A little light culture: Women and porn

I want to revisit a tiny bit of the Mark Regnerus piece I blogged yesterday. The bit that interests me is the bit in parentheses below with added emphasis:

Finally, as my colleagues and I discovered in our interviews, striking numbers of young women are participating in unwanted sex—either particular acts they dislike or more frequent intercourse than they'd prefer or mimicking porn (being in a dating relationship is correlated to greater acceptance of and use of porn among women). 

That is fascinating. I've blogged a fair bit about women and porn and how many more women are using porn today but that correlation is potentially really big news. Or not. I report, you decide.

Before we get into that, a few caveats about the word "correlate". It's a confusing word and the dictionary definition doesn't really help. If you look it up in the dictionary, you will find that "correlation" means there is a relationship between two things. But that is overstating it when we speak of it in terms of research. A better way of putting it is that "correlation" means there is numerical evidence that suggests two things might be related that is strong enough to make it worth our while to do further research. There probably is a relation but there may not be a relation. It may also be the case that the relation is complex or requires other factors to be in place to exist.

Okay, let's go back and look at that parenthetical statement again:

... being in a dating relationship is correlated to greater acceptance of and use of porn among women.

What that means is that women who are in a dating relationship are more likely to treat porn as a normal thing not worthy of condemnation and that they are more likely to sometimes use porn themselves than women who are single.

So what do we do with this? Regnerus is of the opinion that this tells us that women are under pressure to accept porn if they want to be in a relationship. That is clear from the context of the sentence where it is grouped with women having sex more often than they would like and having to do sexual acts they are unenthusiastic about. That's not crazy.

On the other hand, however, there is the runaway success of Fifty Shades of Grey and research that suggests that women make up a substantial portion of users of internet porn. And if you scan the reader reviews of Fifty Shades on the internet you will discover that a lot of women advise other women to read it because doing so will make sex with their husbands better. That suggests that Regnerus may have it backwards: that these women don't accept porn because they  feel pressured to do so to remain in a relationship but that they are more likely to be in a relationship because they accept porn.

Again, there are caveats to be made all over the place. How strong is the correlation? Because I can tell you even without looking it up that there will be some women who hate porn who are in successful dating relationships. And I can similarly assure you that there are probably women who use porn regularly who are perpetually single. I'd even go so far as to bet that women who are heavy porn users are probably more likely to be unsuccessful in relationships with men than other women just as men who are heavy porn users are more likely to be unsuccessful in relationships with women than other men.

To cut to the chase, I suspect the porn itself is not the essential item but that acceptance and use of porn is a marker for other things that do make a difference. These things:

• Acceptance of porn tells us that a woman does not de-legitimize male sexual desire. She is not disgusted or alienated when confronted with the discovery that most are turned on by porn (and even men who never use porn tend to be turned on by it).
• She also is not offended by the fact that her man gets sexually aroused by people other than herself, is not troubled by the fact that he stimulates himself when she is not around and has generally made peace with the fact that his sexual drive is more consistent and persistent than her own.
• If she willingly watches porn tells us that she is curious and attracted to things sexual.
• If she is a user as opposed to merely watching, that tells us that she is eager to find sexual satisfaction. (This, by the way, is a well-established phenomenon, women with the happiest sex lives have a selfish streak about their own sexual pleasure*.)

These are all things that a man craves in a partner. Now the crucial thing here is that porn is not a necessary part of this. You can have all those things and never glance at or read porn even once in your life. No woman has to go out and consume porn in order to be happy in love.

OTOH, if you spend your life crusading for the abolition of porn and being revolted by the thought that men use it, your chances probably aren't so good. And I'd say with absolute certainty that being possessed of the attitudes that acceptance of porn is a marker for is sine qua non for any woman who wants to have a happy relationship with a man.

Relevant disclosure: I was never a regular or enthusiastic porn user but I've looked at, read and yes "used" the stuff. To this day, I will look at porn if it is easy enough and I have nothing better to do. If, for example, I find myself alone in a  room with a dirty book, pictures or video, I will almost certainly look out of curiosity. That said, my interest in porn declined sharply some time in my early twenties, mostly because none of it could do the job as well as my own imagination and actual experiences could.



* CS Lewis wouldn't appreciate my paraphrasing his dictum this way but when a woman regards sex as something she does for her man, you can tell who her man is by his miserable, unhappy expression.