Is porn adultery? The notion that watching porn and fantasizing about other women leads to divorce and infidelity has been floating around for ages. The reason this debate has never been settled is because of the ambiguity between a person watching naked women and physically touching another woman that’s not your wife. I think porn has the potential to not only keep a marriage afloat but also strengthen it. A closer analysis into real life interviews with college students, porn statistics and a deep look into Ross Douthat’s essay on porn, it can be concluded that porn, in fact, isn’t a gateway drug to adultery. I was introduced to porn during my freshman year of high school. At the time, I was still attending T.A.S.O.K (The American School of Kinshasa), an extremely diverse private Christian school in the Congo. I vividly remember that Friday afternoon in the men’s locker room after the basketball team had finished practice my friend Jeremy coming up to me with a big smile on his face. He said something along the lines of “James check this out!” He pulled out his new Nokia that he had received as a gift from his parents for his birthday. I remember looking at the screen of the phone and seeing a man and a woman having intercourse and staying in the locker room with the entire basketball team for next thirty minutes. There were lots of fist bumps and laughter as we were all exposed to this simple tape that was part of a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. According to Covenant Eyes statistics, “nine out of ten boys are exposed to porn before the age of eighteen” (Covenant 1). The porn industry is booming and becoming more and more accessible. Studies have shown that just six years ago, the global adult film industry generated twenty billion dollars in revenue. However, by 2011 the global porn industry’s revenue has gone down by 50% due to the amount of free pornography online. Websites such as www.pornhub.com and www.redtube.com are all free and are extremely easily accessible. This means that men and women alike can access porn a lot easier today and thus have a lot more chance to use it. Interviews I set up with my friends at NYU, mostly freshmen, and friends from high school back in Hong Kong gave me interesting and insightful statistics to bolster my claim that porn isn’t adultery. I asked everyone the same question: “Do you consider porn to be adultery? In the sense that you haven’t physically touched another woman but only used your mind to fantasize about doing so.” The interesting part of these interviews is that 100% of males that I asked, all heterosexual, stated positively that they do not believe porn to be committing adultery. For example, Jason, a friend currently attending Stern with a very liberal background and an agnostic family said, “If a guy is in a relationship, as long as a guy’s dick is in his pants and not in another woman’s vagina, he’s fine.” He even went on to talk about his own two-year relationship with his girlfriend who currently attends University of Pennsylvania “Maylynn and I are extremely honest and close to each other. We fell in love in high school and have continued on long distance even in college. Maylynn knows that as a guy I have needs and with her not around all the time the best way for me to take care of those needs is by watching porn.” Jason is a clear example of how porn can strengthen a relationship. With Maylynn not around, if Jason didn’t watch porn his only solution to getting rid of his sexual frustration would be to meet another woman at some party. Although guys leaned heavily towards porn not being adultery, the ten women that I interviewed seemed somewhat conflicted and split in their decision. Out of the ten girls that I interviewed, only six of them thought it was fine to watch porn in a relationship. The other four thought a relationship to be a bond between them and their lover that would be broken once their man started having thoughts about other women. Ashley, one of my closest friends at NYU, explained to me why she refused to let her boyfriend watch porn. “If his mind is already thinking about it…the only thing stopping him from actually doing it is courage and the chance to do it.” Like many other women in relationships, Ashley didn’t want to be compared to other women professionally trained to do one thing only: turn a guy on. Personally, I can see where Ashley is coming from. For example, if ex governor of New York Eliot Spitzer wasn’t reported to his wife Silda Spitzer as having intercourse with a prostitute but instead just paying to watch her while masturbating himself would it not count as adultery? I think most people would agree that it still counts as adultery because he was in a room alone with another professionally paid woman from an escort agency. But he didn’t touch her. Where do we draw the line between spending money online, in front of your computer screen on internet explorer webcamming another woman and physically being present in front of the woman? After all, most people agree that “arousal isn’t sex.” When convening these interviews, I already expected my male friends to have a positive view towards porn as they all use it themselves as opposed to the much less usage of the female population. I feel that the usage of porn is biologically healthy. Men and women both have sexual needs that need to be addressed and the safest way to do so would be watching porn. If you decided to hook up with random people instead of porn, you may get a STD, HIV, or herpes. Those three diseases are lot easier gotten through a sexual partner and so watching porn actually keeps you safe. I would draw the line between a healthy dose of watching porn and excessive, continual usage of it when someone logs in more than two-three hours a week. A full porn clip is usually thirty-forty five minutes long and who actually watches it all the way through. Therefore, a two-three hour usage a week is definitely healthy and can benefit your body.
It can be seen that women aren’t mad at men for watching porn; they’re insecure. As a young reader, Sarah, of The Atlantic wrote “…not because I’m jealous, but because I’m insecure. I’m sure many of those girls are more attractive than me” (Horn 1). Like many other women in her position, it is perfectly understandable that Sarah doesn’t want to be compared to the likes of Sasha Grey and Jenna Jameson. But that doesn’t constitute porn to be adultery. Just because Sarah’s man is watching porn and fantasizing about Sasha Grey, physically he is still present with her. Sex between two parties involves a flesh-and-blood encounter in which the man and the woman physically touch each other, an experience that websites and DVD players cannot provide.
A woman’s self esteem is one of the most important factors in a man’s decision to watch porn. Women feel as if they are inferior and have something to prove. But even if men were forcibly stopped from watching porn, it is impossible to stop the mind from fantasizing. So the question to reinforce a woman’s self esteem isn’t how much porn her man watched but how she should change her mindset and not compare them to artificially built porn stars today.
Studies show that it is extremely common for teens to watch porn. In a 2010 survey according to Covenant Eyes statistics, 93% of boys and 62% of girls say that they had been exposed to porn before they turned eighteen. That’s an astonishing number. It means that there is a 93% chance that every guy you can see right now has probably been exposed to porn already. Personally, I feel there are many different stages of porn and at every stage people may draw the line between just enjoying yourself and going overboard or even adultery.
The first stage is just the regular mobile porn where one would search Google. Studies have shown that one in five users search for porn on Google in its million hits. By 2015, according to Covenant Eyes statistics, mobile adult content and services are expected to reach $2.8 billion. It may be your first time seeing porn or a friend pointing it out to you and you have some free space to navigate. The next stage is DVD’s. People start purchasing DVD’s of their favorite scenes and playing them on their T.V’s, then search the web for content including hitting websites and forums. I feel this is a healthy amount of usage and is considered acceptable. But as men move into the latter two stages, many people start drawing the line. The last two stages of porn watching are web cam using and strip clubs.
While conducting the interviews, almost all women drew the line after the first three stages but men continued onto the lap dance. Personally, I have experienced people’s reactions towards strip clubs and am very surprised at how firm my friends consider strip clubs to be adultery. During my senior trip to Koh Samui, an island in Thailand, my friends and I all went to this club called Green Mango. It was the hottest club in town and there were about fifteen of us that went every night. But right next to the club there was a strip club called Galaxy which featured European strippers. Seeing that we were all about to head off to college, our group of fifteen decided to go spend some money on the strippers and see what a strip club was like. Once we stepped in, all we saw were half-naked women pole dancing and serving drinks. There were back rooms called “Champagne Rooms” for lap dances and more intimate situations. Our group was pretty evenly divided between males and females and when a stripper approached us asking if anyone would like a lap dance. Everyone was reluctant except my friend and I who figured, what the hell. So my friend Journ and I both got a stripper and paid them about $100 for a lap dance. After it was over everyone was astonished and asked us what it was like. Personally, I was disappointed that it wasn’t as good as was hyped up to be. But the interesting part of this is that Journ was in a relationship with another friend of mine called Maxine who wasn’t present at the time. Everyone was judging Journ for getting a lap dance while being in a relationship and explicitly told him that they thought he had cheated on Maxine. Through this experience, I saw how quickly people turned to adultery when another woman was involved even though Journ wasn’t allowed to touch the stripper at all.
Porn is a multi-billion dollar industry where every year, hundreds of young girls try to make it big and impress the thousands of men that pay to watch them. At a glance, the porn industry promises glamour and money. But as ex-porn star Jenna Jameson warns young teens trying to join the industry, “It's a hard lifestyle and I made the choice and I was able to get through it unscathed but I don't recommend it to anybody” (McKay 2). Porn is an extremely dangerous business. Studies show that 66% of porn performers have Herpes and 7% have HIV. In addition, a 2012 study by Covenant Eyes showed that 79% of porn actresses have used marijuana, 50% have used ecstasy, and 44% have used cocaine. Even with these overwhelmingly dangerous statistics, there are thousands of young porn stars that strive to make it big in the business for the fame and money. This is due to the large demand and huge amount of porn watchers globally. Men and women alike watch porn and have been doing so for many years. It would be foolish to coin a man an adulterer if he glanced across a photo of Brooklyn Decker on Vogue magazine or watched a short porn clip because biologically, men and women alike are attracted to porn.
It’s like the advertisement in Times Square with two young girls half-naked in a pillow fight. Abercrombie and Fitch advertise their brand in such a way because it is the most effective and will provoke viewers. Abercrombie and Fitch spends a lot of money marketing and it’s not random that they chose two very attractive young women to associate their brand with. Like the porn article states, “The images are intended to provoke fantasies, not embody reality.” The reason porn is so attractive is due to the provocative nature of its images intended to make you fantasize.
Ross Douthat tries to convey the message that porn is morally unacceptable yet his illogical arguments fail to back up this assertion. In his piece “Is Pornography Adultery?” he explicitly states that he is against pornography. Douthat thinks that porn will degrade people when universally spread, watching hardcore pornography in private is worse than in public, and that porn is a moral danger. Douthat says that widespread porn usage may risk “universalizing” a “sort of degradation.” That seems completely illogical to me because who will view porn as degrading? The women who make pornography are paid extremely well to do so and they are content in making these videos. Porn actresses are often intervied regarding their hard-core scenes and almost all state that they were completely in their comfort zone. Douthat then states that porn consumed in a private setting such as in someone’s basement is worse than in public such as a cinema. But logically thinking, if a woman were given the choice for her man to masturbate in public or at home, most would probably choose home. At the end of the day isn’t it the woman’s feeling that was concerned for. Finally, Douthat states that watching pornography at its grassroots level is a danger to morality. Douthat often referenced sex advice columnist Dan Savage, a man known for his motto “Consent is the magic ingredient” (Douthat 3). Yet, in Douthat’s assertions and examples, he never once featured consent quite the opposite in fact, as his assertions all focus around his stance of what is and isn’t “decent.”
I have been full fledged on arguing pro porn in not only single life but relationships as well. But the other day my friend asked me, what if I were in a relationship and I found out my girlfriend was watching porn. I can imagine myself in that scenario and I would definitely feel a sense of insecurity as the men portrayed in the movies are all extremely muscular and handsome. But at the end of the day, I still know that porn is just something to fantasize about and I have no problem with my girlfriend using it to spice up our relationship.
The line between fantasy and reality is split down the middle for many people and adultery is to be measured based on how much time a man or woman watches porn. Through the above examination of the porn industry, personal experience, and real life interviews, personally I am convinced porn does not contribute to marital infidelity. There’s just too big a difference between the virtual experience through internet explorer or DVD player and physically hiring a prostitute and having intercourse. It is unreasonable to me for the above two situations to be weighed on the same scale in the same manner. Adultery is simply a physical occurrence and porn is images that are used to provoke fantasies. In light of the above analysis, users of porn should be careful of the consequences in regards to the amount of time spent and consent with their partners, as excessive and secretive use can definitely be harmful to health and relationships.

Works Cited:
Douthat, Ross. "Is Pornography Adultery?" The Atlantic. N.p., 1 Oct. 1008. Web. 19 Oct. 2013.

McKay, Hollie. "Jenna Jameson Warns Girls Off Porn Careers." Fox News. FOX News Network, 13 Sept. 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2013.

Horn, Heather. "Op-Ed Spotlight: Ban Adultery-for-Profit." The Atlantic Wire. N.p., 19 Mar. 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2013.

"Covenant Eyes Header." Honest Discussions about Internet Temptations. Covenant Eyes, 19 Feb. 2013. Web. 20 Oct. 2013.

Bercovici, Jeff. "Is Porn Adultery? Only If You Want It to Be." Is Porn Adultery? Only If You Want It to Be. N.p., 18 Sept. 2008. Web. 20 Oct. 2013.