Science of Good and Evil

by Michael Shermer

  In provisional ethics, then, most moral actors, especially those who are directly or indirectly involved in or affected by the affair—one’s mate, the mate of the adulterous partner, the families of both adulterous parties, the community, and the society—would likely offer their provisional assent that adultery is an immoral act for most people, in most circumstances, most of the time, because it causes considerably more harm than good. Thus, overall and in the long run, the adulterous act leads to disastrous consequences and a decrease in liberty and happiness for most parties involved, and thus cannot in most circumstances be justified. If there is any doubt about this, before you set out on an adulterous adventure, ask first your partner.

  Provisional Morality and Pornography

  On July 26, 1991, Paul Reubens, better known as the affably paedomorphic Pee-wee Herman, was arrested for indecency in the South Trail Cinema, an X-rated theater in Sarasota, Florida. It seems that the actor, then star of his own syndicated children’s television series, which followed his wildly popular film Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, was enjoying Nancy Nurse a bit too carnally for a public venue.

  The event quickly turned into a media feeding frenzy and exploitative fodder for stand-up comics, including Reubens himself who, as host of a subsequent television awards show, quipped, “Anyone heard any good jokes lately?” The Pee-wee porn affair was much ado about nothing. Most wondered why he did not simply indulge his passions in the privacy of a hotel room or his own home, where such materials are readily available and confidentially enjoyed. Unfortunately, the image of some guy masturbating to an erotic film in a public theater is what far too many people conjure up in their imagination when they hear the word pornography.

  Simply defined, pornography constitutes images in the form of films, videos, photographs, literature, and other materials that enhance sexual arousal. Determining which images specifically constitute pornography is so fraught with moral and legal complications that it led D. H. Lawrence to comment, “What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another,” and Supreme Court Justice Stewart to famously pronounce that although he could not define pornography, “I know it when I see it.”6 Unlike all the other primates (with the exception of bonobo chimpanzees), whose sex lives are largely governed by seasonal periods of receptivity (primarily when the female is “in heat”), humans evolved with the desire to engage in sexual behavior at any time of the year. So who would object to enhancing the arousal of a perfectly natural and exceptionally pleasurable activity designed to propagate the species and bring new life into the world?

  Plenty of people, as a matter of fact, do object to such supplemental activities, and they have been largely successful in transmogrifying the meaning of the word pornography into a lewd and smutty activity conducted by sandal-wearing, tree-hugging, left-leaning, liberal, pinko, godless communists, homosexuals, and perverts of all stripes for the purpose of preventing this great nation from returning to its roots as a Christian country and to subvert its foundation in the puritanical ethic whose greatest fear is that somewhere, someone out there is enjoying carnal pleasure. Pornography, we are told, is immoral—a sin of the mind only slightly less violative than such sins of the body as adultery, masturbation, homosexuality, and premarital sex. Even President Jimmy Carter famously (and shamefully) confessed that he “lusted in his heart.”

  Let’s see how provisional ethics applies to pornography, examining three types: mental pornography, positive pornography, and negative pornography. In essence, I shall argue that mental pornography and positive pornography are not immoral because most people in most circumstances most of the time are not harmed by them and, in fact, may find much pleasure in them, both individually and in their relationships. There is, however, some evidence that negative pornography (pornography that depicts harm or violence against women, such as pleasure in being raped) is harmful to at least some people in some circumstances some of the time and may therefore be considered provisionally immoral. Let’s examine what science can tell us about the effects of pornography of these three types.

  Mental pornography. Stripped of its pejorative connotations and seen for what it really is—images that enhance sexual arousal—the simplest form of pornography is the sexual images in our imaginations. Mental pornography, or what Havelock Ellis called “autoeroticism,” is one of the most ubiquitous of all sexual activities. I do not know if sexual fantasy itself evolved, providing some selective advantage to individuals who had them versus those who did not, or if autoeroticism is just a spandrel—a by-product of some other evolutionary adaptation. But certainly the ability to fantasize in general did evolve as a useful by-product of a large cerebral cortex, and no doubt this ability did provide a selective advantage (imagining the positive outcome of a hunt or the negative consequences of a fight). Sexual fantasies are probably a contingent free ride that comes with having a large brain capable of fantasizing about other scenarios in life. Since social relations between humans are so important, and because sex is so intimately intertwined with how we feel about and interact with other members of our group, then it would not surprise me if it turned out that fantasizing about sexual relations with others did ultimately serve some functional purpose in our evolutionary history.

  Western religion has typically prohibited sexual fantasies. Consider this medieval church punishment in the form of penances for erotic fantasies among church leaders of ascending stripes: twenty-five days for a deacon, thirty days for a monk, forty days for a priest, and fifty days for a bishop. (I guess the pope is not only infallible, but also unimaginative.) How can something so harmless to others (this assumes negative sexual fantasies are not expressed behaviorally—more on this below in the discussion of negative pornography) and yet so fun and fulfilling to the individual be immoral? Science sees it rather differently. Erotic fantasies may serve a variety of personal functions, including the fact that sometimes it is a lot easier to just fantasize about a sexual encounter than it is to actually invest the time, energy, and money, and to risk rejection, failure, disease, social ostracism, or the possibility of an unsatisfactory experience in an actual sexual encounter. Some of the best sex any of us have ever experienced is the sex in our minds. That mental sex may be informed by actual sexual experiences—usually the most enjoyable ones we have had with a partner who is especially important to us—but it remains safely ensconced in the private domain within our skulls.

  Therefore, from a provisional ethics perspective, it would be reasonable for us to offer our provisional assent that mental pornography in the form of positive sexual fantasies is not immoral because the evidence confirms that almost everyone has them, they provide numerous benefits, they harm no one else, and thus they are justified if so desired by the individual or couple (sharing your sexual fantasies with your partner, particularly if they are positive and about that partner, can be very stimulating and provocative).

  Positive Pornography. I define positive pornography as images that enhance sexual arousal by depicting individuals or couples in non-harmful and nonexploitative sexual situations. (I do not consider sadomasochism [S&M] harmful as long as the partners involved in an S&M encounter are willing participants.) Films, videos, photographs, and literature that depict individuals masturbating or couples engaging in consensual sex and that are viewed by either individuals alone or couples together for personal enjoyment represent pornography in a positive mode. So-called soft-porn films that leave something to the imagination and depict sex as a romantic and loving expression of affection between two people are fine examples of positive pornography. So too is the body of erotica literature in its higher form by authors such as the French diarist and novelist Anais Nin. In fact, erotica is a synonym for positive pornography and is a term already in the lexicon that carries positive connotations. Let pornography describe negative pornography. Let erotica describe mental and positive pornography. Erotica is literary, highbrow, graceful, elegant, and, most of all, sensual—the very essence of a positive
sexual experience.

  Pulp fiction romance novels that portray lovemaking in crass terms, such as describing a man’s “throbbing pole of love,” and so-called hard-core porn films that leave nothing to the imagination in graphically revealing cunnilingus and fellatio, vaginal and anal penetration, ejaculation, multiple partners, and spontaneous sex with strangers in unlikely venues tend to be preferred much more by men than by women. Contrast these images with the following passage from Anaïs Nin’s book of erotica Little Birds, in a short story about a young woman married to an older man who delays ultimate intimacy several nights to “woo her slowly and lingeringly, until she was prepared and in the mood.” After several nights of teasing kisses and caresses,

  he discovered the trembling sensibility under the arm, at the nascence of the breasts, the vibrations that ran between the nipples and the sex, and between the sex mouth and the lips, all the mysterious links that roused and stirred places other than the one being kissed, currents running from the roots of the hair to the roots of the spine. Each place he kissed he worshiped with adoring words, observing the dimples at the end of her back, the firmness of her buttocks, the extreme arch of her back, which threw her buttocks outwards … . He encircled her ankles with his fingers, lingered over her feet, which were perfect like her hands, stroked over and over again the smooth statuesque lines of her neck, lost himself in her long heavy hair.7

  Pages later, the lovers finally embrace in full intimacy. This is positive pornography at its finest, and research shows that it is very effective in sexually arousing both men and women. Physiological research, for example, shows that penile erection, vaginal vasocongestion, blood pressure, and genital temperature all increase in response to exposure to positive pornographic material (such arousal effects can be also be generated through the imagination alone).8

  There are cases, of course, when positive pornography can become negative (in a manner different from negative pornography to be discussed below), and that is when pornography becomes an alternative, rather than a supplement, to a satisfying sexual relationship with your partner. Here we are well advised to follow Aristotle’s golden mean: all things in moderation. If the viewing of pornography becomes so addictive and compelling that it replaces sex with your partner, and your partner then becomes dissatisfied with this arrangement, then such pornography is no longer positive. We should always remember that, by definition, pornography is supposed to enhance sexual arousal, not replace it. When in doubt, ask your partner.

  On the flip side, positive pornography may be a useful substitute for sex when you are between relationships or, for whatever reason, you do not desire a sexual relationship with your partner (and your partner is not frustrated by this substitution). Sex with yourself is safe, and pornography can be a positive enhancement of the self-sexual experience.

  Negative Pornography. I define negative pornography as images that enhance sexual arousal by depicting sex as violent, abusive, or exploitative, and especially those that imply or show women being seduced and raped against their will and then enjoying the experience as it unfolds. Here we enter the darker realm of rape and the relationship of pornography to this especially malevolent act.

  One argument made against pornography is that it leads men to rape women. Indeed, attacks on pornography often begin here and come not just from the conservative right but from the liberal left as well (mainly from extreme feminists). Catharine MacKinnon, for example, describes all pornography as “the celebration, the promotion, the authorization and the legitimization of rape, sexual harassment, battery and the abuse of children.” Andrea Dworkin defines pornography as “the material means of sexualizing inequality.”9 As a blanket causal variable in the study of why men rape, however, there is no evidence to support this claim. Indeed, if only it were as simple as eliminating pornography in order to eliminate rape; but it is not so, as evidenced by the fact that rape has been a tragic part of human history millennia before pornography of any sort made its appearance on the cultural landscape.

  With pornography and rape we need to make an important causal distinction: although some rapists have watched and enjoyed pornography (as noted by critics in citing serial rapist and killer Ted Bundy’s remark just before his execution, “You are going to kill me … but out there are many, many more people who are addicted to pornography, and you are doing nothing about that”), by far the vast majority of men who have watched and enjoyed pornography have never raped. In a review of seven studies on the relationship of pornography to sex offenders of all types, Berl Kutchinsky concluded: “Sex offenders are, as a rule, not more acquainted with pornography or more sexually aroused by such material than are other males—in fact, such differences tend to be in the opposite direction.”10 Indeed, an extensive study of rapists and their backgrounds revealed that instead of being driven to rape by the hypersexuality allegedly produced by pornography, rapists tend to come from sexually repressed environments in which sex was rarely or never discussed, nudity was forbidden, and sexuality was portrayed as sinful. By contrast, nonrapists were more likely than rapists to have experienced pornography while growing up and to have been raised in a family environment in which sex was openly discussed and not shamed into quiescence.11

  Several correlational studies were equivocal on the relationship between pornography and rape. A 1986 study investigated the relationship between exposure to sexually explicit material and attitudes toward rape in 115 men, finding that only exposure to coercive or violent sexual themes was related to more traditional attitudes about women as submissive and inferior; but contrary to predictions, subjects with greater exposure to general and nonviolent sexual materials held more liberal and egalitarian attitudes toward women. A 199 study based on data from the Uniform Crime Reports, circulation data from three sexually oriented magazines, and the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas found no relationship between pornography and rape. This same study did find, however, that population size, proportion of young adults, percentage divorced, and population change were all significant predictors of rape. Finally, in an extensive cross-cultural study of rape in four countries (Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and the United States), there was no correlation between the availability of pornography (type not specified) and increased sexual violence.12

  Interestingly, a number of studies point to a possible catharsis effect for pornography, with most citing Denmark and Japan as examples. In the 1960s Denmark experienced a surge in pornography. Instead of taking draconian measures to stop it, the government lifted all bans on pornography. Subsequently, there was a dramatic drop in sex crimes. In Japan, levels of pornography are as high or higher than in America, while rates of sex crimes are fourteen times lower than in the United States (34.5 rapes per 100,000 in the United States versus 2.4 per 100,000 in Japan). “Japanese view the availability of such stimuli as a cathartic valve,” wrote the researchers who conducted the study. “It is presumed to provide vicarious satisfaction of a socially unacceptable behavior. In a culture that endorses strict codes of behavior and highly defined roles, the depiction of rape also provides a context in which Japanese men can vicariously abandon all of the explicit signposts of good behavior.”13 Of course, this is not a recipe for subjecting potential rapists to pornography, but at the very least this evidence shows that whatever the cause of rape, it is clearly not pornography by itself.

  On the other hand, negative pornography as I have defined it, particularly pornography that depicts a reluctant women who subsequently succumbs to the pressures of her would-be lover and in the end enjoys the experience, may elicit in male viewers inappropriate sexual behavior toward unwilling females. A number of studies show a strong positive correlation between such pornographic scenarios and subjects’ self-reported probability of raping a woman.14 A corroborative study on nonpornographic but aggressive material found an equally positive correlation between portrayed aggression toward women and actual aggression toward women.15 According to Indiana University psychologist Dolf Zil
lmann, what generates or increases aggression toward women are not specific sexual or aggressive acts toward women per se, but the overall degree of excitation within the film itself. But this varies considerably among individuals; pornographic and aggressive films appear to have the greatest effect on individuals with limited social and sexual experience. “Persons with limited sexual socialization experience in particular have been found to respond negatively to erotica. Such persons … appear to be especially vulnerable to behaving aggressively after exposure to erotica, even to comparatively mild erotica—innocuous as their stimuli may seem to others.” Similarly, W. A. Fisher and D. Byrne found that pornography had a greater effect on people whose attitudes toward sex were negative.16

  A particularly important finding made by Neil Malamuth and James Check was that rapists who report that they are more likely to rape if they think they would not get caught show greater excitatory response to pornography than do nonrapists and men who report that they would not rape even if they would not get caught.17 Here again we see the reverse causal relationship between pornography and rape. Rapists may be stimulated by pornography, but people who are stimulated by pornography do not become rapists. Interestingly, pornography that shows a woman being sexually seduced against her will, and showing disgust in response, decreased the arousal rating among rapists and potential rapists, in contrast to pornography that supports the myth that women like to be raped.18

  As with most ethical issues and moral dilemmas, rarely are matters black and white in the world of pornography and erotica. Instead, there are shades of erotic gray. As with other forms of fuzzy morality, assigning fuzzy fractions to shade the world into erotic degrees is much more useful. Watching a stimulating erotica video once in a while is surely no sin, especially if it is not meant as a replacement for intimacy with one’s partner, so we might assign it a .1. When the experience of pornography gets to the point of being a daily ritual, is done for masturbation purposes only, and replaces intimacy with one’s partner who finds this substitution violative of the relationship, then it might be appropriate to rank that form of pornography as a .9 act of immorality. One can assign fractions in between these extremes according to preference and consequence.