Thursday, July 19, 2018

When Men Say Porn Watching is Not Cheating...




Cheating on a partner, among other things, is using people outside of the relationship for sexual gratification. So why do men insist that looking at pornafied, sexualised images of women and watching porn videos is not cheating?

One of the reasons is because they do not view the women on their computer and phone screens as people. They are seen as nothing more than objects, masturbation fodder, body parts, 'cum-dumpsters', 'fuck-toys'. 

A porn-user's partner knows better. She knows that these women whom he masturbates to are fully rounded human beings. People with lives, with critical financial need; debts, children, rent to pay. Humans with hopes, fears, dreams and problems.

And in order to look at/watch them, so his partner doesn't know about it; he sneaks around, lies, takes his laptop into the bathroom and deletes his internet history. It is a betrayal. There can be no trust and she is always wondering why he is so long in the bathroom with his phone.

A porn-user's partner therefore feels cheated on.  The culture's constant bombardment of the depiction of women and girls as sexual toys, obfuscates female personhood; and a man's objectification of the people on the screen who he is using for sexual arousal and release, prevents him from acknowledging their humanity. 


Photo by Eddy Lackmann on Unsplash