Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is a popular TV and radio personality who has authored 17 books, including Hating Women: America’s Hostile Campaign Against the Fairer Sex (2005). Rabbi Shmuley recently won the American Jewish Press Association’s highest award for excellence in commentary. In this article from 1/15/05, he takes a critical look at the impact of porn on the viewer:
Pornography depicts women not only as sleazy and vulgar, but as greedy and parasitical. The porn watcher never forgets that the women who are stripping for him are doing so for cash. He concludes, therefore, that there is nothing women aren’t prepared to do for money…
For married men, excessive exposure to a variety of naked, female bodies contributes to the penchant of men to feel permanently dissatisfied with their wives…
When compared to the porn ‘stars,’ their own wives become ordinary. When a man sees his wife’s naked body, the trained eye that he has cultivated will be immediately drawn to her flaws rather then her beauty. Not only does this lead to the degradation of his wife, but it also hinders his ability to find satisfaction…
[P]ornography deadens and desensitizes men. Instead of being automatically drawn to woman as he should be, today’s man is too much of a connoisseur to ever lose himself completely…
While love can only be shared between two equals, once pornography enters into a relationship women become subordinate because they have been objectified and commoditized. In the world of pornography, women are portrayed in only three ways, as the mindless playmate, the insatiable nymphomaniac, or as one who craves pain. All are deeply destructive images that erode male respect for women.
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Rabbi Shmuley expands on the above in “Should Wives Be Porn Police? Why women have every right to insist on mental as well as physical fidelity…”
Pornography is destructive not only because it is insulting to one’s wife, but because it takes one’s erotic focus away from one’s spouse. In this respect, the principal harm it inflicts is not radically different from adultery…these “harmless” leers are the first symptoms of neglect…
When I’ve asked women about why they don’t insist that their husbands turn off the cable smut or throw out the dirty magazines, the answers I receive fall resoundingly into two basic categories. The first is that many women believe that they have no right to determine what their husbands see or, especially, what they think. The second is a desire not to appear insecure, petty, or nagging. Yet it’s not petty to demand that your husband be with you and you alone when you are in bed together. It’s not nagging to show your hurt, your vulnerability.
How far we have sunk in our expectations of marriage and commitment! Once upon a time it was not politically incorrect to think of a husband and wife as belonging to one another. Today we are conditioned to think that independence is the be-all-and-end-all, and to be possessive is seen as an a priori sign of insecurity…
The staggering divorce rate is a symptom of this unfortunate conditioning. It’s easy to sever a bond that wasn’t that strong in the first place…
Wives have a right, indeed an obligation, to police their husbands from going into the gutter to get excitement.
Walking in the presence of gntias here. Cool thinking all around!