{"id":31249,"date":"2020-09-14T19:55:47","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T17:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lelo.com\/blog\/?p=31249"},"modified":"2020-09-14T19:51:53","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T17:51:53","slug":"is-it-ok-to-watch-porn-in-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lelo.com\/blog\/is-it-ok-to-watch-porn-in-public\/","title":{"rendered":"Is It OK To Watch Porn In Public?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a grad student, longer ago than I can comfortably recall, I remember sitting in a lecture, at the back, diligently taking notes on modal verb morphology, and I happened to notice the guy sat in the row in front of me, and slightly below, was watching porn on his phone.<\/span><\/p>\n

It struck as particularly unusual because, first, it was the first time I\u2019d seen such technology in a phone, at a time when the Motorola Razr flip-phone was the handset to be seen with. But second\u2026 why was he watching porn during a lecture?<\/span><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a clip either. It was a full-length scene, and he watched it from start to finish, which meant that, indirectly and accidentally, I did too.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t alone. Until recently, I might catch the reflection of a young woman\u2019s phone in the window of a London tube train and I\u2019d see as clear as day that she was browsing her private Tumblr, her filth Tumblr. (We miss you, Porn Tumblr.)<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s something intrinsically attractive about expressing our sexuality in public. Whether it\u2019s actually having sex somewhere outdoors<\/a>, or it\u2019s simply scrawling something obscene on the wall of a public bathroom, it\u2019s something that happens everywhere, all the time. But is it ok?<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Watch<\/p>\n

The law is a little hazy on the topic. For example, exposing others to pornographic material without their consent is considered as a form of sexual harassment in most western countries. But generally, that comes with a caveat: if you\u2019re viewing explicit material privately, in a place where you can reasonably expect to remain undiscovered, and you\u2019re not contravening any other local laws (like trespassing, for example), then you generally won\u2019t get in any trouble for it.<\/span><\/p>\n

But not being illegal isn\u2019t necessarily the same as being totally right. I\u2019m personally all in favor of the free and open manifestation of our shared sexualities. Hell, LELO exists almost solely for that purpose. But there\u2019s a healthy way to do it, and an unhealthy way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Take the guy in the lecture, watching porn on the first smartphone I\u2019d ever seen. My contention isn\u2019t an ethical one: I yearn for a world in which our sexualities are embraced as ordinarily as any other facet of our personalities. My contention is one of worth: is it worth risking the social embarrassment of being caught openly watching porn in public? What\u2019s the point of watching porn throughout a lecture, to only then go home, alone, to study?<\/span><\/p>\n

Somebody was paying for that guy\u2019s tuition. Whether he had a job to pay his tuition fees, or a loan to be paid back later, or his parents, or some kind of scholarship, whoever was putting him through his education would surely be disappointed to see how flippantly he was treating it. Surely he could have waited half an hour and then gone home to masturbate<\/a>?<\/span><\/p>\n

I suspect, as I usually do, that there\u2019s some kind of subversive thrill to accessing pornographic content in public. It\u2019s almost certainly true of those you women scrolling through their secret Tumblrs, when it was still possible: the flush of arousal, the thrill of secrecy, the power of cultural subversion, all these things are highly alluring, and almost addictively intoxicating.<\/span><\/p>\n

I find myself in the rare position of agreeing with the law, for now: there\u2019s nothing wrong with accessing pornographic material, even in public, as long as you\u2019re not inflicting it on anyone else and if you\u2019re doing it in a way in which you can reasonably expect not to be caught.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the guy in the lecture hall? He\u2019s a software engineer for a major smartphone company now. So perhaps it was just research.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a grad student, longer ago than I can comfortably recall, I remember sitting in a lecture, at the back, diligently taking notes on modal verb morphology, and I happened to notice the guy sat in the row in front of me, and slightly below, was watching porn on his phone. 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