The Porn Myth
In the end, porn doesn't whet men's appetites-it turns them off the real thing.
By Naomi Wolf
At a benefit the other night, I saw Andrea Dworkin, the anti-porn activist most famous in the eighties for her conviction that opening the floodgates of pornography would lead men to see real women in sexually debased ways. If we did not limit pornography, she argued-before Internet technology made that prospect a technical impossibility-most men would come to objectify women as they objectified porn stars, and treat them accordingly. In a kind of domino theory, she predicted, rape and other kinds of sexual mayhem would surely follow.
The feminist warrior looked gentle and almost frail. The world she had, Cassandra-like, warned us about so passionately was truly here: Porn is, as David Amsden says, the "wallpaper" of our lives now. So was she right or wrong?
She was right about the warning, wrong about the outcome. As she foretold, pornography did breach the dike that separated a marginal, adult, private pursuit from the mainstream public arena. The whole world, post-Internet, did become pornographized. Young men and women are indeed being taught what sex is, how it looks, what its etiquette and expectations are, by pornographic training-and this is having a huge effect on how they interact.
But the effect is not making men into raving beasts. On the contrary: The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as "porn-worthy." Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention.
Here is what young women tell me on college campuses when the subject comes up: They can't compete, and they know it. For how can a real woman-with pores and her own breasts and even sexual needs of her own (let alone with speech that goes beyond "More, more, you big stud!")-possibly compete with a cybervision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer's least specification?
For most of human history, erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women.
For the first time in human history, the images' power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women.
Today, real naked women are just bad porn.
For two decades, I have watched young women experience the continual "mission creep" of how pornography-and now Internet pornography-has lowered their sense of their own sexual value and their actual sexual value. When I came of age in the seventies, it was still pretty cool to be able to offer a young man the actual presence of a naked, willing young woman. There were more young men who wanted to be with naked women than there were naked women on the market. If there was nothing actively alarming about you, you could get a pretty enthusiastic response by just showing up. Your boyfriend may have seen Playboy, but hey, you could move, you were warm, you were real. Thirty years ago, simple lovemaking was considered erotic in the pornography that entered mainstream consciousness: When Behind the Green Door first opened, clumsy, earnest, missionary-position intercourse was still considered to be a huge turn-on.
Well, I am 40, and mine is the last female generation to experience that sense of sexual confidence and security in what we had to offer. Our younger sisters had to compete with video porn in the eighties and nineties, when intercourse was not hot enough. Now you have to offer-or flirtatiously suggest-the lesbian scene, the ejaculate-in-the-face scene. Being naked is not enough; you have to be buff, be tan with no tan lines, have the surgically hoisted breasts and the Brazilian bikini wax-just like porn stars. (In my gym, the 40-year-old women have adult pubic hair; the twentysomethings have all been trimmed and styled.) Pornography is addictive; the baseline gets ratcheted up. By the new millennium, a vagina-which, by the way, used to have a pretty high "exchange value," as Marxist economists would say-wasn't enough; it barely registered on the thrill scale. All mainstream porn-and certainly the Internet-made routine use of all available female orifices.
The porn loop is de rigueur, no longer outside the pale; starlets in tabloids boast of learning to strip from professionals; the "cool girls" go with guys to the strip clubs, and even ask for lap dances; college girls are expected to tease guys at keg parties with lesbian kisses à la Britney and Madonna.
But does all this sexual imagery in the air mean that sex has been liberated-or is it the case that the relationship between the multi-billion-dollar porn industry, compulsiveness, and sexual appetite has become like the relationship between agribusiness, processed foods, supersize portions, and obesity? If your appetite is stimulated and fed by poor-quality material, it takes more junk to fill you up. People are not closer because of porn but further apart; people are not more turned on in their daily lives but less so.
The young women who talk to me on campuses about the effect of pornography on their intimate lives speak of feeling that they can never measure up, that they can never ask for what they want; and that if they do not offer what porn offers, they cannot expect to hold a guy. The young men talk about what it is like to grow up learning about sex from porn, and how it is not helpful to them in trying to figure out how to be with a real woman. Mostly, when I ask about loneliness, a deep, sad silence descends on audiences of young men and young women alike. They know they are lonely together, even when conjoined, and that this imagery is a big part of that loneliness. What they don't know is how to get out, how to find each other again erotically, face-to-face.
So Dworkin was right that pornography is compulsive, but she was wrong in thinking it would make men more rapacious. A whole generation of men are less able to connect erotically to women-and ultimately less libidinous.
The reason to turn off the porn might become, to thoughtful people, not a moral one but, in a way, a physical- and emotional-health one; you might want to rethink your constant access to porn in the same way that, if you want to be an athlete, you rethink your smoking. The evidence is in: Greater supply of the stimulant equals diminished capacity.
After all, pornography works in the most basic of ways on the brain: It is Pavlovian. An orgasm is one of the biggest reinforcers imaginable. If you associate orgasm with your wife, a kiss, a scent, a body, that is what, over time, will turn you on; if you open your focus to an endless stream of ever-more-transgressive images of cybersex slaves, that is what it will take to turn you on. The ubiquity of sexual images does not free eros but dilutes it.
Other cultures know this.
I am not advocating a return to the days of hiding female sexuality, but I am noting that the power and charge of sex are maintained when there is some sacredness to it, when it is not on tap all the time. In many more traditional cultures, it is not prudery that leads them to discourage men from looking at pornography. It is, rather, because these cultures understand male sexuality and what it takes to keep men and women turned on to one another over time-to help men, in particular, to, as the Old Testament puts it, "rejoice with the wife of thy youth; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times." These cultures urge men not to look at porn because they know that a powerful erotic bond between parents is a key element of a strong family.
And feminists have misunderstood many of these prohibitions.
I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. "Can't I even see your hair?" I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. "No," she demurred quietly. "Only my husband," she said with a calm sexual confidence, "ever gets to see my hair."
When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husband-the kids are not allowed-the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day-in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman's hair.
She must feel, I thought, so hot.
Compare that steaminess with a conversation I had at Northwestern, after I had talked about the effect of porn on relationships. "Why have sex right away?" a boy with tousled hair and Bambi eyes was explaining. "Things are always a little tense and uncomfortable when you just start seeing someone," he said. "I prefer to have sex right away just to get it over with. You know it's going to happen anyway, and it gets rid of the tension."
"Isn't the tension kind of fun?" I asked. "Doesn't that also get rid of the mystery?"
"Mystery?" He looked at me blankly. And then, without hesitating, he replied: "I don't know what you're talking about. Sex has no mystery."
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
What Is Being the Significant Other of a Porn Addict Like?
by: tootrue
What is it like being the significant other of a porn addict?
It might be nearly impossible for someone who has not been affected by living with an addict to fully understand that porn addiction is like any other addiction. And that it affects the people around the addict in significant ways. It eats time, energy, compassion, money, trust and creates enormous chaos and damage to families of addicts. It leads to divorce, tumultuous situations for children, direct and indirect neglect of children by addicts and mothers who are forced into dealing with the addict, accidental and even purposeful exposure to children in the home, sexually transmitted disease for the spouse whose own personal porn addict escalates to acting out in real life, and mental and physical stress on the significant other that can become an obsession all its own.
Internet porn isn't your father's Playboy. Or even today's Penthouse. It's available in enormous quantities right from your home pc. No one has to get up the nerve to buy it in a seedy store or risk being seen by neighbors or friends walking out of an adult video or book store. And it is highly addictive.
To a porn addict, what might start as seemingly harmless entertainment or diversion becomes obsession. Porn addiction is an escalating progressive addiction. What is at first taboo later becomes sought after as an addict builds tolerance, much like with any other addiction, and then seeks out increasingly stimulating material for gratification leading to often increasingly violent porn, subjects that include younger and younger age girls and children, incest, bestiality, rape, and what most might consider just downright not sexually stimulating but repelling.
Recently comments were posted on this blog (which we've deleted) by someone stating that this site is a joke, some raunchy commentary followed by high schoolish degrading of recovered porn addicts' posts to this board, and that for that commenter, "porn is my reason for getting up in the morning."
Well, that pretty much sadly sums up a serious case of porn addiction.
Not very many women find the sight of a man sitting in a dark room by himself in front of a computer masturbating to computer images with pants around ankles very compellingly sexy or manly. It's disturbing. It's the image that gets stuck in the mind of the significant others of porn addicts. And unfortunately for many, their children may have this same image of their fathers permanently fused in their minds.
Escalation of porn addiction can and does lead to acting out in real life. Many SOs of porn addicts report finding their husband's profiles on sex sites, dating sites, phone sex sites, webcam sites, etc.
But beyond the image of the porn puppet in front of the computer, SOs of porn addicts have other images etched in their heads. Maybe most frequently and most disturbing in the long run is the image of someone you love and trust lying in countless conversations to cover up the amount of time being spent, type of porn being viewed, hiding places for porn, and crazy making behavior.
I remember once finding porn tapes and teen porn magazines in my husband's closet. Our toddler was following behind me while I was gathering up dirty laundry in baskets and came upon yet another of her father's many stashes. When I asked him about it his reply was that he did not put it there. They were not his magazines. Maybe, he said, "you put them there."
Me: Yeah, I put them there. I put them there? How could you think I put them there? Nobody else comes into your closet except for you, me, and perhaps our children. So one of us, here in this house, either me or you, put them in the closet. And it wasn't me so of course it was you.
Him: Well, it wasn't me.
Multiply these crazy, crazy making kinds of conversations times a thousand. And add in another hundred that aren't obvious until well after they happen. Being subject to these kinds of responses, lack of simple accountability, blatant lying, blameshifting, and exposure to unwanted and shocking images, and it begins to take a toll on the wife or significant other of an addict. Sometimes this is referred to as "gaslighting."
In my own experience, and through reading so many experiences of other wives, ex-wives, and significant others of porn addicts, some of the most memorable situations that women have had to deal with from porn addicted spouses or boyfriends include being told that a neighbor must have come into the house and been looking at porn on their home computer, blaming the computer history on their own teenage child, hiding porn in the trunk of the car.....
To me it seems that one of the single most quoted responses our MAPA members report from husbands is "there's nothing wrong with it. All men do it."
And another most quoted thought is that SOs of porn addicts are often most troubled and affected by the lying that goes hand in hand with addiction in general.....often even more so than the porn itself.
I would imagine that many SOs of porn addicts start out believing that to be a truth: Men like porn. So getting to the point of believing ourselves that this is more than men liking porn, that this feels inherently wrong, that this is really an addiction, can sometimes be a battle in ourselves that has its own toll. Learning to trust your intuition, feel validated in personal boundaries, have healthy expectations, is a part time job when an addict's converse part time job is to erode those very things to protect his addiction and normalize his behavior and choices. Addiction to anything is not healthy. Addiction isn't something that is normal and beneficial to anyone. Addiction affects people around the addict.
Whatever a person's beliefs on porn, or right to free speech, etc......porn addiction is real and damaging to addicts and their families, and the symptoms of addiction and its effect on families go far beyond the reaction to images viewed or moral standings on porn.
Some of the many symptoms mentioned by SOs of porn addicts include need for personal counseling involving time, expense, and their own recoveries, anti depressant medication, loss of trust in a general sense, feelings of hopelessness, lack of interest in their own lives and appearances, weight gain or weight loss, hair falling out, inability to concentrate or focus, isolation from friends and family, lack of focus on children, lack of joy, anger, bitterness, consideration of separation and divorce, suicidal thoughts, treatment for depression, lack of interest in sex, sense of betrayal, avoiding social situations, decrease in self esteem, concern for children, lack of motivation, feeling stuck in a marriage, obsession with finding porn stashes, fear of financial consequences resulting from job loss of the addict due to porn use on work computers, fear of legal consequences resulting from addict's use of illegal porn, self doubt, covering up for the addict to friends and family, sense of living a dual public and secret private life, heightened sense that it is their fault, feeling worthless or stupid, sexually transmitted diseases.
Our latest trolling commenter stated that the women of MAPA are "middle aged cows." Light bulb moment: Objectively and ironically women affected by porn addiction are from all age groups and all levels of attractiveness. But most ironic is that many are extremely attractive and some are drop dead gorgeous. Does this matter? NO of course not. But to me what is significant is that this addiction, like any other, is about the addict. It has nothing to do with the looks of the significant other. Our MAPA support board relates the stories of many significant others' experiences. Here again it is ironic that so many stories are expressed with a bright, articulate ability to express thoughts. Members of MAPA make up women from all walks of life, from many different faiths, backgrounds, educations, political beliefs, etc. We have many things in common and many differences. One common ground we share is our concern for someone addicted to pornography, our concern for how that has affected us and our families.
Porn addiction treatment is available. It is most successful reportedly when it is sought by the addict. As in treatment for any addiction, the recovery success rate is higher for those who are self motivated.
Leaving the secret life of living with a porn addict behind in seeking out validation, support, information, and individual counseling in real life and in communities online such as this one can be very helpful for sigificant others of porn addicts in their own recoveries.
What is it like being the significant other of a porn addict?
It might be nearly impossible for someone who has not been affected by living with an addict to fully understand that porn addiction is like any other addiction. And that it affects the people around the addict in significant ways. It eats time, energy, compassion, money, trust and creates enormous chaos and damage to families of addicts. It leads to divorce, tumultuous situations for children, direct and indirect neglect of children by addicts and mothers who are forced into dealing with the addict, accidental and even purposeful exposure to children in the home, sexually transmitted disease for the spouse whose own personal porn addict escalates to acting out in real life, and mental and physical stress on the significant other that can become an obsession all its own.
Internet porn isn't your father's Playboy. Or even today's Penthouse. It's available in enormous quantities right from your home pc. No one has to get up the nerve to buy it in a seedy store or risk being seen by neighbors or friends walking out of an adult video or book store. And it is highly addictive.
To a porn addict, what might start as seemingly harmless entertainment or diversion becomes obsession. Porn addiction is an escalating progressive addiction. What is at first taboo later becomes sought after as an addict builds tolerance, much like with any other addiction, and then seeks out increasingly stimulating material for gratification leading to often increasingly violent porn, subjects that include younger and younger age girls and children, incest, bestiality, rape, and what most might consider just downright not sexually stimulating but repelling.
Recently comments were posted on this blog (which we've deleted) by someone stating that this site is a joke, some raunchy commentary followed by high schoolish degrading of recovered porn addicts' posts to this board, and that for that commenter, "porn is my reason for getting up in the morning."
Well, that pretty much sadly sums up a serious case of porn addiction.
Not very many women find the sight of a man sitting in a dark room by himself in front of a computer masturbating to computer images with pants around ankles very compellingly sexy or manly. It's disturbing. It's the image that gets stuck in the mind of the significant others of porn addicts. And unfortunately for many, their children may have this same image of their fathers permanently fused in their minds.
Escalation of porn addiction can and does lead to acting out in real life. Many SOs of porn addicts report finding their husband's profiles on sex sites, dating sites, phone sex sites, webcam sites, etc.
But beyond the image of the porn puppet in front of the computer, SOs of porn addicts have other images etched in their heads. Maybe most frequently and most disturbing in the long run is the image of someone you love and trust lying in countless conversations to cover up the amount of time being spent, type of porn being viewed, hiding places for porn, and crazy making behavior.
I remember once finding porn tapes and teen porn magazines in my husband's closet. Our toddler was following behind me while I was gathering up dirty laundry in baskets and came upon yet another of her father's many stashes. When I asked him about it his reply was that he did not put it there. They were not his magazines. Maybe, he said, "you put them there."
Me: Yeah, I put them there. I put them there? How could you think I put them there? Nobody else comes into your closet except for you, me, and perhaps our children. So one of us, here in this house, either me or you, put them in the closet. And it wasn't me so of course it was you.
Him: Well, it wasn't me.
Multiply these crazy, crazy making kinds of conversations times a thousand. And add in another hundred that aren't obvious until well after they happen. Being subject to these kinds of responses, lack of simple accountability, blatant lying, blameshifting, and exposure to unwanted and shocking images, and it begins to take a toll on the wife or significant other of an addict. Sometimes this is referred to as "gaslighting."
In my own experience, and through reading so many experiences of other wives, ex-wives, and significant others of porn addicts, some of the most memorable situations that women have had to deal with from porn addicted spouses or boyfriends include being told that a neighbor must have come into the house and been looking at porn on their home computer, blaming the computer history on their own teenage child, hiding porn in the trunk of the car.....
To me it seems that one of the single most quoted responses our MAPA members report from husbands is "there's nothing wrong with it. All men do it."
And another most quoted thought is that SOs of porn addicts are often most troubled and affected by the lying that goes hand in hand with addiction in general.....often even more so than the porn itself.
I would imagine that many SOs of porn addicts start out believing that to be a truth: Men like porn. So getting to the point of believing ourselves that this is more than men liking porn, that this feels inherently wrong, that this is really an addiction, can sometimes be a battle in ourselves that has its own toll. Learning to trust your intuition, feel validated in personal boundaries, have healthy expectations, is a part time job when an addict's converse part time job is to erode those very things to protect his addiction and normalize his behavior and choices. Addiction to anything is not healthy. Addiction isn't something that is normal and beneficial to anyone. Addiction affects people around the addict.
Whatever a person's beliefs on porn, or right to free speech, etc......porn addiction is real and damaging to addicts and their families, and the symptoms of addiction and its effect on families go far beyond the reaction to images viewed or moral standings on porn.
Some of the many symptoms mentioned by SOs of porn addicts include need for personal counseling involving time, expense, and their own recoveries, anti depressant medication, loss of trust in a general sense, feelings of hopelessness, lack of interest in their own lives and appearances, weight gain or weight loss, hair falling out, inability to concentrate or focus, isolation from friends and family, lack of focus on children, lack of joy, anger, bitterness, consideration of separation and divorce, suicidal thoughts, treatment for depression, lack of interest in sex, sense of betrayal, avoiding social situations, decrease in self esteem, concern for children, lack of motivation, feeling stuck in a marriage, obsession with finding porn stashes, fear of financial consequences resulting from job loss of the addict due to porn use on work computers, fear of legal consequences resulting from addict's use of illegal porn, self doubt, covering up for the addict to friends and family, sense of living a dual public and secret private life, heightened sense that it is their fault, feeling worthless or stupid, sexually transmitted diseases.
Our latest trolling commenter stated that the women of MAPA are "middle aged cows." Light bulb moment: Objectively and ironically women affected by porn addiction are from all age groups and all levels of attractiveness. But most ironic is that many are extremely attractive and some are drop dead gorgeous. Does this matter? NO of course not. But to me what is significant is that this addiction, like any other, is about the addict. It has nothing to do with the looks of the significant other. Our MAPA support board relates the stories of many significant others' experiences. Here again it is ironic that so many stories are expressed with a bright, articulate ability to express thoughts. Members of MAPA make up women from all walks of life, from many different faiths, backgrounds, educations, political beliefs, etc. We have many things in common and many differences. One common ground we share is our concern for someone addicted to pornography, our concern for how that has affected us and our families.
Porn addiction treatment is available. It is most successful reportedly when it is sought by the addict. As in treatment for any addiction, the recovery success rate is higher for those who are self motivated.
Leaving the secret life of living with a porn addict behind in seeking out validation, support, information, and individual counseling in real life and in communities online such as this one can be very helpful for sigificant others of porn addicts in their own recoveries.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Fast Food Fun
I was having dinner with my two young children recently at a fast food restaurant when about six college aged young men and two college aged young women came in and sat down at the table closest to us.
As I was eating my fast food dinner, feeling slightly guilty that I was, while making a grocery shopping list in my head and listening to my older daughter talk about how the mcnugget is "real chicken, you know" snippets of the conversation from the next table filtered through the air to my ears.
"It's a yellow shower and you would not believe how much she loved it" one of the boys said. Some of the others laughed. I looked at their table. Some of the boys did not laugh. But they did not say anything either. The girls stayed silent. Oblivious to any discord among the group the talker continued on to relate scenes from a porn movie. If I had been two or three tables away I might have looked over and interpreted the scene as a bunch of college kids having a nice time. They were dressed nicely, appeared clean cut. They looked like a nice group of kids.
One of the boys looked at me and made complete eye contact. He changed the subject at the table. He noticed my children. He did the right thing.
One of the girls got up and moved to another table and talked to two others.
When I was in college the topic was real sex, not porn. While I am sure that my friends and I engaged in chatty girl talk that sometimes involved sex conversations, I honestly don't ever remember porn being part of the equation. We were the cool group and we certainly weren't prudish. We partied and had fun, were smart and active and thought we were terrific and knew everything. But we didn't get into porn. We had boyfriends and premarital sex. We were most scared about getting pregnant and AIDS didn't exist. I had never seen a porn movie and I don't think I ever thought about porn at all.
I had to wonder, watching those kids whether some younger people now with the proliferation of porn addiction, computer chat rooms, constant text messaging, cell phones, etc miss out on so much of what goes on in a community spirit of college. Or if it has just changed so much that I can no longer relate to their generation's experience.
What will become of these young people who get hooked on porn?
Seconds before the one young man looked at me and changed the subject, my mind had been racing as to how to handle the situation for my own children. They seemed to not take much notice of the conversation of these college kids, but in their own youthful way were also completely enthralled by watching "big kids" having dinner together. I considered that I could either move to another table or go over and say something to them. I'm glad I didn't have to.
As I was eating my fast food dinner, feeling slightly guilty that I was, while making a grocery shopping list in my head and listening to my older daughter talk about how the mcnugget is "real chicken, you know" snippets of the conversation from the next table filtered through the air to my ears.
"It's a yellow shower and you would not believe how much she loved it" one of the boys said. Some of the others laughed. I looked at their table. Some of the boys did not laugh. But they did not say anything either. The girls stayed silent. Oblivious to any discord among the group the talker continued on to relate scenes from a porn movie. If I had been two or three tables away I might have looked over and interpreted the scene as a bunch of college kids having a nice time. They were dressed nicely, appeared clean cut. They looked like a nice group of kids.
One of the boys looked at me and made complete eye contact. He changed the subject at the table. He noticed my children. He did the right thing.
One of the girls got up and moved to another table and talked to two others.
When I was in college the topic was real sex, not porn. While I am sure that my friends and I engaged in chatty girl talk that sometimes involved sex conversations, I honestly don't ever remember porn being part of the equation. We were the cool group and we certainly weren't prudish. We partied and had fun, were smart and active and thought we were terrific and knew everything. But we didn't get into porn. We had boyfriends and premarital sex. We were most scared about getting pregnant and AIDS didn't exist. I had never seen a porn movie and I don't think I ever thought about porn at all.
I had to wonder, watching those kids whether some younger people now with the proliferation of porn addiction, computer chat rooms, constant text messaging, cell phones, etc miss out on so much of what goes on in a community spirit of college. Or if it has just changed so much that I can no longer relate to their generation's experience.
What will become of these young people who get hooked on porn?
Seconds before the one young man looked at me and changed the subject, my mind had been racing as to how to handle the situation for my own children. They seemed to not take much notice of the conversation of these college kids, but in their own youthful way were also completely enthralled by watching "big kids" having dinner together. I considered that I could either move to another table or go over and say something to them. I'm glad I didn't have to.
Lighted Candle Society
'Tsunami of pornography' debases human dignity, archbishop says
By Dan Morris-Young and Barbara Lee5/14/2007
Catholic News Service (www.catholicnews.com)
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (CNS) – Describing what he sees as an "electronic tsunami of pornography," Archbishop George H. Niederauer of San Francisco told a Utah-based anti-pornography organization that pornography "debases the priceless worth and dignity of each human being and (God's) gift of human sexuality."
While pornography "is not a new challenge," the archbishop told members of the Lighted Candle Society at its annual awards dinner in Salt Lake City May 8, "the explosive increase in the accessibility and availability of pornography is new and deeply troubling."
"Every computer terminal is its pipeline, and cell phones and other hand-held devices, many of them marketed to children and young people, literally deliver pornography everywhere, to anyone," he said in his keynote address.
Archbishop Niederauer was presented the Lighted Candle Society's Guardian of the Light Award two years ago for his work as president of the Utah Coalition Against Pornography, a position he held for five years as bishop of Salt Lake City before being named archbishop of San Francisco.
The archbishop, who headed the Salt Lake City Diocese from 1994 to 2005, reminded his listeners that pornography "now generates more annual income than all three major professional sports combined, and causes as well the world's fastest growing addiction."
"We have all heard the discouraging numbers," he said, noting research shows there are 68 million Internet "search engine requests for porn sites" every day, that 70 percent of men ages 18 to 24 visit porn sites each month, that "90 percent of 8- to 16-year-olds have viewed porn online," and that "the average age of a child's first exposure to pornography on the Internet is 11."
However, he said, "what should motivate us most profoundly is not the amount of pornography there is but the kind of harm it does. Pornography assaults human dignity and commodifies people and human sexuality. Porn starves the human soul in its spiritual dimension. ... The human person, an irreplaceable gift, becomes a throwaway toy."
The archbishop, who chairs the U.S. bishops' Committee on Communications and is a member of the Pontifical Council on Social Communications, cautioned that pornography opponents "need constantly to explore and articulate what we are for, not merely what we are against. Deploring and pointing with alarm are valid and effective only in light of what we value and defend."
Much of the archbishop's talk also addressed the motion picture industry which, he said, "is capable of so much beauty and so much trash."
Admitting he has had "a lifelong love affair with the movies," Archbishop Niederauer criticized "the nihilism that reigns in many quarters of moviemaking" today as well as "excessive violence" and dark portrayals of life.
He called on his listeners, film critics and moviemakers themselves to be wary of being cowed by a desire to seem "supersophisticated."
"The one thing we will not be called is prudes, so we laugh nervously at the vilest sexual aberrations, nod knowingly at the blackest, sickest kind of humor, even relish a bit of violence well carried off," the archbishop said. "Some of us want to come off as so worldly-wise that we defend any evil flashed on-screen by saying, 'Face it, the world is like that!'
"Moviegoers can't be sponges," he added. "Just as in our experiences of other media, in watching films we need to become our own best filters."
At the awards dinner, the Lighted Candle Society presented Guardian of the Light Awards to nationally syndicated radio talk-show host Michael Reagan, the adopted son of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, and Pamela Atkinson, who succeeded Archbishop Niederauer as president of the Utah Coalition Against Pornography.
The society was founded in 2001 by John Harmer, a former California state senator and California lieutenant governor during Ronald Reagan's term as governor. Harmer and researcher James B. Smith recently co-wrote "The Sex Industrial Complex," subtitled "America's Secret Combination: Pornographic Culture, Addiction and the Human Brain."
In an interview with the Intermountain Catholic, Salt Lake City diocesan newspaper, Harmer said it is through the efforts of people such as Michael Reagan and Atkinson that the Lighted Candle Society is ready to achieve a much broader base.
"When I created the society, I was aware of many similar organizations doing the same work," he said.
But Harmer said he found a void in research and the training of law enforcement officials and prosecutors to effectively fight pornography in the courts on behalf of individuals who have suffered because of the use of pornography.
"It is much like the court battles that have tackled tobacco marketing," he said. "People have no idea how powerful and dangerous these images are and how pervasive they become to a person addicted to pornography." - - -
By Dan Morris-Young and Barbara Lee5/14/2007
Catholic News Service (www.catholicnews.com)
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (CNS) – Describing what he sees as an "electronic tsunami of pornography," Archbishop George H. Niederauer of San Francisco told a Utah-based anti-pornography organization that pornography "debases the priceless worth and dignity of each human being and (God's) gift of human sexuality."
While pornography "is not a new challenge," the archbishop told members of the Lighted Candle Society at its annual awards dinner in Salt Lake City May 8, "the explosive increase in the accessibility and availability of pornography is new and deeply troubling."
"Every computer terminal is its pipeline, and cell phones and other hand-held devices, many of them marketed to children and young people, literally deliver pornography everywhere, to anyone," he said in his keynote address.
Archbishop Niederauer was presented the Lighted Candle Society's Guardian of the Light Award two years ago for his work as president of the Utah Coalition Against Pornography, a position he held for five years as bishop of Salt Lake City before being named archbishop of San Francisco.
The archbishop, who headed the Salt Lake City Diocese from 1994 to 2005, reminded his listeners that pornography "now generates more annual income than all three major professional sports combined, and causes as well the world's fastest growing addiction."
"We have all heard the discouraging numbers," he said, noting research shows there are 68 million Internet "search engine requests for porn sites" every day, that 70 percent of men ages 18 to 24 visit porn sites each month, that "90 percent of 8- to 16-year-olds have viewed porn online," and that "the average age of a child's first exposure to pornography on the Internet is 11."
However, he said, "what should motivate us most profoundly is not the amount of pornography there is but the kind of harm it does. Pornography assaults human dignity and commodifies people and human sexuality. Porn starves the human soul in its spiritual dimension. ... The human person, an irreplaceable gift, becomes a throwaway toy."
The archbishop, who chairs the U.S. bishops' Committee on Communications and is a member of the Pontifical Council on Social Communications, cautioned that pornography opponents "need constantly to explore and articulate what we are for, not merely what we are against. Deploring and pointing with alarm are valid and effective only in light of what we value and defend."
Much of the archbishop's talk also addressed the motion picture industry which, he said, "is capable of so much beauty and so much trash."
Admitting he has had "a lifelong love affair with the movies," Archbishop Niederauer criticized "the nihilism that reigns in many quarters of moviemaking" today as well as "excessive violence" and dark portrayals of life.
He called on his listeners, film critics and moviemakers themselves to be wary of being cowed by a desire to seem "supersophisticated."
"The one thing we will not be called is prudes, so we laugh nervously at the vilest sexual aberrations, nod knowingly at the blackest, sickest kind of humor, even relish a bit of violence well carried off," the archbishop said. "Some of us want to come off as so worldly-wise that we defend any evil flashed on-screen by saying, 'Face it, the world is like that!'
"Moviegoers can't be sponges," he added. "Just as in our experiences of other media, in watching films we need to become our own best filters."
At the awards dinner, the Lighted Candle Society presented Guardian of the Light Awards to nationally syndicated radio talk-show host Michael Reagan, the adopted son of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, and Pamela Atkinson, who succeeded Archbishop Niederauer as president of the Utah Coalition Against Pornography.
The society was founded in 2001 by John Harmer, a former California state senator and California lieutenant governor during Ronald Reagan's term as governor. Harmer and researcher James B. Smith recently co-wrote "The Sex Industrial Complex," subtitled "America's Secret Combination: Pornographic Culture, Addiction and the Human Brain."
In an interview with the Intermountain Catholic, Salt Lake City diocesan newspaper, Harmer said it is through the efforts of people such as Michael Reagan and Atkinson that the Lighted Candle Society is ready to achieve a much broader base.
"When I created the society, I was aware of many similar organizations doing the same work," he said.
But Harmer said he found a void in research and the training of law enforcement officials and prosecutors to effectively fight pornography in the courts on behalf of individuals who have suffered because of the use of pornography.
"It is much like the court battles that have tackled tobacco marketing," he said. "People have no idea how powerful and dangerous these images are and how pervasive they become to a person addicted to pornography." - - -
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Cho lapped up our sadosexual culture
Posted: May 3, 20071:00 a.m. Eastern
By Judith Reisman
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com-->© 2007
Based on some Internet bloggers' hysteria, my WND column guessing the Virginia Tech killer had a pornography addiction traumatized scores of heavy users out there.
Well, that is to be anticipated after decades of universities and colleges pandering pornography in their bookstores and at their "we're so cool" pornography film fests.
Now it turns out that this "loner" graduated from looking to paying. The local WSLS News Channel 10 reported that the killer hired a female "escort service" a month before he massacred unarmed and defenseless students and faculty.
Cho paid "Chastity" for an hour of private "dancing" in his motel room. When the little tough guy wanted more than dancing, Chastity says she left him flat.
All of the reports about this fantasy-fueled, frustrated egomaniac confirm Cho's anger, fear and hatred of women.
Although Cho was certainly a porn addict, we don't yet know (if we ever will) exactly what kind of Internet cruising he had descended into: sadistic, "barely legal," children, macho/military men or Playboy's fairytale female lovers.
All allegedly "heterosexual" pornography of course fuels disgust and anger at those provocative women who don't really "do it" but who just "tease" their lusting lotharios.
Naturally, since seething Internet seductresses don't "put out," millions of libidinous men go livid. Unable to admit that pornography robs them of their manhood, these poor Internet patsies tell themselves that their desperate excitement is "sex."
Naturally, statistically, some such confused, angry men will turn from these (um, deceitful) women to guys. Even The Advocate admitted back in 1994 that 21 percent of their largely affluent, educated male readers reported molestation by an adult before age 15. Cho's writing suggests he was one of those.
So another coward belligerently stalked women and took illegal under-the-desk crotch photos of co-eds; the ones that the university seems to think were not criminal.
Of course, the man's hate-filled and medically altered brain has been fueled by the same, dare we say it, immoral refuse culture that taints us all; the coarsened, sadosexual television and film fare, the killer-simulating video games and Victoria Secret public spaces that have come to define our ignorant and barbaric age.
Even the Washington Post reported that Korean youths who knew Cho in high school "said he was a fan of violent video games, particularly Counterstrike, a hugely popular online game published by Microsoft, in which players join terrorism or counterterrorism groups and try to shoot each other using all types of guns."
Right, let's hear it for Bill Gates' gaming bottom line. Now we'll be told it's Christian inhibitions and guns that cause mass murder. Of course, at most high school gun clubs, even in my day, kids practiced shooting at targets, not at people.
Blogger "CLS" pointed out that proposed Virginia legislation in 2005 would have allowed students and faculty with a valid concealed handgun permit to carry firearms at Virginia Tech and other universities. Since the legislation was defeated, Virginia Tech became another "gun free zone" in our erototoxically crazed society.
Firearms for self-defense are verboten. Only firearms for massacres are allowed.
In several prior attacks, would-be killers were stopped by gun-totting faculty and students who had to first retrieve their firearms from their cars. Of course, these heroes don't appear above the fold in the New York Times. That honor is reserved for the latest glaring, copycat killer in pseudo military gear.
Blogger James Lewis raised another question about who taught Cho to hate.
Lewis asks what Cho learned in school. Although his answer is well worth reading in full, here is a glimpse:
"English studies at VT are a post-modern Disney World in which nihilism, moral and sexual boundary breaking, and fantasies of Marxist revolutionary violence are celebrated. They show up in a lot of faculty writing. Not by all the faculty, but probably by more than half. Just check out their websites."
I did. He's right. And talk about learning: After God got kicked out of American schools from kindergarten to university, the Ten Commandments came down and AIDS posters went up.
Kind friends, we are reaping the results of "The Marketing of Evil." As is the case in any war, it is the innocent, especially the children, who pay the price for our arrogant, egotistical sexual license and our ignorance of real American history and tradition.
Dr. Judith Reisman is president of the Institute for Media Education and is the author of "Kinsey, Crimes & Consequences."
Posted: May 3, 20071:00 a.m. Eastern
By Judith Reisman
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com-->© 2007
Based on some Internet bloggers' hysteria, my WND column guessing the Virginia Tech killer had a pornography addiction traumatized scores of heavy users out there.
Well, that is to be anticipated after decades of universities and colleges pandering pornography in their bookstores and at their "we're so cool" pornography film fests.
Now it turns out that this "loner" graduated from looking to paying. The local WSLS News Channel 10 reported that the killer hired a female "escort service" a month before he massacred unarmed and defenseless students and faculty.
Cho paid "Chastity" for an hour of private "dancing" in his motel room. When the little tough guy wanted more than dancing, Chastity says she left him flat.
All of the reports about this fantasy-fueled, frustrated egomaniac confirm Cho's anger, fear and hatred of women.
Although Cho was certainly a porn addict, we don't yet know (if we ever will) exactly what kind of Internet cruising he had descended into: sadistic, "barely legal," children, macho/military men or Playboy's fairytale female lovers.
All allegedly "heterosexual" pornography of course fuels disgust and anger at those provocative women who don't really "do it" but who just "tease" their lusting lotharios.
Naturally, since seething Internet seductresses don't "put out," millions of libidinous men go livid. Unable to admit that pornography robs them of their manhood, these poor Internet patsies tell themselves that their desperate excitement is "sex."
Naturally, statistically, some such confused, angry men will turn from these (um, deceitful) women to guys. Even The Advocate admitted back in 1994 that 21 percent of their largely affluent, educated male readers reported molestation by an adult before age 15. Cho's writing suggests he was one of those.
So another coward belligerently stalked women and took illegal under-the-desk crotch photos of co-eds; the ones that the university seems to think were not criminal.
Of course, the man's hate-filled and medically altered brain has been fueled by the same, dare we say it, immoral refuse culture that taints us all; the coarsened, sadosexual television and film fare, the killer-simulating video games and Victoria Secret public spaces that have come to define our ignorant and barbaric age.
Even the Washington Post reported that Korean youths who knew Cho in high school "said he was a fan of violent video games, particularly Counterstrike, a hugely popular online game published by Microsoft, in which players join terrorism or counterterrorism groups and try to shoot each other using all types of guns."
Right, let's hear it for Bill Gates' gaming bottom line. Now we'll be told it's Christian inhibitions and guns that cause mass murder. Of course, at most high school gun clubs, even in my day, kids practiced shooting at targets, not at people.
Blogger "CLS" pointed out that proposed Virginia legislation in 2005 would have allowed students and faculty with a valid concealed handgun permit to carry firearms at Virginia Tech and other universities. Since the legislation was defeated, Virginia Tech became another "gun free zone" in our erototoxically crazed society.
Firearms for self-defense are verboten. Only firearms for massacres are allowed.
In several prior attacks, would-be killers were stopped by gun-totting faculty and students who had to first retrieve their firearms from their cars. Of course, these heroes don't appear above the fold in the New York Times. That honor is reserved for the latest glaring, copycat killer in pseudo military gear.
Blogger James Lewis raised another question about who taught Cho to hate.
Lewis asks what Cho learned in school. Although his answer is well worth reading in full, here is a glimpse:
"English studies at VT are a post-modern Disney World in which nihilism, moral and sexual boundary breaking, and fantasies of Marxist revolutionary violence are celebrated. They show up in a lot of faculty writing. Not by all the faculty, but probably by more than half. Just check out their websites."
I did. He's right. And talk about learning: After God got kicked out of American schools from kindergarten to university, the Ten Commandments came down and AIDS posters went up.
Kind friends, we are reaping the results of "The Marketing of Evil." As is the case in any war, it is the innocent, especially the children, who pay the price for our arrogant, egotistical sexual license and our ignorance of real American history and tradition.
Dr. Judith Reisman is president of the Institute for Media Education and is the author of "Kinsey, Crimes & Consequences."
Thursday, May 3, 2007
An Open Letter to My Wife By The Webmaster at No-Porn.com
An open letter to my wife:
Thank you for everything you are in my life. Thank you for the tremendous sacrifices you make on a daily basis. Thank you for setting such a remarkable example for our children. Your commitment to your studies since you returned to college has shown the kids far better than we could ever teach them otherwise the importance of an education. They see everything you do, and I am impressed at how well they do in school because they simply follow your example. It isn’t just a one-time example; it has been persistent over the past three years. Perhaps there are things I should be doing persistently by way of example for our children as well.
The children also feel of your love in our home. When you take time to teach them values that will last throughout their lives, when you insist on good manners, when you limit their television and video game privileges, and when you tuck them in and sing them songs, they feel of that love. When you give them hugs and kisses, they feel of that love.
Thank you for limiting the number of sports events and other extra curricular activities the kids are involved in. Thank you for taking care of yourself and recognizing that the kids don’t have to do everything. Thank you for giving them some activities and driving them there, but how nice those nights are when we’re all together and relaxed. Sometimes we feel like our house is too cluttered, but I’d rather have a cluttered house than a cluttered calendar.
Thank you for supporting me by managing the passwords on all our devices. I’d like to think that if the passwords weren’t there I’d be okay, but when you say, “I’d prefer to keep the computer filter running. I prefer that Covenant Eyes stay installed,” I know that you love me. As you say, you do trust me, but you don’t want me to have to endure constant temptation. Thank you for loving me enough to insist on some basic safety practices.
There are things I have done that I pray I will never do again. I can’t understand how I ever did some of those things. Was I a different person then? Not really, I suppose. I just had a secret part of me that I have said good-bye to; now the real me is a lot more comfortable with my day-to-day activities. No new secrets. I don’t think I can ever forgive myself for my old ways, and that’s okay with me. Forgiveness isn’t my priority; abstinence is. Forgiveness may come – it seems to come much easier from you – but what I really want is to live without porn for the rest of my life.
I will never forget when we sought counseling for our child, and the therapist turned her attention toward our relationship. Eventually, my “limited” use of porn (every few months at that time) was brought up. I thought I was doing pretty well compared to how things used to be. She asked you how you felt when I looked at porn. You sat in silence. She asked again, and a tear dripped down your cheek. You said, “I feel badly. I feel like he doesn’t love me.” That moment took me into real recovery. Your honesty and love is what led me to search for a way to break through my binge cycle.
Honey, I never use porn or masturbate now. I’m sorry that my childhood took me there. It stunted my emotional development in ways that still manifest themselves. Although I do not believe I will ever go back, I promise to be diligent and cautious and to do my best to avoid it, so that I never end up back in that compulsive cycle again.
Thank you for letting me know how much my acting out was hurting you. Thank you for supporting me through all of this darkness. I’ve always felt there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and now I am close enough to see that the light is you.
Love,
Wes
Wes is the webmaster at http://www.no-porn.com/ and the author of the e-book “Ten Keys to Breaking Pornography Addiction.” He can be contacted at http://us.f376.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=contact@no-porn.com. His wife does not participate at MAPA, but she has read this letter.
Thank you for everything you are in my life. Thank you for the tremendous sacrifices you make on a daily basis. Thank you for setting such a remarkable example for our children. Your commitment to your studies since you returned to college has shown the kids far better than we could ever teach them otherwise the importance of an education. They see everything you do, and I am impressed at how well they do in school because they simply follow your example. It isn’t just a one-time example; it has been persistent over the past three years. Perhaps there are things I should be doing persistently by way of example for our children as well.
The children also feel of your love in our home. When you take time to teach them values that will last throughout their lives, when you insist on good manners, when you limit their television and video game privileges, and when you tuck them in and sing them songs, they feel of that love. When you give them hugs and kisses, they feel of that love.
Thank you for limiting the number of sports events and other extra curricular activities the kids are involved in. Thank you for taking care of yourself and recognizing that the kids don’t have to do everything. Thank you for giving them some activities and driving them there, but how nice those nights are when we’re all together and relaxed. Sometimes we feel like our house is too cluttered, but I’d rather have a cluttered house than a cluttered calendar.
Thank you for supporting me by managing the passwords on all our devices. I’d like to think that if the passwords weren’t there I’d be okay, but when you say, “I’d prefer to keep the computer filter running. I prefer that Covenant Eyes stay installed,” I know that you love me. As you say, you do trust me, but you don’t want me to have to endure constant temptation. Thank you for loving me enough to insist on some basic safety practices.
There are things I have done that I pray I will never do again. I can’t understand how I ever did some of those things. Was I a different person then? Not really, I suppose. I just had a secret part of me that I have said good-bye to; now the real me is a lot more comfortable with my day-to-day activities. No new secrets. I don’t think I can ever forgive myself for my old ways, and that’s okay with me. Forgiveness isn’t my priority; abstinence is. Forgiveness may come – it seems to come much easier from you – but what I really want is to live without porn for the rest of my life.
I will never forget when we sought counseling for our child, and the therapist turned her attention toward our relationship. Eventually, my “limited” use of porn (every few months at that time) was brought up. I thought I was doing pretty well compared to how things used to be. She asked you how you felt when I looked at porn. You sat in silence. She asked again, and a tear dripped down your cheek. You said, “I feel badly. I feel like he doesn’t love me.” That moment took me into real recovery. Your honesty and love is what led me to search for a way to break through my binge cycle.
Honey, I never use porn or masturbate now. I’m sorry that my childhood took me there. It stunted my emotional development in ways that still manifest themselves. Although I do not believe I will ever go back, I promise to be diligent and cautious and to do my best to avoid it, so that I never end up back in that compulsive cycle again.
Thank you for letting me know how much my acting out was hurting you. Thank you for supporting me through all of this darkness. I’ve always felt there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and now I am close enough to see that the light is you.
Love,
Wes
Wes is the webmaster at http://www.no-porn.com/ and the author of the e-book “Ten Keys to Breaking Pornography Addiction.” He can be contacted at http://us.f376.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=contact@no-porn.com. His wife does not participate at MAPA, but she has read this letter.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
The Robbery of the Soul
The Robbery of the Soul
By: toomuchenergy
For the past year and a half I have struggled to explain the co-addict side of pornography addiction, both to my spouse and to my one friend who knows about the situation. It has been futile and indescribable until a few days ago.
The revelation occurred when we got on our boat. My husband went down below and immediately asked me if I had been out on the boat. I said, “no, why?” Then the look of despair came over him and he said we’ve been robbed. They broke the latch and went into the front window. Anything that could fit through it was taken.
Immediately he went to the marina computer system to watch the videos of the surveillance cameras. He watched for a while and finally saw the perpetrators making their 1:45 thieving spree by water. He pointed out every detail. See the waves, they came by boat. There are three of them. Finally in frustration, he realized that the resolution was so fuzzy that their true identity would never show up on film.
It was reported and we went back to the boat. Despite the loss being under the deductible, bringing the crime into light was a must – a way to stop them from doing it again perhaps.Then, he goes under to take inventory of what all was taken. “I feel so violated” he said.
He searched every nook and cranny of storage for clues and missing items. Then the “I should have …” statements started. I should have taken the DVD player off. I should always park it close to the camera or put it in dry storage. I’m going to get a motion sensor alarm so if anyone else does this (this is the 2nd boat robbery) an alarm will sound and make them leave.
It spoiled the care-free day we had planned on the lake. It costs us hard earned money. It raised distrust for night outings after the marina closes. It violated our comfortable space.
For a moment I saw the clarity of living with this addiction. Through a robbery.
It was like a strobe light and whistles blowing: “Pornography addiction is a “robbery of the soul””.
It starts with a violation of something dear to us – fidelity. The lies to hide the violation erode and destroy trust. It makes us doubt ourselves and second guess our every move (and our worth as humans). We devise ways to catch the perp. We devise ways to stop the violation. We suffer losses of magnitudes far greater than objects. It clouds every special occasion we plan. It taps into our financial and emotional bank accounts. It robs the soul.
Calmly after assimilating the two “violations” I verbalized this to the ears of my perp. He didn’t want to linger there. He knows the damage and saw the similarities (magnified one million times, often daily in the absence of true recovery). Finally, I can describe this world I’ve been living in. Although the damage to the soul is far greater than any worldly object we hold dear.
By: toomuchenergy
For the past year and a half I have struggled to explain the co-addict side of pornography addiction, both to my spouse and to my one friend who knows about the situation. It has been futile and indescribable until a few days ago.
The revelation occurred when we got on our boat. My husband went down below and immediately asked me if I had been out on the boat. I said, “no, why?” Then the look of despair came over him and he said we’ve been robbed. They broke the latch and went into the front window. Anything that could fit through it was taken.
Immediately he went to the marina computer system to watch the videos of the surveillance cameras. He watched for a while and finally saw the perpetrators making their 1:45 thieving spree by water. He pointed out every detail. See the waves, they came by boat. There are three of them. Finally in frustration, he realized that the resolution was so fuzzy that their true identity would never show up on film.
It was reported and we went back to the boat. Despite the loss being under the deductible, bringing the crime into light was a must – a way to stop them from doing it again perhaps.Then, he goes under to take inventory of what all was taken. “I feel so violated” he said.
He searched every nook and cranny of storage for clues and missing items. Then the “I should have …” statements started. I should have taken the DVD player off. I should always park it close to the camera or put it in dry storage. I’m going to get a motion sensor alarm so if anyone else does this (this is the 2nd boat robbery) an alarm will sound and make them leave.
It spoiled the care-free day we had planned on the lake. It costs us hard earned money. It raised distrust for night outings after the marina closes. It violated our comfortable space.
For a moment I saw the clarity of living with this addiction. Through a robbery.
It was like a strobe light and whistles blowing: “Pornography addiction is a “robbery of the soul””.
It starts with a violation of something dear to us – fidelity. The lies to hide the violation erode and destroy trust. It makes us doubt ourselves and second guess our every move (and our worth as humans). We devise ways to catch the perp. We devise ways to stop the violation. We suffer losses of magnitudes far greater than objects. It clouds every special occasion we plan. It taps into our financial and emotional bank accounts. It robs the soul.
Calmly after assimilating the two “violations” I verbalized this to the ears of my perp. He didn’t want to linger there. He knows the damage and saw the similarities (magnified one million times, often daily in the absence of true recovery). Finally, I can describe this world I’ve been living in. Although the damage to the soul is far greater than any worldly object we hold dear.
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