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Boys will be boys, so goes the saying. That is especially true when it comes to one typically male habit that many girls can’t or don’t want to understand: The urge to watch pornography, visit X-rated Web sites and have a stash of Playboy magazines hidden under their beds.

It’s a guy thing. Maybe it’s their stronger sex drive, or maybe it’s simply how their brains are wired. I can’t really say. But I think women who get jealous or are offended when their boyfriends watch porn should lighten up. It’s not like they are cheating on them in real life.

As someone who spent most of her adolescence and college years in Germany, it is safe to say that there is little I haven’t seen.

Zapping through the TV channels late at night would inevitably lead to the sight of naked ladies and gentlemen having sex.

The plots of X-rated films can be hilariously funny, simply because there is none. That is actually the one thing I never understood about pornography: Why have a forced, ridiculous plot if the only thing that matters are the sex scenes? Just do those and skip the rest, because it’s such a waste of time.

Even so, porn is not utterly disgusting and offensive to me, it is just something I don’t need to watch.

Men, on the other hand, are different. They feel the need to indulge in their fantasies of being with that blonde lady with her impressive chest, or the Asian brunette with the soft skin. Is that wrong? I don’t necessarily think so because that’s all it is, a fantasy.

But it’s different in Indonesia, because as we all know, this country has a big problem with pornography, and buying and possessing pornographic material is prohibited by law.

Maybe that’s why women, especially here, feel so threatened when they find out that their partners watch blue films. It’s illegal, so it must be wrong.

In many cases, however, it is also a question of low self-esteem: Does he watch porn because I’m not enough for him? The simple answer is: Of course not! Have you never dreamed about kissing your favorite rock star? Basically, it’s the same thing.

If my boyfriend were to watch porn, I wouldn’t be upset about it. As long as he doesn’t parade it in my face and is discreet about it. And as long as it wasn’t something that he did every night instead of spending time with me, I wouldn’t scold him.

If he can still differentiate between fantasy and reality, then I can’t accuse him of doing anything wrong.

Katrin Figge is deputy features editor at the Jakarta Globe.

Men love to watch porn. In fact, you should be suspicious of a man who doesn’t — chances are he’s lying or there’s something seriously wrong with him. I know I shouldn’t be proud of this porn habit, but I don’t think it’s something I should be ashamed of either.

Scientists agree that a large part of the male brain is occupied by the sex drive. So much so, in fact, that it’s often difficult for us to think about anything else. So I it’s fair to say that it’s not men’s fault that we are into porn. It’s just how we were made.

Women may think that porn is gross, but watching porn for men is no different than shopping at the mall for women. It’s just something that we need to do, although sometimes we can’t even explain why.

I remember my first porn experience, which happened when I was still in middle school. It wasn’t really an X-rated movie, but I still had to tiptoe from my room to the living room. I was scared to death while watching the movie with two of my friends, and I told myself that I would die if my parents found out what I was doing.

That first experience is always the hardest for every boy. But things get so much easier after that. Once I was in high school, I had worked out many different ways to watch porn comfortably without getting caught.

You can call it an addiction, but the truth is watching porn doesn’t stop once you have a girlfriend or even a wife. It doesn’t matter if he’s a teenager or in his 40s with a wife and kids, a man wants his porn.

Before women get mad, they need to understand that men are destined to be explorers. We want to discover new things, and that concerns every situation in life ­— especially when it comes to sex.

I’ve heard it many times from women, that men spend too much time and energy watching porn. They can’t understand why we choose to spend all that time doing something so completely unproductive.

“Instead of watching porn all the time, men should do something else, like cleaning up the mess in their room,” a female friend once told me.

That might sound like a good idea. But hey, do women ever question if spending money on unnecessary things like a new bag is a good idea? Don’t they ever think that they can do something more useful than that?

It’s not entirely men’s fault that we watch porn. Instead of complaining all the time, I think it would be better if women would just let us do what we like to do. In return, we men can let women do all those silly things we like to complain about.

Tasa Nugraza Barley is a features reporter at the Jakarta Globe.