Exploit the weakness of thy neighbor: A rational reason to dislike pornography

Pornography plays on biological instincts to exploit psychological weaknesses and imperfections of the other sex. That's no good for society.

Awards for romantic fiction won by writer Barbara O'Neil. Wikimedia Commons.

Few people genuinely like pornography. Many enjoy it, but few people consider it an entirely respectable artform. Among Westerners, religion is more and more disappearing as a valid explanation to the sensation that pornography is something rather seedy. For that reason I felt a sense of relief when I got to think of an entirely secular reason to dislike pornography: Because it builds on an instinct to search for and use psychologically abnormal behavior among opposite-sex individuals to one's own advantage. 

Interestingly, pornography for males and pornography for females is showing exactly the same pattern: Both are showing members of the opposite sex acting not in their own evolutionary interests, but in the evolutionary interests of the viewer. Pornography for men shows women acting in men's evolutionary interests. Pornography for women depicts men acting in women's evolutionary interests.

A lifelong chase for sluts

Let's start with the kind of pornography males commonly pay for. That is, the visual, main-stream kind. It builds heavily on males' wish to pay for fantasies about extremely cheap sex with attractive women.

Very basic evolutionary psychology, and observations of reality, says that the average man is, compared to the average woman, very interested in casual sexual relationships. In his 1979 book The Evolution of Human Sexuality, anthropologist Donald Symons explained that men are probably pre-programmed to enjoy the thought of cheap sex, even though the opportunity seldom occurs in real life. It is so genetically profitable for a man to have sex with healthy, fertile women who don't ask for anything in return, that many men entertain thoughts that make them prepared to take the opportunity, would it ever arrive.¹

Why would the opportunity present itself at all? Why would women who can sell themselves expensively ever give themselves away for free? Sometimes, it could be because a certain man appears to have such good genes that it's worth it. But in practice, women don't seem to act that way very much. When women are asked why they have affairs, they overwhelmingly say that they are trying out opportunities to change partners². Besides, logically speaking most men can't have unusually good genes, so sane women offering themselves for free should only happen to a small minority of men even if women really were chasing great genes.

Mostly, I think the cause of female promiscuity is just imperfection. Some girls might have inherited a little too high preference for sexual variety and general sexual drive from their reproductively successful fathers and/or ape ancestors. One hundred percent of young, beautiful women can't be perfectly configured to get the optimal evolutionary deal. Women also have tips and dips. Substances and psychological distress can make people lose judgment. According to Donald Symonds' principles, men in general spend a lifetime preparing for meeting such a misadapted young woman.

Pornography exploits those fantasies and enhances them. I'm not a regular consumer of pornography (in fact, I have decided that I have seen enough to avoid it more or less for the rest of my life). But I have seen enough pornography to know that it mainly features women who are psychologically disturbed in an evolutionary sense. First of all, it features very cheap women. Not women who carefully measure men for good genes or relationship opportunities or other advantages, but women who are just indiscriminately horny. They invite whatever man they stumble upon and greatly value penises.

There is also a smaller subset of pornography that features women who actively invest in men. For example, the somewhat older sexually experienced woman who teaches the inexperienced young man. To summarize, visual pornography features women who behave in a way that is greatly biologically beneficial to men, but in most cases biologically self-destructive for women. Male pornography, and male fantasies at large, are to a large degree built around the idea of taking the chance to cheap sex with attractive women whenever it shows up. Many men seem to be genetically programmed to find great enjoyment in the thought of taking advantage of women who don't know their own genetic best. Which allows the pornography industry to take advantage of those men.

An alpha for the price of a beta

Men pay for pornography that shows men who get sex with attractive women without investing³. What women pay for is pornography about men who could get away with not investing much, but still, for obscure reasons, invest crazily in one, single woman. Yes, I know, romance literature normally isn't called pornography. But I think it is the closest female equivalent to visual pornography, because it is what women are most prepared to pay for.

Women spend little on visual pornography. But they spend heavily on romance literature⁴. And the standard plot of romance books could be summarized into one sentence: An alpha to the price of a beta. Pornography for men is mostly about women, who, for some reason, act in a way that benefits men's reproductive interests rather than their own. Pornography for women mostly is about a man who, for some often rather incomprehensible reason, benefits a woman's reproductive interests rather than his own. The hero in romance books typically is attractive, hard and difficult to catch. He could have had several women, if he wanted to. Still, after a bookful of intrigues and backlashes, he invests everything he has in the heroine, who is often a rather ordinary woman.

Romance literature is above all about a woman who gets chosen by a man with the right to choose. He could have chosen almost anyone he wanted, but he chooses exactly that young woman. The heroine's response is to overcome all the obstacles that lie in the way of a life with this man. The details of romance literature change with society, but the core message remains: When an alpha man falls in love, the object of his love should never let go of him, whatever difficulties lie in her way. For example, in best-selling erotic novel 50 Shades of Grey, a very ordinary and somewhat boring young woman called Anastasia Steele catches the attention of a young and handsome business magnate called Christian Grey. But there is an obstacle: Christian is hopelessly into BDSM while Anastasia never thought of anything like that. Since Anastasia feels she is getting an amazing offer, she lets herself be slowly introduced to Christian's world of perversion. Just as pornography for males is about men who don't squander an opportunity of free sex when it occurs, romance literature is about women who don't squander an excessively good marriage offer when they get it. 

Exploiting our free-rider instincts

It seems that pornography (and the erotic fantasies that make typical pornography appealing) for men and women fulfill the same function: To prepare the viewer for an unbelievably good reproductive deal. Both male and female pornography builds on the fantasy of meeting a slightly deranged member of the opposite sex who loses out from the deal. In sum, pornography exploits our instincts to search for opportunities for free-riding.

From the viewpoint of society, free-riding is something negative. No society has ever been able to suppress all free-riding behavior - after all, we are humans, not ants. But every society tries to, and succeeds to some degree. Otherwise, civilization is not possible.

Free-riders treat society like a zero-sum game. Good citizens invest and cooperate and thereby increase the size of the pie. Through accepting and giving fair deals, humans create a good investment climate that leads to growth and prosperity. Free-riders sabotage this process. They increase the cost of doing business through forcing everyone to uphold a high level of vigilance. The more people can be trusted, the faster an economy can grow, mainstream economic theory claims. 

With more investment of the right kind, a company becomes more productive (if it is not fundamentally flawed). It is the same with romantic couples. The more they invest in their relationship and their material infrastructure, the better they can raise their children and the more children they can raise. The more high-investing couples in a given society, the more healthy, happy and well-adapted children there will be. And children are the future of every society, especially in modern times (I wrote more about that here).

Most of the time, the opportunity for free-riding is limited and humans are forced to invest and cooperate. Both men and women can dream of that deranged member of the other sex that will give them everything for free, but most of the time that individual never comes and the dream of an unfair deal remains a dream. 

Pornography changes the equation by encouraging dreaming. Regular consumers of pornography risk getting used to the thought that they should, in fact, wait for the unfair deal to present itself. 

Yes, women too

At first sight, the ideal of male pornography looks much worse than the ideal of female pornography. Few people would say that the indiscriminate promiscuity shown in pornography for males is especially tasteful. But many people would say that high investment marriage, the main feature of romance books, is an ideal for everybody to strive for.

Still, I think the female wish for an unfairly good deal is currently doing as much damage as its male counterpart. The problem is not that women dream of getting married. The problem is the dream of being discovered, out of nowhere, by a man who always says the right things, pays all the bills and makes everything exciting without needing any help at all from his chosen lady. 

Few women will see the dream of an alpha for the price of a beta come true. In reality, there are very few high status men who fall truly, madly, deeply in love with ordinary young women and want to build a life of wealth and monogamy with them. But there are many men who have learned how to appeal to women's instinct to seek out underpriced alphas. Those men seduce young beautiful women almost as a sport. And the women go along with it. After all, if you hope to find an alpha for the price of a beta, the first step is to go for the alphas. Or what looks like an alpha, if you can't tell the difference.

While pornography for males is crowding out real, normal-cost young women, alpha males and alpha-look-alikes are crowding out real, normal-cost young men. Most young men don't know how to make an evening feel like a fairy tale. They don't know how to make a woman feel both relaxed and excited. They can't keep a conversation going with a woman without her making some effort too. In one word, most young men require some co-investment for a relationship to work out, right from the beginning. 

Before, when having sex early in a relationship was frowned upon, the smooth-talking alpha males were at a disadvantage. They had to make the investment of several months of dating before actually getting the sex that they wanted. Beta males had no objections to making that investment and were in a relatively stronger position. 

Now that those rules are disappearing, the long-termist betas have fewer chances to get a foot in the door. Since alphas (real and imagined) are no longer bothered by investment requirements they can choose freely within a wide range of young women. A woman dreaming of an alpha for the price of a beta needs just take a pick. She will get an alpha, although for the price of an alpha. And the betas for the price of a beta never get a chance to even advertise their qualities.

I don't blame romance novels for giving young women this idea. The novels only exploit a deep-lying instinct. I blame the rest of society for not acting as a counterweight against this instinct. Except for religious and secular chastity norms that are rapidly becoming obsolete, there is no clear message to young women that they should go for the good reproductive deals instead of dreaming of fabulous reproductive deals.

What to do about the problem? Some might see bans or restrictions on pornography for males and females as a solution. That is not my cup of tea. I think we would get a long way just by acknowledging the situation: that pornography exploits our antisocial tendencies and that it is a problem. 

On the male side there is already a movement asking young men to stop taking the lazy way of watching pornography and playing computer games and instead make the necessary investments needed to be with a real-life woman. Unfortunately I know of no similar movement on the female side. A movement that asks women to stop wasting their time looking for an unfairly good deal and instead get out and find an investment partner. If anyone who reads this knows about something similar, please let me know.

PS. I hope no one feels offended by my talk about beta males. For a year I have thought of writing an article celebrating beta males as the pillars of human civilization. I will, as soon as I find the words. Until then, stay reassured that I'm a big fan of beta males.

1. Donald Symonds, The Evolution of Human Sexuality, 1979, page 328. Symonds writes: "if the desire for variety were satisfied even once in a lifetime, it might pay off reproductively".

2. David Buss, When Men Behave Badly, 2021, 83-84.

3. According to the book A Billion Wicked Thoughts (2011) by Sai Gaddam and Ogi Ogas, only 2 percent of credit cards used at porn sites carried female names. This is a good reason to believe that females make a very small part of payments for visual pornography. Information to be found at page 42 to 43 of the book.

4. My reference again here is A Billion Wicked Thoughts, page 104. Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam claim that romance publishing generated more revenue than internet pornography in 2008 in the US and Canada.