Why do men watch pornography?

A while back there was a TV programme of this title. I didn’t watch it for two reasons.

The first was that it was clearly yet another ruse to screen soft porn under the cloak of a faux ‘in-depth investigation’.

The second was that it was a remarkably silly title because the answer is obvious, and also implies that women don’t.

At about the same time there was another programme under the same guise called ‘Does size matter?’ Another silly title because the answer to that is equally obvious. But it was hilarious. To make the point (whatever it was) a Welsh rugby team paraded around naked as jay birds, each displaying what appeared to be a shrivelled walnut between his massive thighs.

My exposure to porn (and I really must choose my words carefully) is very limited. Years ago I was at a management course for aspiring big shots. Part of the course was for every member to describe his job and his approach to how it should be managed, in the form of an informal after-dinner presentation.

One such was a senior police officer from the Yard. He returned from his week-end break bearing an attaché case and a film projector. He then announced that after dinner we were to reconvene in his room where he would show a selection of the material confiscated by the ‘dirty squad’ (the Obscene Publications unit, which was so corrupt that it was disbanded in its entirety by Sir Robert Mark, as I recall, about which more anon).

There was a mad dash upstairs, not a single absentee amongst this group of 40-ish, professional, Rotarian, golf-playing, middle class pillars of society. It was also an effective piece of aversion therapy.

But it demonstrated that the idea, if not the actuality, of porn stretches beyond frustrated saddos, if only out of curiosity. Our speaker also revealed that Friday night in the police canteen was porno night; the front row was always monopolised by women, so bang goes another misconception.

Some years later, I went by executive jet to Frankfurt for a demo of new computer stuff. The other members of the party were all senior suits. We were taken to dinner to a place far out in the forest. After dinner I repaired to the bar where I found myself alone. On asking where the rest of the party had gone, I was told that they were all at the ‘pornokine’ upstairs! I preferred the beer.

What this does seem to demonstrate is that most men will watch the stuff, probably out of curiosity and possibly only once.

There are voices being raised to ban it. The experience of the Obscene Publications unit at Scotland Yard shows very clearly that the inevitable effect would be corruption on a massive scale; the trade is said to be worth $97 billion a year. Sir Robert Mark memorably said that a good police force was one that caught more crooks than it employed.

This does raise a question about our sense of values, at least in the ‘Christian’ west. Why do we regard viewing the act of creating life as obscene when we are quite happy to allow the act of extinguishing it acceptable?

To me, the ultimate obscenity is the portrayal on our screens of the most vicious and gratuitous violence and slaughter, as epitomised by ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ and others of the genre.