Women Should Not Tolerate Porn

Young women today have unrealistically high standards. When I speak to conservative young men about dating, this is something I often hear. 

There is some truth to this. Online, women often share rules and checklists for future partners. In one viral post, viewed over 28 million times, a woman says that her ideal man is over six feet, earns more than $130,000 a year, has an IQ above 120, and is preferably Ivy League–educated and from old money. Other women won’t tolerate anything less than “princess treatment,” from having Ubers sent to pick them up for first dates to getting their pedicures paid for. Many describe getting “the ick,” a sudden feeling of disgust, after men do anything from tying their shoes to sneezing. No man ever seems good enough.

What that doesn’t mean, though, is that young women shouldn’t have any standards. Some are very important, particularly when it comes to a man’s character. One standard that is valid is not wanting your partner to watch pornography.

Yet some conservatives act as if this is also unrealistic. Talk about not wanting a partner to watch porn, and they become defensive. Suddenly you are dismissed as a liberal feminist, or accused of pathologizing male sexuality. Of course there are conservatives who take porn seriously, from Christian activists who have been warning about it for years to Republicans pushing for bans to younger writers desperate for older men to understand the destruction it causes. But others see any objection to porn as just another unrealistic expectation from women, another example of feminist nagging.

But this is not a superficial expectation, nor an irrational “ick.” This is something men can change, and a standard any man can meet. There are completely valid reasons for not wanting to be vulnerable with, or make sacrifices for, a partner who is secretly lusting after other women and has a habit associated with lower relationship satisfaction and a higher likelihood of infidelity.

So why do some conservatives defend porn? I suspect partly because they watch it. They don’t watch it as much as liberals—liberal young adults are around twice as likely as conservatives to watch online porn at least once a day—but it’s still a problem. 

In fact, according to a new report by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), where I recently joined as a fellow, porn is a problem even for a sizable portion of married and religious men. They found that 25 percent of husbands who regularly go to church watch porn monthly or more, compared to 35 percent of those who rarely or never go to church.

Some conservatives might also flinch at this conversation because of feminism. Their whole lives, young men today have been blamed, villainized, and made to feel as though their personalities are pathologies. They have been condemned for their masculinity, scolded even for their chivalry. So when they hear women object to porn use, it sounds more like another reason to complain about men.

I understand that reaction, but the porn industry is the real target here. This is an industry that disrespects, exploits, and degrades men too. Many boys first stumble across online porn as children, some as young as nine. Young men describe losing years of their lives to these platforms, sometimes watching for six hours a day. Modern feminism may make men feel as if they are nothing but villains, but this industry reduces them to nothing but their vices.

Feminists are usually not the ones objecting to porn either. Many progressive women tolerate it, or even defend it, not wanting to be seen as prudish or old-fashioned. Often, the women who object are conservative and religious. Porn seems to put more of a strain on their marriages too. Among religious couples, the IFS report notes, porn use has been associated with higher rates of marital dissatisfaction and divorce. The authors also found something curious: Catholics, both churchgoing and nominal, report lower perceived marital stability than Protestants and secular couples, even though they report higher marital satisfaction and have lower divorce rates.

This may be because religious wives are less likely to tolerate porn. Discovering a husband’s hidden porn use would be destabilizing for many marriages, the authors of the report suggest, but “may be especially so for churchgoing Catholics and Protestants who hold sex to be sacred.” As they put it: “Practicing Catholic spouses may hold higher expectations—and lower moral tolerance—for a spouse’s transgressions in this area.” The wives most hurt by porn seem to be those who take marriage and morality most seriously—in other words, the type of women conservative men are looking for. 

These women may not go as viral as those on TikTok listing their “icks” and expectations, but they exist, and they are in pain. Online, one wife describes feeling “absolutely devastated” after finding out about her Catholic husband’s porn addiction; after thirteen years together and three children, she felt “blindsided” and “betrayed,” her body image destroyed. Meanwhile, younger Christians say they are scared to get married because of their boyfriends’ porn habits and are having doubts about whether to have children. They fear that no matter how hard they try to be good wives, they will never be enough.

Of course, objecting to porn use is only fair if women are holding themselves to high standards too. We can’t expect men not to watch porn if we are consuming it or objectifying ourselves for online attention. When both partners restrain themselves and resist their baser impulses, what once seemed like a controlling, one-sided demand becomes something more like mutual obligation—more like love. This is what both sexes should be for each other: restraining forces, not imposing on one another’s freedom but inspiring one another’s virtue.

This standard is one young women should not lower. Yes, they might hurt their chances of love and happiness by having high material expectations. But they should have high moral expectations that they hold themselves and others to. Not watching porn is one of them. I hope young women are brave enough to set that standard, and that men respect their relationships—and themselves—enough to meet it.