Women Don’t Watch Porn, Right?
33July 10, 2012 by mattfradd
Pornography almost always sends it’s consumer into a spiral of shame and isolation. How much greater the shame and isolation, then, when you are constantly being told, “Oh, girls don’t struggle with porn.” It’s time to face the facts – women can and do. In this blog we will hear from a young woman named Jessica Harris who once struggled with pornography, and now by the grace of God is finding freedom.
The following has been written by Jessica Harris:
Admittedly, men have the corner market on pornography ministries. It seems a sad fact that you cannot have a men’s conference without a session addressing pornography and that when pornography is mentioned, people are usually talking about men. It puts a ministry like Beggar’s Daughter in this type of sci-fi realm of reality. A spiritual twilight zone that confuses men and women alike. Often I get phone calls or e-mails that say, “Why on earth do women do this? Do they do it for the same reasons as men?”
I cannot really speak for why men get into pornography. Conversational experience tells me it is because they are more visually-wired. That seems to be the common explanation (or excuse, depending on how you view it) for why men are so much more ‘lustful’ and likely to get into porn. Sadly, it has also become a twisted norm for men to struggle with pornography. It seems that if a man does not struggle with pornography, then he is not really a man. Nothing like holding ourselves to a high standard. Moments like these make me glad I am not male.
As for women, though, I think it is safe to say our reasons are not visual. Believe it or not, for a majority of women involved in pornography the visual stimulation addiction to pornography came long after they were really addicted. For many women, pornography satisfies the desire to be accepted, to be cherished, long before it ever satisfies a physical sexual desire.
If you walked into a classroom tomorrow and plopped an X-rated magazine on the desk, I cannot speak for the reaction of the men, but I can tell you that a majority of the women- followers of Christ or not- would not spend long looking at it. For your average everyday woman the idea of pornography is repulsive. In high school, a classmate of mine was taking classes at a local college. In her English class the professor forced the class to watch a porn video in order to ‘expand their artistic sense.’ At the end, they had to write a report. I will never forget how shocked and mortified my friend was that she had been forced to watch that video. The idea of women being treated as objects, brutalized, and humiliated does not sit well with us at all. However, the idea of being loved does.
When I first saw pornography, I was confused. I was thirteen and had happened upon it completely by accident. There was a video with a neat title and I clicked on it, and nearly threw up. There was a physical charge, but that did not cause my addiction. I was curious, so I kept looking, but the pornography just made me sick, so I ventured into the realm of cyber sex and erotica.
That is how I got addicted. Those men made me feel loved and accepted, even though I was adjusting myself to be whomever they wanted. They desired me, and that feeling was my addiction. I got into pornography to figure out how to make them happy. When I tried to back out, that is when my body stepped in and said, “No, you have to have this. You have to have this rush.”
Over the months of cyber sex and romantic stories, I had become a sex object to those men. I had numbed myself to what was once so repulsive. Now, it no longer mattered if those women were being beat up and mistreated because at least they were being loved, right? They are really just like me, aren’t they? Isn’t this love?
That is how many women progress. We do not tend to jump right into the hardcore world of debauchery, but we can get there. Believe me; it is as confusing for the addicts as it is for those who know them.
The church is still overcoming a gender stigma when it comes to pornography. In the mind of the church pornography is a ‘man only’ sin. Period. Women just do not struggle with pornography. The women hear that and feel there is no grace waiting for them in the body of Christ. The only place they have left to run is back into the arms of pornography. The ‘industry’ knows that and makes pornography specifically designed to entice women. The ‘industry’ has caught on and is preying on the hearts of those that the church denies exists.
When women become addicted to pornography, it is really, in my opinion, out of a desperate search for love. Many women found trapped in pornography are struggling with low self-esteem or have rough family lives. Quite a few, like myself, have no relationship with an earthly father and therefore never learned as a young child, what a healthy relationship with a man looked like. Men were there to boss you around, beat you up and leave you behind… just like they do in pornography. That is the new love. The fairy tale happy ever after dream is dead, replaced by ‘settle for whoever can pay your bills.’
Contrary to popular belief, and I believe this is true in the cases of both men and women, this problem is something deeper than a problem with lust. This is a problem with life, and the life Christ promises to us. Porn addicts are not some vile, coldhearted maniacs. If experience proves true, porn addicts, at the deepest part of who they are, are searching, broken hearts in dire need of life. For women, that is our cause, for men, that is the effect.
The way I see it, the physical pull leads men to porn; the longing for love keeps them there. The longing for love leads women to porn; the physical pull keeps them there.
To learn more about Shamed
matt fradd 
It is really sick to see the movies like” Magic Mike” which is about a stripper and then the novels coming out like “Shades of Gray”. These women are being sucked into a culture of sexual perversion! And we wonder why there is the problem with the breakdown of the family! God help us!
You probably don’t know anything about the movie “Magic Mike” except that it is about “a stripper”. Strippers are people too, and this movie has an actual story to tell. It is the fault of the marketing that the movie is seen as “perverse” and quite shallow. Why don’t you read the synopsis on Wikipedia if you don’t plan on watching it. At least you would be able to compose an informed statement. People are changing for the better; they are being more comfortable with their own sexuality. They aren’t sexually perverse, you’re sexually repressed. Traditional families don’t work for most people.
Strippers are people too. Exactly. But porn doesn’t convey that. Porn reduces a person to an object. I’m sure ‘Magic Mike’ has a story to it but I’m pretty sure most women are going to see the movie because “Channing Tatum is SOOoOO hot”, and that’s also what they leave saying. ‘Magic Mike’ marketing may not convey the actual story, but it’s definitely promoting a culture where humans are being reduced to objects for someone else’s gratification.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by people “more comfortable with their own sexuality” or what this refers to.. I just wanted to say though, there’s the idea that sexuality is meant to be expressed in a particular way, not in whatever way we feel like. This is not because sexuality is bad, but because it’s something good given to us for a purpose so it’s meant to be protected. It’s not sexually repressed to say that sexuality is for a purpose. In our society, there’s often the concept that we should just do “whatever we feel”, but this is not us guiding sexuality, this is it controlling us. There’s so much more to the person than that. In reality, it turns out that when people express their sexuality in a proper way, (for example: in marriage, open to life), it becomes something good in their life, and when they express it in a way that doesnt correspond to its purpose, it ends up becoming something damaging. Maybe not at once. But expressing it in the proper way is not limiting it, it’s putting it in the right place, and in the end this is the best way. 🙂 Strippers are people too, of course, we would all agree there, – but the whole idea of a stripper is one of these misuses. So is porn. If sexuality is meant to help us become a gift of ourselves to a spouse, – actions that are based on lust are in the end, selfish and unloving and objectifying of the other person.
Okay, smart guy. Two words–the title of a book…Libido Dominandi
Read it!
Reblogged this on Jacob H Baugher IV and commented:
Very Interesting! A must see!
Hey, great article. Way to put the word out there.
this is an amazing article and I think it is spot on
Too many feelings. Not enough scientific facts. You’re forgetting that you’re brain is also a sex organ.
Why don’t you people read and actual article written by an actual doctor?
And when are you people going to get a simple clue and realize that anything that has morphed into the degraded circus that pornography has over the past 40+ years isn’t any kind of an improvement of anything, other than a further development and acceptance of perversion, an attack on marriage, and a cancelling out of anything that might have possibly been gained by women in being seen as individuals that are equal in personal worth to men.
But then again, I really wouldn’t expect anyone dense enough to actually come to the defense of pornography to be able to form any kind of rational thought.
You do realize that pornography has existed longer than what you think marriage today is. Sexual excitement and stimulation is and was more genuine than marriage ever was. Marriage is a failing institution. I’ll assume that you live in America and that by marriage you’re only considering monogamous marriage between a man and a woman. What does a 50% probability of failure say about the sanctity of marriage?
Why does society as a whole have such a romantic idea about sex and marriage?
Sexual thoughts stimulate the pleasure center’s of the brain urging us to seek more. Without these “dirty” thoughts a man would not get an erection and a woman would not become lubricated. Do you think just physical stimulation is good enough to get a man hard? It doesn’t work unless your mind is into it. And you can bet the man isn’t thinking about God. Different people are wired differently. MOST people get turned on by some kind of porn. Some people don’t. Think of any situation with any object/ living thing. There is probably a porn for it.
You’re example of “scientific proof” is nothing but fallacy. How is that example proof of anything? I won’t even question your questionable sources. Are you seriously saying that praying helped this man and others in their pornography predicament? Praying the rosary? How come it can’t do anything more useful than making victims think that their porn “problem” was solved? Is “God” playing a “sick” joke? There is no way of proving or disproving that praying the rosary fixed the porn brain damage.
Terence, – you are describing sexuality as something that’s supposed to be based on lust. You are actually lowering it. Marriage is so that sexuality could become a way to love a spouse: not to just want some sort of physical feeling. Love is self giving and wanting the good of another.. it’s not a selfish quest for pleasure. That is not love. Nor is it the right expression of human sexuality. It leads to nothing but enslavement and addiction. People often talk of our perspective as being restrictive, well actually I think the perspective you described is much more limited, since it lowers sexuality to nothing more than lust. The human person is not just a body. We have desires to love and to be loved which lust will never satisfy.
Terence, what your missing is that our society’s degrading of sexuality is what ruins marriage. Marriages are falling apart because people have sex outside of marriage, are not loyal, and don’t know what love really is. Love is free, total, faithful, and fruitful, whether it is sexual love or love iwthin a friendship. Because people in our culture fall into passion so easily without using logic, they forget that they could be truly happy if they treated sex the way God intended it. He intended it for a husband and wife to become united and to reproduce children. Every couple I have ever known who figured that out lives in happiness and become closer and closer to God.
Seriously, look into what the Catholic Church teaches about Natural Family Planning, the Theology of the Body, and the connection of marriage to the Church itself. It is really amazing and beautiful how God designed out sexuality. We are the ones who destroy it through out own human failings. But if we really treated marriage and the family and love the way God intended, we would be so much better off. I am not just making things up, I have heard this from so many people and I have learned this from personal experience.
http://vimeo.com/45290691
That’s the beauty of personal stories. Both sides in a court case can have conflicting ‘expert witnesses’ but only one side has a victim’s statement. All the science in the world could never prove to me that the way I felt when I was in pornography was healthy or good or that it was how I was supposed to feel about myself and about sex. Porn is a twisted representation of something that is supposed to be beautiful. You don’t need science to know that.
Thank you for being so vulnerable and wiling to share. God Bless!!
What scientific facts would you consider relevant?
You asked about scientific proof, and what comes to my mind is the story I saw on Jonette Beinkovic’s show “Women of Grace” on EWTN. She interviewed a couple, Bruce and Jeannie Hannemann, who head Elizabeth Ministries which deals with various marriage-related healing issues—their story was quite interesting. It seems that Bruce had an addiction to pornography, which had been somewhat “asleep” for many years that he had never dealt with during his marriage, raise it’s ugly head with a vengeance when his dad passed away—he eventually concluded, during counseling, that it was because his dad was the one who introduced him to pornography to begin with as a teenager. Bruce is very intelligent, and a retired college professor, but after getting into online porn for period of time, his wife noticed that he seemed spaced out, forgetful, and wasn’t talking to her or giving her eye contact like he had in the past, and her first suspicion was that, due to his age (they’re both in their 60’s) it could possibly be Alzheimer’s. He was checked by a physician who gave him an MRI, and he indeed had frontal lobe damage, but had absolutely no signs of Alzheimer’s. At this point his brain kicked in enough for him to admit to her that he had been viewing a lot of porn online since his father’s death (which she didn’t know anything about–big surprise there), and he speculated that perhaps the porn was affecting his brain. He sought help at a secular (non-religious) pornography addiction center that he lived at for several months, where they actually showed him his MRI’s periodically to show him the healing that was taking place from his separation from the viewing pornography and praying the rosary—for some reason the rosary, in particular, heals porn damage of the brain. The man who ran the center, who wasn’t even Catholic, said his patients that pray the rosary (which he recommends to all of them), whatever their religion, even no religion, had a much quicker healing than those who wouldn’t use it.
http://www.elizabethministry.com/Greetings.html
Not everything is scientific. And yes, I am a scientist. My brother is a doctor amd he feels the same way. People have feelings and emotions that can’t always be dealt with by science alone. They need love, the true love of Christ and the real loyalty of people around them. Science cannot solve relationship problems between spouses, siblings, families, friends, and even with God.
[…] For the complete article click HERE. […]
To Terence–
First of all, my proof that I used in this instance was the MRI proof, and the part about the rosary was just part of the story—should I have left that out to make you happy? And what bothers you about a comparatively few people on the internet saying they don’t like porn, or that they think it’s an undesirable addiction—we should have no say? What are you, this site’s Thought Police? That’s real big of you to stick up for something that not only is in no danger of going away, but works it’s way steadily downwards year after year, taking our society right along with it–what a guy. You’re perfectly safe—nobody’s trying to take your porn away from you, and thousands of new addicts join the ranks every day, so you’ve got plenty of company–and they certainly aren’t going to waste any precious porn-time reading anything here, so your need to “clarify” something for their benefit is perfectly useless. The only thing that truly makes any sense for you to be here is your own guilt—yes, your own guilt, and your own feelings of discomfort that anyone even dares to say they don’t like it, because we’re all supposed to going in lock-step to Hell with the likes of you and your friends so that you can all feel like you’re totally safe right up until the very end.
Everything you said is half-true—yes, many marriages fail. Do you think the ever-increasing divorce has nothing to do with porn—at all? Ever since this stupid culture embraced porn, there’s been a steady decline in the respect of women, the ability for people to stay married, and an BIG increase in people who are interested in kiddie porn, and child-adult sex. If you think all this could have absolutely nothing to do with pornography, then your brain obviously doesn’t go all the way to the top floor—so maybe you’re in need of an MRI. You’re taking an effect, the disintegration of marriage due to various forces, porn being one of them, and feminism being another (among other things), and then assuming that it’s the constrictions of marriage that are to blame, not a culture that isn’t hospitable to it. So there’s your first fallacy. Oh, and marriage never stopped being a sacred thing, in fact a Sacrament, just because so many people nowadays find it impossible to tolerate.
Why does society have such a romantic idea about sex and marriage—because we aren’t just animals, that’s why. If you don’t have anyone to have an emotionally satisfying relationship that also involves sex, then this means that everyone else should stop having any “you’re special, and what we’re doing is special” feeling so you don’t feel left out or frustrated because you can’t find it? Porn aficionados always go back to that same thing—that sex should have nothing to do with emotion, or shouldn’t need to—this lack of “romance” eventually leads to something that goes so far down that it eventually sees rape as entertaining, as in pornography, because nobody needs to actually care about anyone else that’s involved—I suppose you think this is much better than “mushy” romance—what a compassionate guy.
Your observation that porn is stimulating, and the man has to be stimulated to have sex—yes—that’s right. But taking sex completely away from anything that keeps it wholesome (like between married people) is an excellent way to end up with a culture that sees one perversion after another accepted—until you’re living in a country that has so many perverts that two missing girls I heard about yesterday have (or had—they’re probably dead by now, the statistics are definitely against them) 241 registered sex offenders living within a 10 mile radius of their homes, and they live in the country in a small town—you think this is normal? You probably think that pornography has nothing to do with adults wanting child sex, but the vast majority of child porn users started out by looking at regular adult porn—it’s a fact. Another fact is that child molesters and rapists are almost always enthusiastic porn users. So you and your ilk’s need for adult porn steadily takes many who look at into a search for something younger and younger—which is the way that sex always goes, sexual liberation, that is—just like in ancient Rome.
Why don’t you think that one couples experience with pornography, with both of them having M.A.’s, and one of them teaching science for 30 years to college students, is “questionable sources”? If they’re “questionable”, then I posit that YOU are, too. There’s another porn addict tendency—to keep crying for absolute proof that it isn’t good, but quickly discounting anything that could possibly lead them to any alternative conclusion—how impressive. I frankly believe that anyone that can’t see anything significantly wrong with pornography has had their brain fully ossified by it already.
Here’s something I just wrote that is my personal response to the ubiquitous porn addict—I bet you will probably just LOVE it—
What an Honest Porn Addict Would Say
I think I’ll try to un-convolute the invariably idiotic argument that is postulated by the average porn addict, and try to straighten out the whole mess by translating what they usually say over to what is the actual, unvarnished truth—
I don’t care if pornography degrades society—I only care about my own personal satisfaction that I derive from it, and even if it goes against all common sense to believe that it has absolutely no bad consequences, as if it’s floating out in space somewhere and couldn’t possibly have any impact whatsoever on morals, or on the way that women and children are seen in society, I hereby choose, as a Free American, to use pornography, because only the things that I want really matter to me—the rest of society, the future, and humanity as a whole can all go fend for itself.
I also don’t care if I never have a girlfriend or a wife, because a girlfriend or a wife might be offended by my pornography use, and it would be way too oppressive for me to change my habits. I really don’t care if I never have an actual, real, loving relationship with the opposite sex because pornography is the perfect virtual substitute for real love. I also don’t care if my own appetite for degrading porn gives me an undesirable “vibe” that effectively repels women, either, because like I said, a real woman isn’t anything I need in my life anyway. Women are usually very narrow-minded—most of them don’t like degrading porn, and even though this makes perfect sense that they would be offended by it, just like I would be similarly offended by porn that degrades men, I would prefer to believe that women who can’t accept it are just jealous and unnecessarily judgmental, because seeing it any other way makes me uncomfortable with my own porn use—which, like I already said, means more to me than just about anything because it’s fully replaced having a wife or a girlfriend in my life. If someone insults or dislikes pornography, it’s the very same as if they had insulted or didn’t like my wife or girlfriend, if I had one–it feels exactly like they’re insulting my “mate”. I also feel justified in referring to all current pornography as if it’s as innocuous as a 1965 Playboy, because even though this particularly mild level of porn is nothing I’d be even remotely interested in viewing at this point, it’s infinitely much easier to defend by implying that it’s all still this way, and then I can react as if anyone who doesn’t like pornography is exactly like someone’s prudish 60’s mom, which then in turn makes me look like the rational, humane, put-upon victim–even though you’d have to have been living on a different planet to believe that it hasn’t morphed into something way, way sicker and rougher over the past 40+ years.
I also don’t like anyone mentioning or believing in God, either—because I realize that this “God” concept makes people see porn as a bad thing. My porn use means so much to me, that it’s not only been a replacement for me having a wife or girlfriend, but it’s also replaced my needing a “God” in my life, too. Because of pornography, I desperately need to believe that I won’t even exist after my death, on any level–the idea that there’s a God would make me feel guilty, and feeling guilty about my own porn use seems worse to me than taking the risk that I might actually be wrong about there being no God and no afterlife. I can’t stand anyone thinking that they even have the right to remind me that there’s any “God”, and I will actually seek out believers to insult them—they would probably say that I’m so full of demons who have made strongholds into my psyche that I’m foolishly trying to defend the territory that they’ve conquered in me, like I’m some sort of “Stockholm Syndrome” type that’s just mindlessly going along with my captors—I really can’t believe the nerve and the arrogance of these people. The very thought of this absolutely infuriates me—you’d think that if I REALLY didn’t believe in God, that I’d just ignore the believers and look at porn with absolutely no worries, but I can’t abide anyone even having the right to say anything about God, because deep down it really does make me feel guilty (for some indefinable reason), and this creeping, insidious guilt can, at times, ruin my ability to fully enjoy pornography. Oh, and in spite of the fact that I’m supposedly a big supporter of free speech, I absolutely can’t stand to hear anyone criticize pornography, in particular—in fact sticking up for pornography is really the only thing I still feel passionate about at this point.
I also don’t like feminism, either, except the part where it says that it’s OK for a woman to do whatever she wants with her body—I like that part because many women are like naïve, insecure children in comparison to men, and they’re always plenty of them who want attention so badly that they’ll do anything to get it—and I really like the “anything” part. The part I don’t like about feminism is the part where they say that degrading pornography that features women is bad—that makes me very upset, even though if the shoe was on the other foot, and I was the one who was having my sexuality continually made into a degrading circus, then I miraculously wouldn’t have any trouble seeing it as bad, too. Women actually deserve to be degraded in pornography, because they’re so dense that they believe they deserve any respect at all—but please don’t tell anyone that I said that, at least not any decent people, because I’ve got a respectable image to maintain. The more porn that I look at, the more I can see that women thinking that they’re more than anything but props for the assorted fantasies of men is crazy—seeing women as full human beings really threatens me, because I want, as a man, to believe that just the fact that I’m male makes me somehow better than any woman on earth. Since I occasionally meet women who are better than I am at various things in the course of my life, I need degrading pornography to look at so that I can go back into that warm cocoon where all women are just like interchangeable car parts, and none of them deserves any respect, because it’s the perfect way for me feel much better about myself and my own failings. I often proclaim that pornography has had absolutely no negative impact whatsoever on my respect for women, and that I have every bit as much respect for women as I had before I began viewing porn, if not even MORE respect, at this point. No, I’m not so completely self-deluded to actually believe that this is true, because even I know that it’s most likely humanly impossible, but I just keep on saying it to whoever will listen, because even though I know that it isn’t true in my case, or in any other case that I’m aware of, I can still conceive in my mind that it COULD be true, somewhere, at some time, for someone, and I think that the other people in my life, if they care about me at all, really owe me the benefit of the doubt. It’s very important that I try to make others believe that pornography has had no impact on my respect for women, because otherwise they would rightly criticize my pornography use, and since it’s something that would be about as difficult as cutting off my own arm to stay away from, I find simply lying about it to be much easier than going to all the trouble to change my habits. Looking at pornography has made my entire life one of lying to others, and lying to myself—and as you can well imagine, it’s psychologically very stressful to be living multiple lies day in and day out, so I would expect your understanding and compassion in this regard. It also doesn’t matter to me if pornography gets more and more degrading every year, either—it needs to keep up with the times, just like anything else does, because it’s not like it could be actually FORMING the times we live in, or anything like that, and the fact that the average appetite for porn is getting grosser and more violent every year doesn’t bother me either, not in the least—but don’t you even DARE call me anti-social, because even though I’m someone who now feeds on the degradation of others like I need it to live, nobody better ever insult or denigrate me—I simply can’t bear it.
I also don’t like to hear anything about rape—not because I see rape as a deplorable thing, and I find it upsetting, but because I like rape, and consequently I don’t want anyone to even have the right to say that they’ve been raped, because this might lead to someone trying to take all of the rape porn out of circulation. I know that this seems like sheer paranoia, and a really big stretch of the imagination, but I can’t help it, I honestly feel this way. I can’t stand hearing that someone doesn’t like pornography because so much of it either resembles rape or IS actual rape—because in the first place, the rest of society doesn’t even need to be informed about all of this or have it called to their attention, and also because we certainly don’t need to decide whether rape porn could be detrimental to the safety of women or could make them seem like they’re less valuable in the eyes of people who like to see rape or faux rape in pornography, either. There’s nothing I hate worse than hearing a woman say that she’s been raped, because the natural inclination of those who don’t look at porn is to see rape as some kind of a bad thing, as a violation—my friends and I see rape as very entertaining, and any woman who’s unlucky enough to get herself “raped” either deserves it, or is outright lying about it—there is no other rational possibility, in our minds. We highly resent anyone saying that rape either exists, or is inherently wrong—either one of these ideas makes us go into a hysterical frenzy of derision toward anyone stupid enough to believe that any woman is raped, or doesn’t deserve to be raped, and we ourselves ought to know that this is contradictory and sounds exactly like one thing cancelling the other one out, but please try to understand—this really isn’t an easy position to defend. We’re sick of women complaining that they’ve been “raped”, in any fashion, and we’re trying our best to stop this highly unfair tendency for people to have an automatic knee-jerk reaction to side with those who’ve been “raped”, and we think that it’s about time our society outgrew this very limited way of seeing sex, which, after all, is just a natural thing, no matter what it happens to look like to the casual viewer. Even though I’d definitely know it if I were raped, the fact that my friends and I like to see women raped is why rape is not only a complete non-issue to us, and why we want to see it as fictional, but it’s also why we really resent anyone trying to make us feel guilty about it, too, because anyone feeling even the slightest bit guilty for watching rape porn is infinitely much, MUCH worse than anyone actually being “raped”. How I can literally search on the internet for rape porn by using the word “rape” in my searches, without being disgusted with myself that I’m sick enough to be looking for someone being either raped or faux raped is totally my business, not yours—please keep your old-fashioned, hopelessly narrow way of viewing human sexuality to yourself. We also like to think that women want to be raped, but unfortunately, if they really did like it, then it wouldn’t BE rape, and since the violation aspect is what we find most satisfying about it, it really must be there for it to be sufficiently stimulating to us. The more that I think about it, the more I really don’t feel comfortable even talking openly about this, so let’s just please change the subject—I need to be able to like myself (and be liked) in the morning.
I also don’t care about child pornography—it really doesn’t matter to me at all if most kiddie porn viewers didn’t start out looking at, or deliberately looking for, child porn, and whetted their appetite for child pornography on adult pornography to begin with—to me this is entirely the problem of these ill-supervised kids and their negligent parents. I truly believe that my right to see pornography completely supersedes the necessity for any child to be safe from being used by adults to make pornography—and how could anyone in their right mind see it any other way. I also highly resent anyone mentioning the adult-porn-leads-to-kiddie-porn connection to me because I flatly refuse to feel guilty for anything concerning pornography, no matter what it is. That people into child molestation or those that are serial killers are almost invariably heavy porn users means absolutely nothing to me, and anyone being so unlucky as to end up being victimized by either of these types is entirely on their own, as far as I’m concerned. I also don’t want anyone censoring the internet, even though there were originally only 2 organizations promoting child-adult sex when the internet began, and now there’s hundreds of them—that’s no more than an unfortunate coincidence, and anyone who sees this as a bad sign of things to come is out of their minds.
So maybe now you can understand why I am rightly upset by anyone who doesn’t like pornography, or anyone who ventures to say publically that they don’t like it—it pushes all of my buttons because I’m forced by my lifestyle to go through a whole assortment of rigorous mental and emotional machinations every day to see myself as a good person, or see myself as someone who’s not significantly worse than the person I was before I began looking at pornography, and because of all of this continual self-deception I really don’t feel that I will ever need any reminders that it might not be a good thing. I’ve given up having a relationship with the opposite sex, given up believing in God, don’t believe that anyone is actually “raped”, and also don’t care if adult porn is the “gateway drug” to child pornography, too, so now that I’ve gone so far out on a limb that I’ve bet literally everything I have on the idea that porn is inherently harmless, anyone having the gall to criticize it makes me understandably nervous. My fellow porn addicts are very important to me, too, because we all believe the same destructive lies about pornography and feel compelled to helpfully re-enforce each other’s mental and emotional disintegration, and because most of us don’t have a “significant other” in our lives, either, we tend to cling to each other desperately. I know that this is difficult to comprehend, but even though I’ve thoroughly trashed all of my moral sense by viewing pornography, and now ironically see myself as the poor, misunderstood victim of anyone who doesn’t like it, I still fully expect everyone I meet to respect me and see me as rational, compassionate person regardless of this, even though I no longer deserve it–and my personality has been so inverted by viewing pornography that I really can’t help but be extremely insulted by anyone who treats me as if I’m someone who doesn’t deserve the same respect that is due to a decent person, because this, understandably, makes me morally outraged. You’d think I’d have enough sense to at least to keep my mouth shut, out of some vague, remotely uncomfortable sense of shame, or if only to be seen as an acceptable person, but I need so very badly to believe that porn is a perfectly ok thing that I just can’t keep my nonsensical, self-serving, anti-social concepts to myself. Even though I’ve been emotionally, mentally and spiritually ruined by pornography, I feel very strongly that it should have no impediments whatsoever in society, so that by the sheer accumulating number of other addicts, I will at least feel less isolated and less like a perverted “freak”. I know that it’s almost impossible to have any pity for me, but I would sincerely ask that you please try, because remember, I’m a victim—of my own pornography use.
Wonderful post!
Terence Pang,
I definitely agree that the brain is also a “sex organ”. In fact, most things about sex are in your “head”, your nervous system and emotions. Oh by the way – incidentally, that’s exactly why you’re not a slave to it. Not to testosterone, not to the instinct to reproduce, not to your awesome vision, scent, prefrontal cortex, etc. These are pretty circumstantial EXCUSES that you use to understand and treat yourself (only) like an ANIMAL. Most women really won’t be that interested in the size of your penis. Plus, this blog post was actually about women. You’re better than just that, even if it isn’t a doctor’s role to inform you about that. You can lead your own life and save the best things about your body for the one who deserves it.
If you’re so comfortable about the sick stuff you’re still watching, what are you doing here Terence?
Traditional families don’t work for most people? Are you saying you have experienced personal failure in that area? Are you saying that children of traditional families don’t do better? If it’s the first, I can only empathize, but as the child of parents who have argued all of their life and would have divorced if it weren’t for their kids, I can see how having both of them at home and even all the hardships and lessons they provide us with makes us better rounded people in the end. There’s still some love involved; and I don’t have my heart broken because they didn’t simply decide they should start loving other people than us. This has a lot of connections to the logic of porn and endless new partners, always disposable and always imperfect. Anyway, if it’s the second question, then you’re the one who needs to catch up on the scientific literature.
You really need to understand it’s possible to quit porn and that in the end there’s noone stopping you but yourself and all the excuses. Not everyone is doing it. I know how empty it feels each time you’ve had your fix. We’ve overcome that. You should not surrender. Happiness and love are about so much more, if you got that you’d realize you’re wasting your life with what amounts to nothing. People making this site know better and you should pay some real attention to it sometime.
I can honestly say that the most disgusting type of person I can think of isn’t the unrepentant porn addict, but the unrepentant porn addict that goes OUT OF THEIR WAY to defend pornography. I find this particularly reprehensible, and that anyone is infected with this much unmitigated gall, such as coming to a site like this just for the sole reason to hassle someone who doesn’t like it, leaves me completely outraged—and these degenerates couldn’t possibly love it more than I HATE it.
I may be stating the obvious to some here, but anyone who criticizes pornography on message boards of all kinds in this country usually gets resoundingly attacked, with extreme disrespect and venom by these miscreants, who, if they aren’t just hurling obscenities, usually do their very best to make the porn critic feel horribly guilty and out of touch from reality—this is from people who watch rape, gang rape, anal rape, etc.—and they see anyone who has a problem with society going straight into the toilet with this garbage as the guilty party. This may also be totally obvious, but their ranks are growing exponentially every day, and they absolutely HATE anyone mentioning or believing in God, because the God “concept” hurts their ability to go full steam ahead into Hell with no worries. We should be truly worried that we will be seen as real enemies to this scum, and only the future will tell us just what sort of “punishment” they’ll think we deserve—and whether the God “concept” is going to be something they will also feel fully justified in trying to eliminate, too, as in going so far to make it against the law for anyone to even mention God. The future really DOES NOT LOOK GOOD for those who have the sense (and the bravery) to let others know that they don’t like pornography.
Tell everyone you know—friends, family, the people you work with, the people you hang out with and the people you go to church with that YOU DON”T LIKE PORNOGRAPHY!!!
WE MUST NOT BE SILENCED!!!
Speaking of ‘real scientific facts’ here’s some shared by “actual” doctors:
“…pornography “supercharges” the area of the brain called the hypothalamus, the part of the brain responsible for primary drives: eating, drinking and sex…. taps into the area of the brain—called the amygdala—that is responsible for negative emotions such as stress or anxiety or sexual tension… viewing pornography and masturbating weakens the region of our brain known as the singular cortex, the region that is responsible for moral and ethical decision making.”
http://www.covenanteyes.com/2012/07/09/how-does-porn-effect-the-body-and-brain/
And this particular type of brain damage is what is fueling the huge increase in child pornography, with more of these poor children being filmed by their own parents than ever before. Porn viewing is a conscience-killer and a soul-killer.
I saw on the news the other day where a married couple’s cell phone was found in a shopping cart by an employee at a grocery store, and it had pictures on it of a 4-year-old girl having sex with these people, and the police eventually found out who’s daughter she actually was, and discovered that her own mother had “rented” her to these perverts to make porn for 6 weeks–and this was after the daughter had already been rented out for 6 weeks previously to someone else who had made pornography with her.
What on earth is happening to this country??? God help us!!!
People of good will must unite to oppose the degradation of our culture and of men by the moral poison of Magic Mike. I wish every woman who saw this movie, or who will go to its debauched Broadway strip-a-thon good luck exampling to their 13 year old sons why they oggled male strippers. How could someone who is either a mother or who could ever think of themselves as a mother act so violently against responsible male sexual development in adolescents? Magic Mike is perverse in part because of what it says to our sons, which is this: “hey you struggling with the pains of adolescence you must know that men are to be objectified and instrumentalized by aggresive female lust; and too bad if you aren’t “hot” in this world of unbridled feminine sexual agreression–for if so, then you just don’t count at all.” Good luck, ladies, ever explaining that to your sons! You are raping their minds. You truly are. And lastly, wow! right after responsible people cleaned up the (female )strip joints and peep shows from Broadway these people are putting another massive (male) strip joint–Magic Mike the Musical–right at the very heart of Broadway. That is outrageous, truly outrageous. I really think–and I am serious–that we need a national protest movement against turing once family-friendly Broadway into a Ladies Only La Bare sleaze-fest. I am very serious: THIS HAS GONE FAR ENOUGH. Please join me in this–protectors of common sense and elementary deceny, you are not alone. We can do this!
I would never go to a movie like Magic Mike, because I think the objectification of either sex is deplorable.
This whole culture is throwing away the morals that made it great (at one time) for cheap thrills.
Not only are men being objectified in movies like this one and in strip joints, but they are also now being raped and gang-raped in the military–my husband who was in the military in the 80’s said he had never heard of any men being raped by their fellow soldiers–now 37% of the rapes in the military are men raping other men, and it’s usually gang rapes.
Pornography is something that makes everyone’s dignity, whether they be male, female, or child into a disposable commodity, and makes marriage and family values into nothing but meaningless words.
Lori: Powerfully stated and absolutely correct. Objectification per se is hideous. Today women seem to think that their objectification of men is just “good clean fun.” How depressing is the power of a lie! As to male rape in the military, alas, it is even worse than you state. According to the Huffington Post: “In fiscal year 2010 alone, according to DOD estimates, there were over 19,000 sexual assaults in the military, with less than 13.5% reported, due to fear of retaliation. The Department of the Navy estimates that approximately 10,700 involved male victims.” So it is over 50% of sexual assaults in the military. This sex-crazed culture is truly a culture of death.
Thank you, CJRP, for being a man who has no trouble saying that MEN RAPE OTHER MEN now in our culture, in the military–this is no doubt one more thing the porn addicts refuse to believe even happens, and most likely also believe has nothing to do with the pornification of our society.
How’s this for the height of irony—so now over 50% of the rapes in the military are men raping other men, and it’s usually gang rapes–in the article I saw recently about this subject, about 1/3rd of the comments that were left after the article had to be removed for unacceptable content. I know WHY these posts were removed—because the new pornographically-poisoned citizen sees anyone’s complaints about being raped as unbearable to hear—even if the people being raped are men.
This is what you get when you have literally millions of (mostly) men who daily peruse and pursue any perverted thing that they find stimulating on the internet, and not only is much of this stuff very degrading to the object, but some of it is actual rape, or it’s faux rape that looks virtually the same to the viewer. This fare is so sacrosanct to these jackals that the thought of anyone, male or female, actually complaining about being raped, or being so nervy as to have the audacity to go to the authorities, is so unacceptable that they work themselves up into a group howl about how totally wrong it is for anyone to see what happened to them as a “rape”—this is perfectly unendurable to them.
It sure didn’t take long for the love of violation to make a full circle, did it? Are the men who like degrading pornography really so totally gone mentally that the thought of men also being gang raped means nothing to them, too? Unbelievable. Their love of seeing women degraded is so overwhelming that they actually don’t even care if THEY might be the next ones to get raped or gang-raped—how’s that for mentally ill. Now these idiots can live in a society that sees their rape as nothing, too, thanks to the philosophical foundation that’s been laid due to their own pornography use.
The original “rape myth” was that women secretly wanted to be raped—which for the average normal person (who’s getting less average and less normal by the minute) sounds crazy—now the new “rape myth” is that NOBODY is ever “raped”—they only want to think that they’ve been raped because they’re either poor sports who changed their minds halfway through, or they’re outright confabulators who delight in getting people who are totally innocent into a lot of trouble.
One particularly bizarre and disturbing post I saw that was left for a different article postulated that “Why should we care if women are being “raped” (yes, with that word in quotes), if no one cares if men are raped in prison, and that this has been going on for years. What??? So now it looks logical to throw the whole concept of someone being violated out the window because “nobody” has ever cared if men were being raped in prison??? Pornography turns the human mind completely and utterly inside out, where bad is good, and good is bad, and this insanity absolutely PROVES it.
So now we live in a country that is rapidly seeing rape as just a meaningless word used by those with over-active imaginations, and the violation of anyone, male or female, is regarded as just nothing but good wholesome fun.
How horrible it must be to be somone who’s been raped in the military, either male or female, and then be expected to be a “good sport” about it the next day by your superiors who really don’t want to hear you “whining” about it, as if you’re the one who’s the only problem–I’m sure there must have been someone who has committed suicide due to this sort of thing, considering how many suicides there are now in the military.
This article joins together “cyber sex” and “pornography” as if they were the same thing.
Erotic stories can certainly be a form of pornography when read online, and the article mentions it by name. One can surmise that it became the author’s preferred format for pornography.
Erotic fiction is a mainstream form of pornography designed for women. A softcore form of it are found in paperbacks in grocery stores.
Cyber sex, due to to the fact that it is an ephemeral product of two individuals and a lust of one for another, each an active contributor to it, has an element of intimacy that pornography doesn’t involve. One might more justly gloss over the technological medium and call it closer to sex than anything else.
This leaves so many questions unanswered by the article. The need for acceptance the author felt was not satisfied by the pornography. It came from the cyber sex.
From what I understood from the article, the cyber sex was’t satisfying, either, and left her feeling used–I agree with you that cyber sex is different than pornography, and that it is more intimate, but what kind of intimacy is it–intimacy with someone who you will probably never meet because you don’t actually want to get to know this person (or they would rather not get to know you), because the whole relationship hinges so much on the fantasy of it, which usually doesn’t survive after a face-to-face meeting–so it sounds to me to be a very big dissapointment for anyone who’s looking for more than a no-see masturbation “partner”.
Cyber sex sounds to me to be the virtual equivalent to picking up stangers at bus stations or bars for sex who you never intend to get to know any better than that–which sounds like a typical male fantasy that a woman would find this satisfying emotionally, but I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of women would only find anything like this degrading and painful in the long run–or even the short run.
I can see why a young woman would think that she might find real love through cyber sex, and also how she would feel like her heart’s been raked over the coals afterwards, and like she’s been thoroughly used for sex without anyone having laid a hand on her, which must be very strange to deal with afterwards. Only the shallowest woman with no desire or ability to commit to another person to begin with would be truly happy with it.
As the author of this article, let me help clear it up for you. First off, I don’t care what you label it, it is all porn.
I can 100% assure you that erotica was not my ‘preferred form’ of pornography. My preferred form was hardcore pornography, not soft-core porn, femme porn, romance or whatever else you might classify in the genre that is ‘typical’ of women.
I was introduced to and became addicted to hardcore pornography. Erotica and sex-chatting were the vehicles that fueled that addiction. Erotica “met” the need for acceptance but at the same time warped that need into something pornography could fill. Erotica killed the dream enough to let hardcore pornography in. My time in erotica and sex-chatting was short, probably not even three months. When it got in, pornography numbed that need altogether. The need didn’t matter anymore, what mattered was my physical pleasure. It’s exactly what pornography does: rips the heart and soul away from a human reducing them to nothing more than a collection of body parts.
I am not sure what questions you feel are unanswered, but I would be happy to answer them for you.
What kind of sites were you on to begin with when you started having cyber sex? Were they sexual in nature or someting other than that?
Did you ever feel bad that the men you were talking to didn’t want to meet you–or did you not want to meet them anyway, or was that not important to either you or them?
Did the men want you to look at specific images, and create a dialog that was connected to these images–and is this what originally got you into looking at pornography?
I’m sorry if these sound like dumb questions–I’m really not up on things like this–