Presumably, the August centerfold photo of Hustler has made a lot of men happy. But should it help give birth to children? A British think tank thinks not.
202health.org, a grassroots health and technology organization, has lashed out against British fertility clinics for offering porn to their clients. Their latest report states that, for one thing, porn scars the women working in clinics because “pornography strips women of full human status and reduces them to sex objects. It gives permission to its consumers to treat women as they’re treated in porn. And the reality of porn today is that it increasingly uses younger girls and is more violent and extreme.”
Porn certainly objectifies women, but it’s not as if the clinics force the receptionists and nurses to flip through Playboy, nor do they screen porn on their waiting room TVs (though I’ve yet to attend a fertility clinic, so maybe they do?).
Beyond the employees, porn apparently also warps the clients who use the porn to test their fertility. The report reads, “To do this at a time when men are particularly vulnerable, already facing the emotional and physical pressures of infertility, is inexcusable.” However, it’s probably the most effective way of helping a man determine if he can start a family of his own. Testing fertility may be the most practical, even moral, application of pornography.
The only problem I can see with porn in a fertility clinic is six years later, when the child asks, “Where do I come from?” The dad might have to reach for his Hustler.
I’m sorry, but I’m an attractive 28 year old female that is trying to get pregnant with my husband. I have caught him watching porn before and it really hurt me emotionally. Pictures of naked women are porn to females because we all know that men masturbate to that EASILY. I don’t want my husband looking at pictures of literally perfect bodied women! It makes you feel worthless, especially if you have already had children and have stretch marks. Half naked pictures of women are everywhere. On magazines in the grocery store, life size pictures in the mall, all over… Read more »
Having been a visitor to a fertility clinic on occasion, I have to admit that I felt like it was all porn for a good cause and almost made up for the awkwardness of the situation, and the arrogance of almost all fertility doctors. But maybe that is my lizard brain talking…
I think the REAL problem is trying to “moralize” every tiny bit of individual experience. I don’t care if the personal is supposed to be political or not. The real problem is that real humanistic progress, which would be towards a more egalitarian political and economic system– more like continental Europe in other words– is preempted by show-offy arm waving of this sort. We need to reign in corporations, not find ways to impune individual behavior in an infinite regress of finger pointing and complaining. That diverts attention from real problems.
Also, Playboy isn’t porn. Hustler might be…
As a sperm donor for a clinic in the past, I appreciate porn in this situation because a man needs all the encouragement he can get. I don’t think a woman can imagine what is like to come into a sperm bank and be led into a small donation room, be given a cup for your “specimen,” expected to become aroused on cue, ejaculate all of it into that tiny cup, and do all this quietly in a sterile, medical environment. The good folks at 202health.org, have some compassion for the male sexual psyche and functioning. We are NOT just… Read more »
Edited for personal commentary about men: Men get to jack off into a little cup and at least orgasm to end in a pregnancy. You want women to have compassion for the male sexual psyche while they are looking at airbrushed pictures of models, when their wife, only 36 hours before an IUI has undergone and EXTREMELY painful HSG and is now having invasive and painful treatments just to get pregnant?!! Oh wait, lets not forget about the pain we go through with birth and that forever after having a baby, our body won’t ever look again like the girls… Read more »
Men are such filthy beasts.