I noticed an article on MSN entitled “15 Ways You’re Secretly Ruining Your Marriage.” Curious, I clicked on it, and the author was trotting out pop Darwinism by Way #2:
YOU TAKE HIS PORN HABIT PERSONALLY
Sure, it doesn’t feel great to think about your guy fantasizing about other women. But it’s totally normal. Research shows that 64 percent of U.S. men look at porn at least once a month, and 55 percent of ’em are married. And it really has nothing to do with how he feels about you or your relationship—most men just need to blow off steam by themselves, the way you zone out to How I Met Your Mother reruns after a long day. The fact that it’s porn he’s zoning out to—well, he’s sort of wired for it: One study found that men’s brains react differently to porn that women’s; for them, it’s a form of stress relief. Bear with us, but evolutionarily speaking, a guy is always looking to maximize their mating opportunities. So seeing what’s out there is, well, relaxing (just like it’s relaxing for us to go shopping and know what shoes are at the mall, even if we’re not buying them). We know—weird—but in other words, he can’t really help it. So as long as it’s not hurting your love life, don’t take it personally.
Pornography is evil for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it objectifies women, treating them as nothing more than a means for sexual gratification of men. Not only is pornography evil, it is objectively harmful. Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D. identifies the following harms:
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Married men who are involved in pornography feel less satisfied with their conjugal relations and less emotionally attached to their wives.
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Pornography use is a pathway to infidelity and divorce, and is frequently a major factor in these family disasters.
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Couples affected by one spouse’s addiction usually experience a loss of interest in sexual intercourse and good family relations.
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Both spouses perceive pornography viewing as tantamount to infidelity.
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Pornography viewing leads to a loss of interest in good family relations.
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Pornography is addictive, and neuroscientists are beginning to map the biological substrate of this addiction.
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Users tend to become desensitized to and bored with the type of pornography they use, seeking more perverse forms of sexual imagery.
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Men who view pornography regularly have a higher tolerance for abnormal sexuality, including rape, sexual aggression, and sexual promiscuity.
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Prolonged consumption of pornography by men produces notions of women as commodities or as “sex objects.”
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Pornography engenders greater sexual permissiveness, leading to a greater risk of out-of-wedlock births and STDs.
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Child-sex offenders are more likely to view pornography regularly or to be involved in its distribution.
Against all of that, MSN advises wives to “get over it,” because he evolved to use porn and “he can’t really help it.”
The formal logical fallacy committed by the author is “appeal to nature,” i.e., men have a natural desire to use porn; therefore use of porn is a good thing (or at least an inevitable thing) that wives should tolerate. Piffle. This advice goes beyond stupid to affirmatively harmful. By the same logic, the author could have written, “men evolved to want more than one sexual partner; get over his multiple infidelities; he can’t help it.” The same logic could also lead to “he raped her because he evolved that way; she needs to get over it, because he can’t help it.”
Materialist idiots like the MSN author pervert morality by suggesting that “the good is the desirable and the desirable is that which is actually desired.” True morality, however, is based upon conforming one’s behavior to the objective, transcendent moral code, even when (nay, especially when) we “feel” like doing otherwise.