This is a question that has been posted on Feministe.
I find the question to be quite weird, to be honest. People who react to visual (other than, say, verbal) stimuli seem to be singled out here as especially worthy of control. The article quoted in the post seems to narrow the field of pornography even further to videos featuring actors and actresses (as opposed to, say, pornographic cartoons or computer-generated images of human beings.)
This is, of course, nothing but a projection of the controlling partner’s sexuality. The controlling partner does not know how to manage the arousal this particular kind of pornographic material evokes in him or her and is trying to prevent the controlled partner from experiencing the same kind of arousal. The Controller disregards, however, the likelihood that the Controlled might be aroused by a completely different set of stimuli.
The interesting issue here is what it is that the Controller actually wants to prevent. What if the Controlled doesn’t watch porn but fantasizes about images s/he saw in the past while masturbating to the fantasy? What if the fantasy / masturbation takes place not to a set of visual images but to pornographic readings? What if it is a result of reading a completely PG-13 novel and getting aroused? Human sexuality is complex and it is ridiculous to believe that only a very small segment of pornographic material will produce arousal. What if there is no fantasy / masturbation but the partner has powerful sexual dreams about readings / images / other people? What if the partner gets aroused whenever s/he sees a cucumber? Or hears a particular song or sound? What if the participants in a porn video look like human beings but are actually computer-generated images? Is it OK to watch such videos?
In short, how does the Controller transmit his or her objections to “pornography” to the Controlled? There is such a variation in what might trigger sexual fantasies that I don’t think anybody could create an exhaustive description of what kind of fantasies s/he doesn’t want the partner to have that would not sound completely psychotic.
As a result, we can conclude that the question that gave the title to this post cannot be answered. If this question is one you ask yourself, I suggest finding responses to the auxiliary questions I offered here. This will help you figure out what it is that actually bothers you about pornography.
There is nothing more engrossing than self-discovery. Instead of the “I am who I am and who cares why?” attitude that informs the linked article, I propose an approach that can result in interesting revelations about oneself.
I personally believe that anybody is entitled not to be in a relationship with anybody else for absolutely any reason. However, if one chooses to continue a relationship, any attempts at controlling that person are abusive, wrong, and highly aggressive. To illustrate, if you find it unacceptable that a person should peel a soft-boiled egg on the pointy side, you are absolutely entitled to stop seeing this person. However, if you continue the relationship and structure it around the endless, “Here you go again peeling the egg in this intolerable way,” “How many times did I ask you not to. . . ,” “Are you sure you didn’t peel any eggs in my absence? And what if I look in the trash?”, then you have a serious problem that it is your duty to resolve.
P.S. The answers to the question on Feministe demonstrate such a lack of basic sexual literacy that one loses all hope for humanity.
Clarissa's Blog 
So if you saw N looking at someone else with desire (reference from a previous pose), you would prefer to immediately end that relationship rather than at least discuss if he could/would stop doing that?
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Absolutely. The last thing I want is for another person to engage in any self-violation on my behalf. Any monogamy should stem only from an impossibility to live in any other way. Would it make sense to ask a man to stop looking with desire at another man because homosexuality bothers one? Of course, not. He can make a supreme effort of willpower and control it but for what purpose? And at what cost to himself?
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For people in a committed monogamous relationship it is not unreasonable to ask their significant other to abstain from a behavior that could possibly hurt the relationship. I would like to think as an adult the person being asked could always say no and then they both can decide where it goes from there. Im so glad my wife points them out so I can take a look myself. 🙂
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“For people in a committed monogamous relationship it is not unreasonable to ask their significant other to abstain from a behavior that could possibly hurt the relationship. ”
– That depends on the behavior. Fantasies cannot be controlled.
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Fantasies cannot be controlled.(Clarissa)
The need to view them can. But again, that would have to be the choice of the one being asked.
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Is there really a big difference in whether the fantasies are formed on the basis of seeing a video or reading a book?
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Nope, reading can be controlled to. 😉
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Well, the sort of pron that would cause everyone to object is child pron, and that’s an automatic “out of my sight, I never want to see you again” (not to mention, a call to the police).
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Exactly.
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“Peeling an egg” has been added to my list of euphemisms for masturbation. It sits neatly between “Shaking the palm” and “rubbing the plum”!
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My favorite is “chasing the baldie”. 🙂 It was originally created by the Russians.
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I guess I’m a traditionalist. A date with Rosie Palms is enough for me
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It is a testimony to the profound sexual health of my readers that the post is getting a humorous response instead of the long outpourings of masturbatory verbiage Feministe gets.
As they say, tell me who your friends are. . .
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I always liked “petting the one-eyed newt” 😉
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Defniniton of rejection, you go to masturbate and your hand falls asleep. 🙂
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I love “how many devils can dance on the point” articles (and comments !) on Feministe. But conflating fantasies (fanfiction, animated, CGs, drawn etc.), staged (pornography involving actors and actresses) and real world is impressive.
What folks at Feministe don’t get is that people watch/read/consume/whatever porn because they like to fantasize about things that they wouldn’t do, or are too troublesome or impossible to do in real life. Or there is something “dark”, or “edgy”, “forbidden” in it.
I mean, really. Why would somebody care what other people are masturbating to ?
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I especially like the attempts to attach ideological meanings to pornographic preferences.
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Reminds me of Jill’s articles saying: “if he doesn’t want to eat you out he hates women; if he doesn’t want to have sex during your period he hates women, too”.
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Do that many people spend that much time watching porn that it becomes this major issue? I mean, I have this one friend with tales of it, costing huge amounts of money on the Internet bill she was paying and having her husband more interested in it than her, and they got divorced, and so on. Otherwise it just doesn’t seem to come up as a problem, at least not from what I can tell in real life … am I just living among the porn-free prudes, or In Denial, or what … ?
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People with healthy lungs don’t talk about breathing and people with healthy bladders don’t spend any time discussing peeing. But this doesn’t mean they don’t breathe and pee. 🙂
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And people who can communicate probably don’t lecture others on the fine art of communication:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/derek-medina-facebook_n_3728077.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009
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The best explanation for this behavior I can think of is a very fragile ego. I trust that my boyfriend loves me even if he notices that I’m not the most beautiful man in the world. Hell, you’d be asking them to view you as the ONLY attractive person in the world, which only someone with severe self-worth issues could think of doing. Any relationship that means more than sex doesn’t need that kind of validation.
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hahahahaha!. Daughter sent a funny story from a town in Spain called Arenas de San Pedro. Apparently, the mayor has decided to move away a 7.5 m high sculpture in center city because the penis was too big!!!!. The mayor of that town is a woman.
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I agree with you, Clarissa.
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