Not All of Us

I think I was about 12 years old. I was visiting relatives for the summer outside of where my family was living in Colorado. I was sick with a cold and restricted to an upstairs bedroom. Since I was bored and alone, at my request an older cousin brought me something to read. What I wanted were comic books, what I got was my very first exposure to Penthouse magazine. Now this essay could easily be one of those testimonies of how I descended into the dark world of porn and how it ruined my life - just like it has for countless other guys - but it’s not. Did I find those dirty magazines exciting? Oh yeah. Was I exposed to other opportunities of seeing Penthouse and Playboy magazines thereafter? Of course. Did I at some point acquire my own magazines, hide them, and share them with other kids? No. Not one. Ever. Why not? I grew up being taught that “dirty magazines” were bad (long before the internet). As far as I knew so did all other kids, but some boys indulged in them anyway and I didn't. Again, why not? Blind obedience to my parents? Fear of punishment for being caught? I don’t know for sure but did believe that only sleaze-balls looked at dirty mags and I didn't want to be associated with them. However, what may have originally begun as an aversion to parental disapproval and punishment eventually matured into a self-policing of not allowing myself to view porn or even looking at women baring it all, and that in turn gave way to a deeper understanding of how the objectification of women into purely objects of pleasure is harmful to individuals and all of society.

When living in Brazil as a high school exchange student, I remember walking out of a house while several boys around my age sat around the TV watching a porn movie. Several years later I quickly turned my back on a gay porn video in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after a friend took me to a house party full of guys, like my friend, who had that kind of inclination. I didn't, but my friend probably held out hope I’d come around. Another time - perhaps even earlier that night - my friend took me to a gay bar where I had the unique opportunity of being visually undressed by his friends while I played outside volleyball. For the first time in my life I really understood what many women must experience when they are visually (let alone physically) assaulted by lustful men: I felt seriously violated. Yet another time we ended up at a party in which a teenager drugged out of his mind stumbled into the room with a much older man who owned a Jiffy Lube. It was obvious that this young man was the sex toy of the other. He had no other value. Unfortunately for this young man, the owner of the oil-change shop could act out his fantasies on. That is not the case when one immerses themselves in porn on the internet and in magazines and videos: they remain intangible fantasies. I think it is for this reason than for any other as I got older why I refused to indulge in what was enslaving increasingly more and more men (and even women) in the U.S. and apparently the world at large. It wasn't so much because it was “wrong” or “a sin”, or that I would meet with parental disapproval, but because porn promised something it couldn't deliver: fulfillment. If one has an impulse or strong desire to keep coming back to something with increasing frequency then it is clearly not satisfying a need, but is resulting in an addiction. Sometimes these addictions can result in harm and violence. Are marriages stronger for the use of porn or weaker? Are spouses/partners having a harder time sexually pleasing the user/addict? One can ask a dozen or more questions like these, but the bottom line is this: porn is a drag on individuals, relationships, and society and the data backs it up. Utah’s governor hasn't declared it a health hazard for no reason. Even TIME magazine recently devoted an issue addressing the harmful effects of porn. 

All the people in failing and failed relationships and in counseling for porn addictions very clearly indicate that their use has serious detrimental side effects. What people do on their own time is indeed their own business, but if they think what they do only affects them they are deceiving themselves. What we think about and what we do on a daily basis reinforces our neural networks, and pornographic images leave a powerful imprint. Much more is known today about the damaging effects of pornography then ever before, and how it alters brain chemistry to progressively desire more stimulation resulting in increasingly hard-core porn addiction. But it sometimes doesn't stop there. It can stop with child porn or even child sexual predation. It’s reported that 80% of untraceable internet activity - referred to as “the dark web” - is child porn. Most porn users don’t become pedophiles, of course, but it does make me wonder just how celebrities like The Who guitarist Pete Townshend and Subway spokesman Jerod Fogle ended up being titillated by children. As everyone will recall, The Catholic Church got beat up pretty badly a while back regarding the “Priest Abuse Scandal”. There isn't a whole lot of good to say about that shameful episode except this: it slammed the door on “pedophilia chic”…at least for awhile. In her book, Adam and Eve after the Pill, Mary Eberstadt discusses how certain elites in influential positions (writers, Hollywood types, etc) were trying to soften-up the public regarding adult-minor sexual relations, but when the priest scandal hit those on the political left could not help but attack the hated Catholic hierarchy. The unfortunate problem for them was that by attacking the Church they stopped their own forays into child/adolescent sex. From evil good really can spring forth, and we at least can be grateful that perhaps one generation was spared, but unfortunately the proponents of adult-minor sex are back. Yes, pedophilia chic is gearing up once again.

Late one evening in the country of Luxembourg a few years ago I walked into the lobby of my hotel. No one was there, but on the large-screen TV were a naked man and woman in intimate union. I watched it for as long as my legs took me to the TV and the switch to change the station. It wasn't long, but the image remains. Wait, did I say they were in “intimate union”? That’s actually the last thing they were in. What I really saw were two people who were physically engaged but emotionally disengaged. Despite the intimacy of the act, the man’s face struck me as emotionless and cold, and the woman only had hands for herself. I did not invite these images into my mind, but there they are. However, I do think they are telling. Pornography is not about male and female (and certainly not about male-male or female-female) becoming one through sexual union, but about personal desire and/or gratification. It is the lie that keeps on lying, for one can never become fulfilled or gratified through self-stimulation and by objectifying and fantasizing about others.

I do not view pornography as a lifestyle choice but as a weakness. I see absolutely no redeeming value in it but only frustration and am not the least bit interested in being whisked away into the world of self-addicted sexual slavery. I’m a free man and aim to stay that way. It’s tragic when kids get exposed to porn, but it’s pathetic when men get hooked on it. The former are victims, the latter are junkies.

So what’s my point in doing this write-up, to crow about being morally superior to the staggering numbers of men who do view porn? No. I’m not that smug, for smugness paves the way to moral failure. My initial resistance to smut was not due to any strength of my own but the result of my upbringing and perhaps the grace of God. I wrote about this because it has been brought to my attention lately that there seems to be a prevalent attitude in some quarters that all guys view porn, so we just have to deal with it. As I recall, actress Jennifer Lawrence did just that in excusing away her boyfriend’s porn habit a year or so ago. Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I for one say the hell with that. Jennifer Lawrence might have low expectations for her boyfriend, but not all of us believe in reducing women to sex objects and I have nothing but contempt for an industry that specializes in perversion and ruining lives. The addicted need to be helped, the pushers need to be punished (especially those making billions of dollars selling hard-core and child porn), and the industry needs to be dismantled. We are increasingly becoming a society that justifies, glorifies, and encourages base animalistic urges instead of cultivating qualities of temperance in self-restraint, self-control, and loyalty and we've done so because we see no value in the latter qualities. As Western morals continue to devolve into merely the pursuit of absolute personal license, we will increasingly alienate our loved ones in real relationships for fantasy ones and will further the destruction of the already seriously weakened family.

However, not all is lost. Even though I can’t relate to the porn epidemic, people like Matt Fradd can. Here’s some links that can help:

http://integrityrestored.com

http://theporneffect.com

http://mattfradd.com/category/pornography/