No woman they could meet at the coffee shop or on the church camping trip could possibly compete with these perfectly toned, perfectly undemanding models.

That quote comes from a First Things article (H/T: CC) about men who game instead of work and get married. This claim that women are competing with porn comes up a lot from feminists, women, and conservative commentators. I know this particular commentor is male, but I’ve seen it many times before from females as well.

This claim always stuck me as odd. Why would real women, living beings of flesh and blood divinely molded to be beuatiful, think they’re competing with digital masturbation aids? Even odder, why do so many women think this is a difficult competition and that they are losing to a collection of moving pixels?

Let’s unpack it.

The first thing this claim presupposes is that the only method of competition for men women have is sex. Porn provides sexual release and little else; by making the claim women are competing and losing to porn, one is making the claim that women have nothing to offer but sex. Supposing (falsely) for a moment porn provided a far superior sexual experience to actual sex, there are still many areas a real woman could compete where a video and a fleshlight, or even a full-fledged futuristic sexdoll, couldn’t.

This gets back to what I’ve mentioned before. A real women can offer many things beyond sex that no porn could hope to match: kindness, sympathy, comfort, joyfulness, beauty, encouragement, submissiveness, softness, feeling like a man, a warm home, a good meal, a family, etc. These all require inner beauty, which feminism is actively trying to destroy. With feminine virtues being all but destroyed, sexiness is all that’s left. The tough, independent, argumentative, “intelligent”, high moxie, career-oriented failed-man-with-tits has nothing to offer a man but sexiness.

I can see feminists fearing competition from sexbots, but conservatives and Christians should know better, and teach their young women feminine virtues that will attract a man.

This claim presupposes is that porn is competitive with real sex with a real woman. While I’ve mentioned before the incentives against marriage and that masturbating into future sexbots may be superior to normal masturbation, no sex, or sex with unattractive fatties, all things being equal sex is better than masturbation by a very wide margin. There might be a couple addicts out there who prefer porn, but the vast majority of men would rather have sex.

Porn is an inferior substitute good for sex. If porn is competing with women over providing sexual release to men, something is definitely wrong. The most likely explanation is that there is no competition, because the man’s sexual needs aren’t being provided for in this because he can not obtain a wife or girlfriend (or in marriage, because his wife is not providing). Relatedly, he might have been burned in this area by women (or his wife) in the past and have given up on trying to obtain sex. The next most likely is obesity, men many might choose porn over sex with someone fat if fatties were all he could get or if his wife was fat. After that, it’s that the man is a perverted porn addict.

In neither of the first three cases are women competing with porn: they’re either not competing or they’re competing with their own poor habits. I think the last case is likely rare; I know of few men who would choose porn over even an average young girl for sex, 3DPD jokes aside.

Next, the claim of “perfectly-toned” girls, is missing the mark. From what I am given to understand (I can’t remember where I read it, possibly 28 Sherman), the porn business model has been moving away from toned, big-breasted, blonde bimbos for a while now. Porn is trending towards “amateur” girls-next-door and the personal cam-girl business model. Even the higher-end prostitution model is moving away from simple paid sex to the girlfriend experience.

Men’s fantasies are orienting less towards hot sex with unattainable bombshells and more towards intimacy with a normally pretty, seemingly attainable girl. The competition, if it exists, is not over just the penis, but over the heart as well. Which brings us back to the point made on the first assumption. Women can compete on a lot more than just being hot, and if not being “perfectly-toned” disqualifies them, then they are lacking feminine virtue that would make them marriageable in the first place.

Finally, while no women can be “perfectly undemanding”, their demands can be reasonable and in line with what they bring to the table. Porn demands nothing, but it also gives very little: temporary, unfulfilling sexual release. As partially listed above, there is a voluminous list of things a woman can bring to the table that porn simply can not do. With the amount extra they can provide a man, they can easily demand a reasonable amount. If they disincentivize themselves out of the marriage market by being too demanding (or more accurately, too demanding in the wrong areas) to such an extent that porn, with the primary virtue of being “undemanding”, can compete and win against them, they are, again, lacking the feminine virtues which would make them marriageable.

All this too say, porn is degenerate and a blight on modern society, but the thought that real women are in competition with it bears little resemblence to reality. If women are losing to porn, it is not porn that is beating them, but themselves. The only way the vast majority of real woman can possibly lose to porn to the vast majority of men (ie. those who are not the small portion who are porn addicts), is because they have abandoned the feminine virtues that would make men desire them more than hollow masturbation and pictures on a screen.

Porn is a vastly inferior substitute good for sex. Women have a strong advantage in attracting men unless they price themselves out of the market or abandon the virtues that would make them marriageable in the first place.