wondering when desiring a partner's sexual attention undivided by videorecorded gang-bangs became the exclusive province of repressed conservatives?
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