Aside from an addiction framework, consider what is the devastating impetus to damaging sexual fantasies. (*Noteworthy is that not all fantasy is unhealthy or sinful - a point which I may someday discuss further. Fantasy can be the impetus for creative endeavors. For a clinical discussion about the potential of erotic fantasy to heal check out this article by Esther Perel. Still, here I am talking about common illicit fantasies.) It is sometimes argued that men use power to get sex and that they disempower women through sex. But sex IS itself powerful. It's not even evil that's inherent in our sexuality but its power that causes us trepidation. Some have argued that porn kills. Yes, that’s true to some extent. But porn use can feel so exhilarating. It doesn’t feel like it’s killing. It feels like it’s invigorating and giving power. Is the driving factor in indulgence of fantasy that users are somehow already dead or emotionally dismembered? I believe fantasy is a sometimes a desperate encompassing attempt to enliven, reconnect and feel powerful when men aren’t supported, persuaded or socialized to other truly viable options. To such guys sex is a socially acceptable vehicle for transmuting their deepest longings for significance. When they don't know significance otherwise - due to castrating experiences - the fantasy yields immense power even if it is ultimately and knowingly a counterfeit power.
Psychologist Dr. Ley wrote the following article at the request of the guy who runs the website quitporngetgirls: Article here!
Oh wow! Discernment. This has a lot of truth mixed in with some sadly misinformed and familiar-sounding information. The porn industry has oft said that society benefits from porn through decreased sex crimes as availability of erotica goes up. Well that doesn't exactly take into account the staggering statistics regarding sex trafficking and illegal materials that are produced sort of in conjunction with the legal stuff. At present some 300,000 children in America alone are at risk for commercial sexual exploitation. I have met a number of women who've been involved in making this stuff, and believe me, it's not a "victimless crime." If it looks like it would be painful - guess what! That's not Hollywood special effects. It DOES hurt. To claim that as access to porn goes up violence against women and children goes down is absolute damnable BS!
However, I agree with Dr. Ley's assertion that sex addiction is a made-up paradigm. While engaging a twelve-step approach has helped countless individuals take responsibility for their compulsions, absent a more comprehensive framework, it is limited in its broad applicability. I absolutely concur with the author that it's not pathological to like sex, like frequent sex or high intensity sex. What porn offers many is permission to plumb the depths of their own sense of meaning and purpose present in their own (again not pathological) fantasies mostly free from judgement and shame. Until a more satisfying and life- affirming, Godly alternative is convincingly advanced, I believe we will continue to see individuals engaging in problematic and ego-dystonic use of porn. Porn is the "brave new world" where people can normalize/legitimize their deepest yearnings and struggles. Christians offer hope by actually listening to these struggles and lifting burdens, being transparent and real that life includes suffering but also freedom and redemption. Our task is not to prematurely shut down the explicit fantasy but to as quickly as possible help our brothers and sisters move away from engaging /entertaining thoughts about the compulsive (external flesh and blood) act and move toward searching out the underlying obsession (rulers/authorities/powers of this dark world/ spritiual forces in the heavenly realm). Clearly, staring down the face of evil by wrestling with the darkness that holds people captive is much more frightening than just shutting down the external problem moralistically. But we have a sinless high priest who empathizes with our struggles who permits us to approach the throne of grace confidently that we can find mercy and grace in our time of need.
The issue of porn is debated from polarization and the usual tendency to want to legislate freedom and morality absent the ability to instigate genuine transformation. I'm hoping for discourse among my concerned and God-fearing friends and colleagues but at present, I feel like a voice in the dark. Sex addiction is a misnomer that doesn't get to the heart of the issue. In all too many cases, it is an excuse or distraction from dealing with the core issues. Many evangelicals will recall that James Dobson met with serial rapist and murderer Ted Bundy on death row in order to highlight the dangers of porn. As though porn, rather than sociopathy - or Ted Bundy himself, was the reason those women were killed! Now the Cleveland kidnapper is trying to pull the same deceptive wool over our eyes. The evangelical position of the last 40 years has defaulted to legislating morality, and has therefore played a role in overplaying an inadequate reference point. It is curious to me that EVERY well-known activist on the issue of sex trafficking, those that are changing policy and effectively transforming lives out of sex slavery are women who profess redemption and faith in Jesus. Furthermore, they don't always look and sound like the church ladies we have been accustomed to. They are all survivors of the sex trade in some form themselves and as such reject the silliness of modesty/purity/virginity cults and rather seek radical sexual transformation and (dare I say?) liberation! Women don't bear sole responsibility for evoking lust from men. And their worth as women isn't centered in their virginal qualities anymore than it is in their sexual attributes. Telling women how to dress is as unproductive as telling men not to look at dirty pictures. It just doesn't get to the underlying person in either case.
This is a men’s issue as well as a women’s issue. So I'd really like to know what the guys have to say. Chime in by clicking the words "Comments so far" below.
The thing that struck me the most here is the idea that the porn industry is creating a need, which they then fulfill and so perpetuate their existence and influence. The problem here is that among the majority of sex "addicts" the porn industry doesn't create the need. The men bring the need, the need isn't to look at porn it's to stop hurting. The hurt in most instances wasn't created by the sex industry it was created by life, by our broken world, the addict turns to porn and the sex industry because it offers to medicate his pain in an ever increasing and easy to get medium, but the consumer of illicit sex doesn't just need to get dried out but to get healed. Support and recovery groups can offer the support needed to help get men passed a porn or sex addiction, but each man needs to be willing to confront the sources of pain. This is why we see so many men multiply addicted. They turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, food or spending, work, or toys wildly flailing to grab hold of anything that will get rid of the hurt, only to find that none of these things work.
ReplyDeletePorn does kill but as a parasite, feeding off the consumer till nothing remains, even then not leaving but going dormant till the consumer can build up enough to function as a source of food again. Porn takes a mans God given sexuality and replaces it with a collection parts, utterly dehumanising both the consumer and the subject. No lenger is that woman a woman with needs, hopes and problems, but a great this and good that, and no longer is the man a man, made by God and bought by Christ, but a dumb animal, interested only in his most immediate need. This transformation isn't unique to sex, we see it attempted in everything from soda to cars, but we see the effects the clearest because sex is created to be so powerful.
As for fantasy, I see three distinct ideas here. One is fantasy in the since of a specific erotic fantasy or set of fantasy's. Then there is a broad fantasy which may not be sexual, at least in the beginning. These fantasies reflect our pain, as men and humans. If we feel castrated, we fantasize about being vital, if we are shamed we fantasize about being bold, for sexually addicted men the fantasy will likely codify in a sexual image, but because sex provides the necessary jolt required to transform a general desire into a specific actionable image. The third type of fantasy I see here I would call vision. Fantasy reflects our pain, but vision reflects God's promise. Vision is the spark to be creative, vision is the ability to see ourselves and our lives not as they are but as they could be. Fantasy is us reacting to pain, vision is us reacting to promise.
Thank you, Robert, for accepting the challenge to help me in my attempt articulate a unique viewpoint, as well as to challenge my presumptions. I love the idea that fantasy in its highest expression can become a vision of Divine promise!!! Yes God gave us imaginations that we would use them to conceptualize a better, restored, redeemed reality. I know brokenness devastates our capacity to see. Illicit fantasy is shortsighted vision, blindness even.
ReplyDeleteHere is a big part of the tragedy as I see it: Men are socialized NOT to need or to hurt, but to be the conquerors of everything. The brotherhood of men becomes sublimated to forces of domination and control, the virtues of manliness. A need for human contact is "weakness" in a society that idealizes individualism. Support groups can offer validation and necessary contact in the form of other persons willing to get into each other's pain and to offer healing. But I see an essential caveat. Within such groups guys must determinedly refuse to succumb to the usual societal competitive tendencies and one-upmanship . Men need to be able to have each others' backs. If a brother shows anything that could be construed as unmasculine or weak in any way he needs confidence that he won't be shamed by others in the group as a "sissy" (or other derogatory names). I know some men have considered the twelve step model only to be frustrated with the inherent judgment/shame in self-identifying as an "addict". Even to entertain the idea of visiting a group, it takes a certain amount of bravery or certitude that others in the group won't emasculate "weaklings." A number of men I'm acquainted with WONT give it a second thought.
There has been much focus given to how men, through pornography, subjugate women and how women are violated. What I don't hear as much of is how boys learn to deny entire parts of themselves in order to take on the masculine burdens and responsibilities given them. In an ironic twist "castration" - cutting off of essential/vital parts - becomes the vehicle by which men are societally endowed with masculine characteristics. Perhaps that is what leads to so much overcompensation to rejuvenate the masculine? This is surely a perversion!
More evidence that it is not a benefit to society:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.relevantmagazine.com/reject-apathy/loss-innocents/justice-side-porn
This really ought to be common understanding. Making products/services illegal generally does little or nothing to eradicate them. Rather, doing so generally drives them into a black market and makes them higher risk, more expensive/lucrative, and actually *creates* criminals. Similar is true, at least some/most of the time, with the "it's immoral" approach. Shame or guilt does little or nothing to eradicate the immoral behavior and can actually add to the allure of the "forbidden fruit".
ReplyDeleteI see porn use as *very* much *like* or *actually* (potentially) an addiction-type issue. It falls neatly into that category of things represented by Turkish Delight in C.S. Lewis' Narnia work. Along the same lines, it fits the paradox of hedonism to a tee. Some is pleasant, more is worse (pleasant but less effective,) and too much is never enough. With porn it can look like this: Just a little peek at something naughty but exciting with the "getting away with something sneaky that mom and dad (or the people at church) wouldn't approve of" thrill attached. Then it fails to satisfy or excite as it did, then on to more extreme stuff, etc. You know the drill.
I'll state the following as fact(s) and we can refine or argue about it later.
Speaking in terms of "straight" porn for now:
Men need to *understand*: Self-pleasure via porn is NOT just "naughty", it's toxic. Seeking pleasure for its own sake, as an end in itself, is always toxic. It's SO much like refined, white powders such as table sugar, cocaine, etc. In natural form (sugar cane, coca leaves,) there's good stuff there -- and not so much danger. But with the "purifying" comes an exaggerated impact of the thing in its natural form -- and the nutrients are stripped away.
Porn is like that. Men *need* to be respected and admired by their women. Porn gives the thrill or pleasure of sex without the needed "nutrients" that only exist in real relationship with real women.
This is the nexus: "All is nexus." ~Alfred North Whitehead (Nexus=connection/relationship)
Existence itself IS relationship (Trinity). When men seek pleasure via porn they are actually working *against* their own happiness/well being/existence.
The key for men is to understand what they *really* want -- what will *really* serve their happiness (well-being). It's like what someone called "divine discontent" - that condition that gets people thinking, "There's GOT to be more to life than just THIS!"
I suppose that's what Jesus called the "good heart" in His explanation of the parable of the seeds.
Oh man!
ReplyDelete"The key for men is to understand what they *really* want -- what will *really* serve their happiness (well-being). It's like what someone called "divine discontent" - that condition that gets people thinking, "There's GOT to be more to life than just THIS!"
I suppose that's what Jesus called the "good heart" in His explanation of the parable of the seeds."
Let's consider that one!!! I'll mull it over and replace this lame comment later with something more thoughtful. But thanks brother, for challenging me!