Wife masturbating, watching porn not grounds for divorce: Madras HC

Tin watching porn and onanism be ‘ pitilessness’ in wedlock? The Madras heights court says no. Underscoring a woman’s sexual autonomy and that the fundamental right to privacy includes spousal privacy, the Madras high court on Wednesday rejected a man’s petition seeking divorce from his wife on the ground that she watched pornography and often masturbated.Justices GR Swaminathan and R Poornima of the Madurai bench held that if a spouse did not breach any statutory laws in watching pornography and if such habit did not have an adverse impact on the discharge of one’s conjugal obligations, such acts cannot be amount to cruelty and therefore, cannot be a ground for divorce.It further said that watching pornography in a private setting was not an offence.On the husband’s argument that the woman “often indulged in masturbation,” the court said that even calling upon a woman to respond to this averment would amount to a “gross infringement of her sexual autonomy.”When masturbation among men was acknowledged to be universal, masturbation by women cannot be stigmatised, the court said.“If after contracting marriage, a woman has sexual relationship outside marriage, it would furnish ground for divorce. However, indulging in self-pleasure cannot be a cause for dissolution of marriage. By no stretch of imagination, can it be said to inflict cruelty on the husband,” the high court said.The court was hearing a petition filed by a resident of Karur district in Tamil Nadu, who had challenged an order of the family court that had refused to grant him divorce from his estranged wife.The petitioner told the high court that the family court had erred in dismissing his allegations of cruelty, a valid ground for divorce under Section 13(1)(i-a) of the Hindu Marriage Act.The wife, he alleged, was a spendthrift, was “addicted to watching porn, refused to do household chores, and often indulged in masturbation. “The petitioner also alleged that the wife suffered from a venereal disease.”The high court, however, noted that the man had failed to submit any documents to establish that the woman suffered from any venereal disease, much less that such disease was communicable.As per the petition, the couple got married in July 2018. However, they started staying separately in December 2020. While the wife subsequently sought restitution of conjugal rights, the husband filed for divorce on the ground of cruelty, making allegations that the wife was meting out cruelty against him by watching pornography and masturbating.The high court however, cited a previous judgment passed by justice Swaminathan in October 2024 where the judge who was presiding over a single bench at the time, had held that one’s right to privacy included spousal privacy.In its present order, the bench said, “When privacy is a fundamental right, it includes within its scope and reach spousal privacy too. The contours of spousal privacy would include various aspects of a woman’s sexual autonomy. So long as something does not fall foul of law, the right to express oneself cannot be denied. Self-pleasure is not a forbidden fruit; its indulgence shall not lead to a precipitous fall from the Eden Garden of marriage.”It went on to say that a woman retains her individuality even after marriage and that her fundamental identity as an individual did not get “subsumed by her spousal status”.