The Dirty Thirty and the Silence of the Media Lambs
by Paula Gordon
When the U.S. Senate finally stopped Joseph McCarthy's violent, devastating attacks on American values, 22 Senators SUPPORTED McCarthy. They were all Republicans.
When a 19-year-old woman was reportedly gang-raped by co-workers in Iraq, 30 Senators* supported the rapists' company, effectively protecting the RAPISTS along with the company. All Republicans, these Senators self-righteously voted AGAINST an amendment holding government subcontractors responsible for the actions of their employees. "Free enterprise" beat out accountability for a gang-rape.
What kind of human being, much less Senator, champions private profit over justice in the face of rape? I can only wonder -- would it have been different if a man had been gang-raped?
When The Daily Show with Jon Stewart reported this week on the debate, then vote on the Senate Floor -- including simply unbelievable speeches from a number of these 30 Republican Senators -- we went looking to other news sources to learn more, quite reasonably turning first to The New York Times. Zero, zip, zilch.
Alternative media, such as Alternet and the Huffington Post had the story, as did the member-supported MinnPost.com in the hometown of the Senator who had introduced the proposed amendment, Senator Al Franken. A press release was reprinted by HometownSource.com. Coverage was also provided by numerous bloggers and special interest groups. Except for Haliburton's hometown Houston Chronicle, in the mass/traditional media, we had to go to the U.K.'s Guardian** for more information. Lest one argue that the story "isn't news", as of 7 PM Mountain time on Saturday, the story ranked #4 on the Guardian website's most viewed list. We're still waiting for the screaming-Fox-News-headline: Republican Senators Support Gang-Rape by Three to One Margin.
Minnesota Senator Franken served decency well by introducing this piece of proposed legislation. Anyone working for the United States government, even mercenaries working for subcontractors, has the right to expect their fundamental human rights will not be blindly violated, left with no where to turn for justice.
More, Sen. Franken has served a greater good in letting these Senators' actions speak for themselves. It is they -- not he -- who are keeping front and center the reality of Republican ideological and dogmatic maliciousness in the service of their corporate masters.
These 30 Republican Senators may refuse to hold accountable government contractors and those to whom they subcontract. For me, the larger question is -- will voters in the states nominally represented by this Dirty Thirty hold THEM accountable?
Arbitration for gang-rape? Surely the Republican Party has earned the right to die.
*- These are the Republican senators, all male, who voted against the amendment and for the right of corporations to do pretty much what they damn well please without suffering any consequences:
The Dirty Thirty WALL of SHAME:
Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)
Apparently their views were actively supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
These are the Republican senators who voted for the amendment:***
Robert F. Bennett - R-UT
Susan Collins - R-ME
Chuck Grassley- R-IA
Orin Hatch-R-UT
Kay Bailey Hutchison - R-TX
George S. LeMieuz - R-FL
Richard Lugar - R-IN
Lisa Murkowski - R-AK
Olympia Snowe - R-ME
George Voinovich - R-OH
Four of the 10 are women, bless them all.
** - see, particularly, the "controversial history" of Halliburton at the end of this article. That history appears to be part of what the DIrty Thirty voted to protect.
***- two Democratic senators, West Virginia's Byrd and Pennsylvania's Specter, did not vote.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paula-gordon/the-dirty-thirty-and-the_b_324920.html
_______________________________________________________________________________
Monday, October 19, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
As Addictive as Cocaine?
By Olivia LichtensteinLast updated at 8:54 AM on 28th July 2009
A very modern dilemma: If a wife catches her husband watching porn, should she forgive him or throw him out?
She's younger than you, and prettier, too. Her breasts are pneumatic, her stomach is taut and flat. Your husband is spending more and more time in her company (and in the company of hundreds of women just like her). She's never tired and is always ready and available at the click of a mouse.
Sound familiar? Then you have most likely joined the legions of porn widows spawned by the internet.
Never has the subject of pornography been more hotly debated than since former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced that she had forgiven her husband Richard Timney for watching porn films - which she later claimed for on her Parliamentary expenses.
What's more, she said, she had not even made him sleep on the sofa as punishment.
These days, we're told it's 'uncool' to mind too much about porn: everyone watches it, come on, loosen up, what's the big deal? No one is coercing the women involved, so should you mind if your man is watching it?
As a mother of two in a 22-year marriage, I'm not sure I can be so understanding. My husband has never been able to see the point of porn and has no interest in it. But he is unusual.
I suspect thousands of wives who discover their husbands are watching porn are then left with a very modern dilemma: should you forgive them, or throw them out and try to explain to your children why Daddy has gone?
Pornography today permeates society. It's available on TV screens and in magazines and to anyone of any age on the internet. Teenagers in the UK spend 87 hours a year looking at porn, according to a survey carried out this year for CyberSentinel, a parental-lock software company.
Studies suggest that as many as 80 per cent of men watch porn on TV or the internet, and many of them are so addicted to it that it's been called the new cocaine.
Why is it so powerful? Pornography taps into intense emotional, biological and chemical connections throughout the brain and body. Arousal through pornography leads to the release of the naturally occurring chemicals dopamine, norepinephrine, oxytocin and serotonin.
Mary Anne Layden, Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Programme co-director at the University of Pennsylvania, says: 'Porn is the most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today.'
According to Layden, online pornography is akin to having an addictive drug pumped into your house for free, 24 hours a day.
And unlike other drugs, which users can get out of their system, pornographic images stay imprinted in the brain.
Many men might argue that it's harmless; a naughty diversion from the stresses of everyday life. But how many wives will agree?
Has Jacqui Smith really forgiven her husband? Can a marriage ever really recover from this sort of betrayal?
Hilary is 45, a successful working woman from Manchester with two teenage children, and married to a market researcher.
'
Four years ago, I saw a bill for our cable TV,' she says. 'My husband snatched it away from me before I could examine it, but I'd already seen it was for about £1,000.'
Her husband said it was for repairs he'd had done to the TV system and she forgot all about it. But then a second bill arrived for a similar amount and she found that it was actually for adult films.
Embarrassment: Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced she had forgiven her husband Richard Timney for watching porn films
'I felt sick and horrified, and confronted him with it,' she says. 'He said it was research for a project he was working on. Part of me wanted to believe him, but part of me knew the truth. I chose to go with the lie, though, because I didn't want to confront the alternative.'
But over the next few months, more and more bills arrived - and then Hilary found that he'd also been buying films and magazines.
'
It was revolting, really horrible. I felt utterly sickened.'
By now, their sex life had dwindled. 'I thought: "If that's what you want, fine, but you're not having me, too."'
Their physical relationship has still not recovered from it. Still, she claims to have forgiven him.
'It was a period of great stress in his life and this was his way of escaping from it,' she says.
She admits she still feels uncomfortable about it and stayed in the marriage so that their children would have a father at home.
'I find the whole thing so distasteful - this notion of a dolly bird who will do anything for you. I insisted there would be no pornography in the house again, but I'm not sure if we'll ever resume our physical relationship.'
Sex, at its best, is the physical expression of love between two people. Lonely, narcissistic cyber sex is a poor imitation of the real thing.
The problem for many women who discover their partners are looking at pornography is that all too often they blame themselves - a fact identified by therapist Charlotte Friedman, who specialises in divorce.
Pornography is a factor in a significant number of the cases that she deals with. In her experience, men are liable to argue that looking at porn is harmless and that they're doing it because their wives aren't having sex with them. '
As a result, the women blame themselves and think that they've driven their partners to it.'
Friedman finds that women generally do forgive partners' porn habits - if the behaviour stops and work is done to rebuild the relationship. She argues that a woman's natural inclination to blame herself makes her more likely to forgive her husband.
What is disturbing, however, is that in clinical trials where subjects are exposed to repeated presentations of pornography over a six-week period, the subjects are found by the end of the trial to devalue monogamy and cease to regard marriage as a lasting institution.
It's no surprise, then, that excessive use of pornography causes a disturbance to family life and decreases sexual satisfaction within marriage.
In the U.S., pornography is the third largest money-maker for organised crime, after drugs and gambling. In the UK, it's a fast-growing billion-pound industry that trades on men's fantasies, increasingly featuring scenes of violence.
Expensive habit: Relationship support groups reported as many as 40 per cent of couples with problems believed pornography contributed to their difficulties
Familiar plots are those where women find themselves helpless and at the mercy of men enacting rape 'fantasies' and reinforcing age-old stereotypes of 'you know you want it'.
A recent review by the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice, the body responsible for setting standards in advertising, stated that: 'Pornography distorts human sexuality and undermines dignity and respect for others by making sexual intimacy into little more than a spectator sport without love, commitment or responsibility.'
The review highlighted the fact that relationship support groups reported as many as 40 per cent of couples with problems believed pornography contributed to their difficulties.
That view supports research by the University of Calgary, which has shown exposure to pornography puts men at an increased risk of developing sexually deviant tendencies and of experiencing difficulties in intimate relationships. Don't you find that sad and depressing? I know I do.
Pornography addiction is sad. It eroticises male supremacy and debases women. It makes wives feel hurt, betrayed, mistrustful and lacking in self-esteem - and it's when they are in that state that they're forced to choose whether to forgive the man who has betrayed them or break up their marriage.
The men, too, experience feelings of shame and self-loathing. One man I spoke to who uses porn said: 'There is always a little nagging voice in my head which says I'm a filthy, woman-hating lout and I should abstain.'
Where, in the past, men had to pluck up the courage to pick a magazine off the top shelf, now, thanks to the internet, there are no witnesses and no controls.
The easy, open-all-hours access that exists means many men neglect their families, give up hobbies and don't get enough sleep because they are up until four or five in the morning on the computer.
There is an argument - which many feel has some currency - that a lot of these men would not be that interested in porn if it were not so freely available at the click of a mouse. If that's the case, then it's another example of the internet subtly debasing society - and chipping away at the self-respect of men and women alike.
'Pornography is not real and the only thing human beings get nourishment from is reality: real relationships,' says David Morgan, consultant psychotherapist at London's Portman Clinic, whose patients have problems with sexuality or violence.
'The problem with the internet,' he says, 'is that it enables you to find people who share your predilections and it normalises them. Pornography is corrosive and addictive and, like any drug, every time you use it, you need more to get the same high.'
As many wives have discovered, men are being seduced into seeking ever more extreme 'highs' with internet porn. How those wives react when they find out is a complex and troubling question.
And make no mistake, the fate of many marriages is hanging in the balance.
Print this article
Read Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1202605/Its-addictive-cocaine-just-damaging-So-YOUR-husband-hooked-internet-porn.html#ixzz0McXNcd8G
A very modern dilemma: If a wife catches her husband watching porn, should she forgive him or throw him out?
She's younger than you, and prettier, too. Her breasts are pneumatic, her stomach is taut and flat. Your husband is spending more and more time in her company (and in the company of hundreds of women just like her). She's never tired and is always ready and available at the click of a mouse.
Sound familiar? Then you have most likely joined the legions of porn widows spawned by the internet.
Never has the subject of pornography been more hotly debated than since former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced that she had forgiven her husband Richard Timney for watching porn films - which she later claimed for on her Parliamentary expenses.
What's more, she said, she had not even made him sleep on the sofa as punishment.
These days, we're told it's 'uncool' to mind too much about porn: everyone watches it, come on, loosen up, what's the big deal? No one is coercing the women involved, so should you mind if your man is watching it?
As a mother of two in a 22-year marriage, I'm not sure I can be so understanding. My husband has never been able to see the point of porn and has no interest in it. But he is unusual.
I suspect thousands of wives who discover their husbands are watching porn are then left with a very modern dilemma: should you forgive them, or throw them out and try to explain to your children why Daddy has gone?
Pornography today permeates society. It's available on TV screens and in magazines and to anyone of any age on the internet. Teenagers in the UK spend 87 hours a year looking at porn, according to a survey carried out this year for CyberSentinel, a parental-lock software company.
Studies suggest that as many as 80 per cent of men watch porn on TV or the internet, and many of them are so addicted to it that it's been called the new cocaine.
Why is it so powerful? Pornography taps into intense emotional, biological and chemical connections throughout the brain and body. Arousal through pornography leads to the release of the naturally occurring chemicals dopamine, norepinephrine, oxytocin and serotonin.
Mary Anne Layden, Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Programme co-director at the University of Pennsylvania, says: 'Porn is the most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today.'
According to Layden, online pornography is akin to having an addictive drug pumped into your house for free, 24 hours a day.
And unlike other drugs, which users can get out of their system, pornographic images stay imprinted in the brain.
Many men might argue that it's harmless; a naughty diversion from the stresses of everyday life. But how many wives will agree?
Has Jacqui Smith really forgiven her husband? Can a marriage ever really recover from this sort of betrayal?
Hilary is 45, a successful working woman from Manchester with two teenage children, and married to a market researcher.
'
Four years ago, I saw a bill for our cable TV,' she says. 'My husband snatched it away from me before I could examine it, but I'd already seen it was for about £1,000.'
Her husband said it was for repairs he'd had done to the TV system and she forgot all about it. But then a second bill arrived for a similar amount and she found that it was actually for adult films.
Embarrassment: Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced she had forgiven her husband Richard Timney for watching porn films
'I felt sick and horrified, and confronted him with it,' she says. 'He said it was research for a project he was working on. Part of me wanted to believe him, but part of me knew the truth. I chose to go with the lie, though, because I didn't want to confront the alternative.'
But over the next few months, more and more bills arrived - and then Hilary found that he'd also been buying films and magazines.
'
It was revolting, really horrible. I felt utterly sickened.'
By now, their sex life had dwindled. 'I thought: "If that's what you want, fine, but you're not having me, too."'
Their physical relationship has still not recovered from it. Still, she claims to have forgiven him.
'It was a period of great stress in his life and this was his way of escaping from it,' she says.
She admits she still feels uncomfortable about it and stayed in the marriage so that their children would have a father at home.
'I find the whole thing so distasteful - this notion of a dolly bird who will do anything for you. I insisted there would be no pornography in the house again, but I'm not sure if we'll ever resume our physical relationship.'
Sex, at its best, is the physical expression of love between two people. Lonely, narcissistic cyber sex is a poor imitation of the real thing.
The problem for many women who discover their partners are looking at pornography is that all too often they blame themselves - a fact identified by therapist Charlotte Friedman, who specialises in divorce.
Pornography is a factor in a significant number of the cases that she deals with. In her experience, men are liable to argue that looking at porn is harmless and that they're doing it because their wives aren't having sex with them. '
As a result, the women blame themselves and think that they've driven their partners to it.'
Friedman finds that women generally do forgive partners' porn habits - if the behaviour stops and work is done to rebuild the relationship. She argues that a woman's natural inclination to blame herself makes her more likely to forgive her husband.
What is disturbing, however, is that in clinical trials where subjects are exposed to repeated presentations of pornography over a six-week period, the subjects are found by the end of the trial to devalue monogamy and cease to regard marriage as a lasting institution.
It's no surprise, then, that excessive use of pornography causes a disturbance to family life and decreases sexual satisfaction within marriage.
In the U.S., pornography is the third largest money-maker for organised crime, after drugs and gambling. In the UK, it's a fast-growing billion-pound industry that trades on men's fantasies, increasingly featuring scenes of violence.
Expensive habit: Relationship support groups reported as many as 40 per cent of couples with problems believed pornography contributed to their difficulties
Familiar plots are those where women find themselves helpless and at the mercy of men enacting rape 'fantasies' and reinforcing age-old stereotypes of 'you know you want it'.
A recent review by the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice, the body responsible for setting standards in advertising, stated that: 'Pornography distorts human sexuality and undermines dignity and respect for others by making sexual intimacy into little more than a spectator sport without love, commitment or responsibility.'
The review highlighted the fact that relationship support groups reported as many as 40 per cent of couples with problems believed pornography contributed to their difficulties.
That view supports research by the University of Calgary, which has shown exposure to pornography puts men at an increased risk of developing sexually deviant tendencies and of experiencing difficulties in intimate relationships. Don't you find that sad and depressing? I know I do.
Pornography addiction is sad. It eroticises male supremacy and debases women. It makes wives feel hurt, betrayed, mistrustful and lacking in self-esteem - and it's when they are in that state that they're forced to choose whether to forgive the man who has betrayed them or break up their marriage.
The men, too, experience feelings of shame and self-loathing. One man I spoke to who uses porn said: 'There is always a little nagging voice in my head which says I'm a filthy, woman-hating lout and I should abstain.'
Where, in the past, men had to pluck up the courage to pick a magazine off the top shelf, now, thanks to the internet, there are no witnesses and no controls.
The easy, open-all-hours access that exists means many men neglect their families, give up hobbies and don't get enough sleep because they are up until four or five in the morning on the computer.
There is an argument - which many feel has some currency - that a lot of these men would not be that interested in porn if it were not so freely available at the click of a mouse. If that's the case, then it's another example of the internet subtly debasing society - and chipping away at the self-respect of men and women alike.
'Pornography is not real and the only thing human beings get nourishment from is reality: real relationships,' says David Morgan, consultant psychotherapist at London's Portman Clinic, whose patients have problems with sexuality or violence.
'The problem with the internet,' he says, 'is that it enables you to find people who share your predilections and it normalises them. Pornography is corrosive and addictive and, like any drug, every time you use it, you need more to get the same high.'
As many wives have discovered, men are being seduced into seeking ever more extreme 'highs' with internet porn. How those wives react when they find out is a complex and troubling question.
And make no mistake, the fate of many marriages is hanging in the balance.
Print this article
Read Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1202605/Its-addictive-cocaine-just-damaging-So-YOUR-husband-hooked-internet-porn.html#ixzz0McXNcd8G
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
Certified Sex Addiction Therapists
Finding a CSAT or Certified Sex Addiction Therapist is crucial to finding help by someone who is trained in treating the specific and real symptoms of porn and sex addiction.
Dr. Patrick Carnes' website includes a valuable link to find a CSAT by zip code.
http://www.sexhelp.com
Dr. Patrick Carnes' website includes a valuable link to find a CSAT by zip code.
http://www.sexhelp.com
Friday, January 9, 2009
Friday, October 31, 2008
40, Married, Gaming Addict
40, married, gaming addict
It's not just teenagers in the basement: Adult addiction is growing, but the stigma remains
SARAH BOESVELD AND ZOSIA BIELSKI
From Friday's Globe and Mail
October 31, 2008 at 3:49 AM EDT
For years, high-school science teacher Pauline Harvey went to work thinking her unemployed husband spent all day job-hunting on their home computer.
He was hunting, all right - Brad Dorrance would shoot down opponents for more than 12 hours a day in a virtual world that had gradually become more real to him than his wife.
Since her husband was battling depression as well as bipolar and attention-deficit disorders at the time, she believed it was just a symptom of his illness.
"I thought this was just the behaviour of a depressed person," Ms. Harvey, 47, said from her London, Ont., home.
But in a hospital room after Mr. Dorrance, 40, tried to kill himself with a handful of sedatives, she heard the truth: Her husband was addicted to gaming and pornography, and had racked up $24,000 in debt on five credit cards she knew nothing about.
"I was really angry and felt betrayed," she said. "I was scared, but at the same time I thought you can only go up from here."
While the recent disappearance of 15-year-old Brandon Crisp has put a spotlight on teenage video-game addiction, the phenomenon of adult gaming addiction is largely ignored, experts say.
It's a growing problem as the age of the average gamer has risen to 32, said Liz Woolley, founder of Online Gamers Anonymous. And because gaming has more social acceptability than alcohol or drugs, most adult addicts don't realize they have a problem. But it can have a similarly destructive effect on family and relationships.
"People are just sort of living on these things," said Kimberly Young, director of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery in Bradford, Pa., adding that most gamers have a family and a good job.
"Because it's so new, we haven't really said, 'Well, gee, we have a lot of stuff going on with dad.' And nobody knows how to deal with it because it's a game. It's not like he's doing drugs every day."
Indeed, that's the excuse many gamers use when confronted by worried spouses. In games such as World of Warcraft, battles take hours and the games don't end, she said.
"You can't leave the computer because then you're disappointing your teammates. It becomes a whole psychology of 'You create a character, you live through this character, this character has responsibilities and duties within the game.' "
Dr. Young compares the most extreme gamers with heroin addicts who eventually disengage from work and their relationships.
Dr. Young said it usually takes a "rock bottom experience" such as a divorce, a pink slip or traumatized children to wake up an addict.
For John Blakely, who asked that his name be changed, it was the birth of his daughter that finally moved him to seek treatment. For six years, the Bay Street banker was hooked on online gaming, while battling a sex addiction he says developed in his youth.
"If it wasn't for her, I don't think I would've actually gone [to rehab]. ... I was really fearful in terms of what kind of parent I was going to be."
The 37-year-old, who already suffered from depression and anxiety, said one addiction bled easily into the other.
"As an adult, I would use video games so I wouldn't act out sexually. If I'm at home and my wife's in the next room, I can't be surfing pornography," he said. "Video gaming was kind of an easy way because it's not like I'm piss drunk, it's not like I'm smoking up, but it's still a way for me to escape, numb out and lose track of reality."
Since video games are still viewed as a kids' activity, many adults feel a stigma surrounds their addiction. Mr. Blakely said he'd rather admit to his sex addiction than tell colleagues about his urges to play EverQuest.
For Mr. Dorrance, gaming afforded a chance to be a leader again after he felt he lost control of his life. Games, he said, offered a self-medicating adrenalin rush.
"We're wired to gain that kind of acceptance and acclaim from our peers," he said. "It preys on people's sense of belonging. ... If they're looking to replace a hole in their lives, they find that very quickly."
The gaming soon spilled over into his life with Ms. Harvey.
"I think it was a painful time for her, lonely. She knew the back of my head better than she knew my face."
By November, 2007, after almost a decade of gaming, Mr. Dorrance had "cocooned" himself in the basement in front of his computer. One month later, he attempted suicide.
Today, Mr. Dorrance works as a technical support representative for an Internet service provider. He believes addicted gamers are predisposed to their disorders: "The rest of your life can be crashing down around you, and you can be who you want 12 hours a day."
He runs a blog, exgamer.net, to help fellow video game addicts, and next Wednesday, he'll launch the London chapter of Online Gamers Anonymous.
Online support is popular among wives of addicted gamers, who call themselves "widows." Sherry Myrow, a 30-year-old mother of two from Toronto, launched gamerwidow.com after her husband got hooked on World of Warcraft. Ms. Myrow said she initially tried to stop him from playing, but one day decided to see for herself what it was like. "My longest stint was 15 hours straight. You forget about time, you want to keep going and going," she said.
Ms. Myrow's strained marriage perked up - the couple were now playing together and she felt like she had her husband back. But one day, she was so consumed by the game that she avoided a phone call from her mother, who had been her lifeline during her husband's addiction. It jolted her.
"I literally pulled the blinders off. I looked around and saw the dishes had piled up, the bills were unopened. That just wasn't me."
Ms. Harvey said she also fell into a depression. Even though Mr. Dorrance has been nine months "sober" and is now helping others fight their addictions, the marriage remains fragile.
"I have forgiven him," she said, "but I don't trust him."
*****
Tips to end game time
Over the past four years, registered social worker Peter Silin has seen a steady trickle of game-addicted husbands at his private counselling practice in Vancouver, mostly at the behest of their wives. He looks at patients' personal and family histories and examines current relationship dynamics. He believes gaming addicts must quit cold turkey, but also offers some basic tips to avoid addictive behaviour online:
Put the computer in a public place.
Agree to log on only when someone else is in the room.
If you log on, make a list of what you intend to do, which sites you will visit and how long you will be online.
Uninstall game programs and trash the CDs.
Consider Net Nanny software for the computer.
It's not just teenagers in the basement: Adult addiction is growing, but the stigma remains
SARAH BOESVELD AND ZOSIA BIELSKI
From Friday's Globe and Mail
October 31, 2008 at 3:49 AM EDT
For years, high-school science teacher Pauline Harvey went to work thinking her unemployed husband spent all day job-hunting on their home computer.
He was hunting, all right - Brad Dorrance would shoot down opponents for more than 12 hours a day in a virtual world that had gradually become more real to him than his wife.
Since her husband was battling depression as well as bipolar and attention-deficit disorders at the time, she believed it was just a symptom of his illness.
"I thought this was just the behaviour of a depressed person," Ms. Harvey, 47, said from her London, Ont., home.
But in a hospital room after Mr. Dorrance, 40, tried to kill himself with a handful of sedatives, she heard the truth: Her husband was addicted to gaming and pornography, and had racked up $24,000 in debt on five credit cards she knew nothing about.
"I was really angry and felt betrayed," she said. "I was scared, but at the same time I thought you can only go up from here."
While the recent disappearance of 15-year-old Brandon Crisp has put a spotlight on teenage video-game addiction, the phenomenon of adult gaming addiction is largely ignored, experts say.
It's a growing problem as the age of the average gamer has risen to 32, said Liz Woolley, founder of Online Gamers Anonymous. And because gaming has more social acceptability than alcohol or drugs, most adult addicts don't realize they have a problem. But it can have a similarly destructive effect on family and relationships.
"People are just sort of living on these things," said Kimberly Young, director of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery in Bradford, Pa., adding that most gamers have a family and a good job.
"Because it's so new, we haven't really said, 'Well, gee, we have a lot of stuff going on with dad.' And nobody knows how to deal with it because it's a game. It's not like he's doing drugs every day."
Indeed, that's the excuse many gamers use when confronted by worried spouses. In games such as World of Warcraft, battles take hours and the games don't end, she said.
"You can't leave the computer because then you're disappointing your teammates. It becomes a whole psychology of 'You create a character, you live through this character, this character has responsibilities and duties within the game.' "
Dr. Young compares the most extreme gamers with heroin addicts who eventually disengage from work and their relationships.
Dr. Young said it usually takes a "rock bottom experience" such as a divorce, a pink slip or traumatized children to wake up an addict.
For John Blakely, who asked that his name be changed, it was the birth of his daughter that finally moved him to seek treatment. For six years, the Bay Street banker was hooked on online gaming, while battling a sex addiction he says developed in his youth.
"If it wasn't for her, I don't think I would've actually gone [to rehab]. ... I was really fearful in terms of what kind of parent I was going to be."
The 37-year-old, who already suffered from depression and anxiety, said one addiction bled easily into the other.
"As an adult, I would use video games so I wouldn't act out sexually. If I'm at home and my wife's in the next room, I can't be surfing pornography," he said. "Video gaming was kind of an easy way because it's not like I'm piss drunk, it's not like I'm smoking up, but it's still a way for me to escape, numb out and lose track of reality."
Since video games are still viewed as a kids' activity, many adults feel a stigma surrounds their addiction. Mr. Blakely said he'd rather admit to his sex addiction than tell colleagues about his urges to play EverQuest.
For Mr. Dorrance, gaming afforded a chance to be a leader again after he felt he lost control of his life. Games, he said, offered a self-medicating adrenalin rush.
"We're wired to gain that kind of acceptance and acclaim from our peers," he said. "It preys on people's sense of belonging. ... If they're looking to replace a hole in their lives, they find that very quickly."
The gaming soon spilled over into his life with Ms. Harvey.
"I think it was a painful time for her, lonely. She knew the back of my head better than she knew my face."
By November, 2007, after almost a decade of gaming, Mr. Dorrance had "cocooned" himself in the basement in front of his computer. One month later, he attempted suicide.
Today, Mr. Dorrance works as a technical support representative for an Internet service provider. He believes addicted gamers are predisposed to their disorders: "The rest of your life can be crashing down around you, and you can be who you want 12 hours a day."
He runs a blog, exgamer.net, to help fellow video game addicts, and next Wednesday, he'll launch the London chapter of Online Gamers Anonymous.
Online support is popular among wives of addicted gamers, who call themselves "widows." Sherry Myrow, a 30-year-old mother of two from Toronto, launched gamerwidow.com after her husband got hooked on World of Warcraft. Ms. Myrow said she initially tried to stop him from playing, but one day decided to see for herself what it was like. "My longest stint was 15 hours straight. You forget about time, you want to keep going and going," she said.
Ms. Myrow's strained marriage perked up - the couple were now playing together and she felt like she had her husband back. But one day, she was so consumed by the game that she avoided a phone call from her mother, who had been her lifeline during her husband's addiction. It jolted her.
"I literally pulled the blinders off. I looked around and saw the dishes had piled up, the bills were unopened. That just wasn't me."
Ms. Harvey said she also fell into a depression. Even though Mr. Dorrance has been nine months "sober" and is now helping others fight their addictions, the marriage remains fragile.
"I have forgiven him," she said, "but I don't trust him."
*****
Tips to end game time
Over the past four years, registered social worker Peter Silin has seen a steady trickle of game-addicted husbands at his private counselling practice in Vancouver, mostly at the behest of their wives. He looks at patients' personal and family histories and examines current relationship dynamics. He believes gaming addicts must quit cold turkey, but also offers some basic tips to avoid addictive behaviour online:
Put the computer in a public place.
Agree to log on only when someone else is in the room.
If you log on, make a list of what you intend to do, which sites you will visit and how long you will be online.
Uninstall game programs and trash the CDs.
Consider Net Nanny software for the computer.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Renowned Lecturer Describes Pornography's Addiction
Printer-friendly version Email this articleby Brandon Stewart '08
April 3, 2007
Over 150 students gathered in Salter Hall Monday night to hear Michael Leahy, self-proclaimed recovering sex addict give a presentation entitled, "Porn Nation: Living in a Hypersexual Culture".
Mr. Leahy’s 90 minute presentation covered the influx of sex in our culture and the effect it has had on us all, but especially the current generation of college undergraduates. Leahy identified two of the most common ways people dismiss the effects of pornography: the idea that no one gets hurt and that we have the freedom to choose to be exposed to the material. Leahy declared his lecture would hopefully dispel those myths.
The first few minutes of Leahy’s lecture were spent reciting a listing of startling facts about the porn industry. As he put it at the start, "I want to be open, honest and transparent with you tonight." The world-wide porn market rakes in an estimated $57 billion a year, with a significant portion of that money being generated by the United States. In fact, Leahy shared with the crowd, there are roughly twice as many adult shops in the US than McDonald’s restaurants. The internet has become a huge outlet for growth in the pornography industry attracting nearly 40 million customers at over 4.2 million websites.
But the lecture wasn’t all about citing facts. Leahy gave a personal testimonial about the damage a porn addiction had on his own life. The youngest of five children, Leahy moved around a lot and eventually settled in Spokane, Washington for the majority of his childhood. It was as he hit puberty that he began to be interested in pornography and his addiction began. But he cited an earlier episode, in which he was shown a naked woman on a playing card, as his first experience with the power that sexual imagery can produce.
He then narrated his collegiate and post-graduate life which he described as being completely devoid of any real intimacy. Instead, said Leahy, he had bought into the culture of sex’s myth that "real men are sexual conquerors and that woman are merely sexual objects." But he had thought all of it was over when he married Patti Gail, the woman who he said he fell in love with "in one of those love at first sight moments."
They had a good marriage of 15 years with several children when Michael’s desires began to overcome him. He related how he began to rely more and more on himself for fulfillment and the sexual intimacy between himself and his wife took a violent nosedive. In fact, his life was in a real tailspin and in 1997 he began an affair with a woman. In fact, after his marriage crumbled a year later, he learned that this woman was having affairs with at least five other married men at the same time.
With a sad laugh, Leahy said that at that point he realized "that I had gotten everything I asked for." He had found a woman who embodied all of his sexual fantasies, but at the cost of his marriage. As the marriage began to dissolve, his wife even became suicidal, having blamed herself for failing to be a good wife. But as Leahy openly admitted, "I was an affair waiting to happen." Indeed, "the seeds were sown long before that" when he began to rely on focus on his own sexual gratification at the expense of the other aspects of his life.
Interspersed between Leahy’s lecture were video clips from a number of psychologists, counselors, recovering sex addicts, and a former prostitute. There was even a testimonial from a former Playboy playmate. Each addressed the issue of sexual addiction in different ways, but were almost unanimous in their description using words like "high" and "buzz". In fact, throughout the night, sexual addiction was compared to the experience of a junky attempting to get a fix from some narcotic.
The testimonials provided sage advice for those who are in similar situations. As a former sex addict stated, "What you do currently will affect your ability to have intimacy in the future." This sentiment was echoed by many throughout the video clips. The sexual liberation which has been proclaimed so proudly by many in our culture has had many serious deleterious results.
Indeed, the incidence of on-campus rapes has not declined and roughly one in four college females are reported to be suffering from some sort of eating disorder.
Towards the end of the lecture, Leahy offered up a four minute intermission and invited people to stick with him but that the rest of the lecture would be more grounded in a spiritual message and that those that wanted to leave could do so. He then launched into a series of video clips and personal testimony which presented the idea that the best way out of this sex addiction was through Christ.
The lecture was hosted by the Wabash Christian Men, the Newman Center, the Religion Department and the Gender Issues Committee.
There were mixed reactions in the crowd. Brian Deyo, President of the Wabash Christian Men was pleased with how the event turned out. "Wabash Christian Men brought Michael Leahy to campus to help address what we see as a serious issue in our lives as students, and present the idea that Jesus Christ is the only way to find true pleasure and intimacy in life."
Others had slightly different views. Zafer Ahmed ’08 said, "I didn't quite buy Leahy's contention of a "Sex Syndrome." I agree and accept his points about the hypersexualization of American society (and the subsequent influence porn has had on it), but I saw "Porn Nation" as Leahy's justification for having an extramarital affair." For Zafer and others, there was not enough focus on personal responsibility and too much emphasis on the effect pornography had on people.
Mike Karam, president of the Newman Center was particularly pleased to have the opportunity to co-sponsor this event. "We were pleased that the WCM approached us with this opportunity. It was special for us to have this opportunity to show our Christian solidarity across Protestant/Catholic lines."
"
Everyone understands the potential for disease, however, the Newman Club's concern – like the concern of the Church – are the emotional and spiritual dangers of pornography and unchaste behavior period. Leahy's talk was an exciting opportunity for us to bring someone in who could level with our secular culture on its own terms-- speaking from personal experience, with physical examples of the destructiveness of pornography-- and to help to make it aware of the objective reality of the grave dangers of unchaste behavior."
Wabash College - Crawfordsville, IN
Printer-friendly version Email this articleby Brandon Stewart '08
April 3, 2007
Over 150 students gathered in Salter Hall Monday night to hear Michael Leahy, self-proclaimed recovering sex addict give a presentation entitled, "Porn Nation: Living in a Hypersexual Culture".
Mr. Leahy’s 90 minute presentation covered the influx of sex in our culture and the effect it has had on us all, but especially the current generation of college undergraduates. Leahy identified two of the most common ways people dismiss the effects of pornography: the idea that no one gets hurt and that we have the freedom to choose to be exposed to the material. Leahy declared his lecture would hopefully dispel those myths.
The first few minutes of Leahy’s lecture were spent reciting a listing of startling facts about the porn industry. As he put it at the start, "I want to be open, honest and transparent with you tonight." The world-wide porn market rakes in an estimated $57 billion a year, with a significant portion of that money being generated by the United States. In fact, Leahy shared with the crowd, there are roughly twice as many adult shops in the US than McDonald’s restaurants. The internet has become a huge outlet for growth in the pornography industry attracting nearly 40 million customers at over 4.2 million websites.
But the lecture wasn’t all about citing facts. Leahy gave a personal testimonial about the damage a porn addiction had on his own life. The youngest of five children, Leahy moved around a lot and eventually settled in Spokane, Washington for the majority of his childhood. It was as he hit puberty that he began to be interested in pornography and his addiction began. But he cited an earlier episode, in which he was shown a naked woman on a playing card, as his first experience with the power that sexual imagery can produce.
He then narrated his collegiate and post-graduate life which he described as being completely devoid of any real intimacy. Instead, said Leahy, he had bought into the culture of sex’s myth that "real men are sexual conquerors and that woman are merely sexual objects." But he had thought all of it was over when he married Patti Gail, the woman who he said he fell in love with "in one of those love at first sight moments."
They had a good marriage of 15 years with several children when Michael’s desires began to overcome him. He related how he began to rely more and more on himself for fulfillment and the sexual intimacy between himself and his wife took a violent nosedive. In fact, his life was in a real tailspin and in 1997 he began an affair with a woman. In fact, after his marriage crumbled a year later, he learned that this woman was having affairs with at least five other married men at the same time.
With a sad laugh, Leahy said that at that point he realized "that I had gotten everything I asked for." He had found a woman who embodied all of his sexual fantasies, but at the cost of his marriage. As the marriage began to dissolve, his wife even became suicidal, having blamed herself for failing to be a good wife. But as Leahy openly admitted, "I was an affair waiting to happen." Indeed, "the seeds were sown long before that" when he began to rely on focus on his own sexual gratification at the expense of the other aspects of his life.
Interspersed between Leahy’s lecture were video clips from a number of psychologists, counselors, recovering sex addicts, and a former prostitute. There was even a testimonial from a former Playboy playmate. Each addressed the issue of sexual addiction in different ways, but were almost unanimous in their description using words like "high" and "buzz". In fact, throughout the night, sexual addiction was compared to the experience of a junky attempting to get a fix from some narcotic.
The testimonials provided sage advice for those who are in similar situations. As a former sex addict stated, "What you do currently will affect your ability to have intimacy in the future." This sentiment was echoed by many throughout the video clips. The sexual liberation which has been proclaimed so proudly by many in our culture has had many serious deleterious results.
Indeed, the incidence of on-campus rapes has not declined and roughly one in four college females are reported to be suffering from some sort of eating disorder.
Towards the end of the lecture, Leahy offered up a four minute intermission and invited people to stick with him but that the rest of the lecture would be more grounded in a spiritual message and that those that wanted to leave could do so. He then launched into a series of video clips and personal testimony which presented the idea that the best way out of this sex addiction was through Christ.
The lecture was hosted by the Wabash Christian Men, the Newman Center, the Religion Department and the Gender Issues Committee.
There were mixed reactions in the crowd. Brian Deyo, President of the Wabash Christian Men was pleased with how the event turned out. "Wabash Christian Men brought Michael Leahy to campus to help address what we see as a serious issue in our lives as students, and present the idea that Jesus Christ is the only way to find true pleasure and intimacy in life."
Others had slightly different views. Zafer Ahmed ’08 said, "I didn't quite buy Leahy's contention of a "Sex Syndrome." I agree and accept his points about the hypersexualization of American society (and the subsequent influence porn has had on it), but I saw "Porn Nation" as Leahy's justification for having an extramarital affair." For Zafer and others, there was not enough focus on personal responsibility and too much emphasis on the effect pornography had on people.
Mike Karam, president of the Newman Center was particularly pleased to have the opportunity to co-sponsor this event. "We were pleased that the WCM approached us with this opportunity. It was special for us to have this opportunity to show our Christian solidarity across Protestant/Catholic lines."
"
Everyone understands the potential for disease, however, the Newman Club's concern – like the concern of the Church – are the emotional and spiritual dangers of pornography and unchaste behavior period. Leahy's talk was an exciting opportunity for us to bring someone in who could level with our secular culture on its own terms-- speaking from personal experience, with physical examples of the destructiveness of pornography-- and to help to make it aware of the objective reality of the grave dangers of unchaste behavior."
Wabash College - Crawfordsville, IN
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Judith Reisman Article: Hefner's Bunny on a Trojan Horse
Hefner's bunny on a Trojan horse
November 10, 2007
By Judith Reisman
© 2007
http://drjudithreisman.com/
Can important lessons still be learned from history and cherished Greek mythology? In 1184 B.C., Sinon, a Greek spy, tricked the Trojan leaders into bringing Ulysses' wooden horse into their walled city. The destruction of Troy, and the enslavement of her women and children, is now legend.
But how could the lesson of Troy's costly naiveté apply to our own times?
Cast your memory back to 1948 when Alfred Kinsey's Trojan horse of "sexual liberation" and his fraudulent "sexual education" harangued our tolerant, Judeo-Christian walled city. Our rates of STDs, family breakdowns and sexual crimes against women and children reflected those restraining religious beliefs and laws.
By 1953, Hugh Hefner, Kinsey's "pamphleteer" smashed through our city walls with his Playboy bunny, and the "sexual revolution" had begun. Elite professors swiftly took up the new values, recruiting students to the sex and drug revolution. Hefner's smiling Playboy bunny, the modern sexual Trojan horse, would torch our civil society – "no fault" divorce and skyrocketing sexual crime and disease were on the way.
See the Kinsey/Hefner fallout in the daily child abuse arrests of influential college educated leaders, legislators, doctors, lawyers, military and Justice Department officials, teachers, clergy, professors and the like.
(Column continues below)
Mainstreaming "adult" pornography inevitably created a lust among perhaps millions who now seek their endogenous opioid thrills in child pornography and abuse.
What follows are a few current reports from my "VIP Child Abusers" file. These are men (and increasingly women and children, despite the lack of VIP women in this recent list) who risked their professions, reputations, families, finances, everything to attain that state of fear, shame and lust the predator experiences as sexual arousal to children.
Thus does the child predator transition from high arousal euphoria to depression and dysphoria, endangering more and more children.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Nov. 6 arrest of Robert Singer, the chief operating officer of the National Children's Museum, charged with deliberately distributing child pornography to a child.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Nov. 6 arrest of Irving Mittleman, a University of New Haven professor charged with flying to Detroit to have sex with two children.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Oct. 31 arrest of Barry Mentser, former staff attorney for Franklin County Children's Services, Ohio, for "importuning and attempted unlawful sexual conduct with a minor."
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Oct. 30 arrest of University of Hawaii professor Marc P.C. Fossorier for arranging sex with a 15-year-old girl.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Oct. 26 arrest of John Eric Gilliam, a ,
Seminole, Texas, paramedic for possession and transportation of hundreds of child pornography images.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Oct. 26 arrest of Troy, Ohio, pediatrician Robert Reinhold for "1,700 images … [many] depicted minors engaging in lascivious displays or engaging in acts of sexual activity."
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Oct. 27 arrest of Victoria County Texas, Sheriff Mike Ratcliff for aggravated sexual assault and criminal solicitation of a minor with a handgun.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Oct. 25 arrest of John P. Duffy, a "well-known local sports announcer and former weekend news anchor for ESPN Radio 1250" in Pittsburgh, Pa., for child pornography.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Oct. 3 arrest in Fayetteville, Ark., of Michael V. Fortino a nationally televised motivational speaker, for transporting child pornography across state lines.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the notorious (now almost forgotten) Sept. 17 arrest of federal prosecutor John David R. Atchison, a U.S. Justice Department, official for soliciting sex with a 5-year-old girl. He allegedly said the child would be unharmed. "Just gotta go slow and very easy. I've done it plenty." Atchison was a member of the Florida Bar Association since 1984 and president of a youth athletic organization.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse when reading on Sept. 14 of the arrest of Louis J. Stroschien Jr., listed as the principal of the Shelby County Catholic School in Harlan, Iowa, for enticement of a minor for sex.
The "sexual liberation" epidemic is of course reflected in violence to women as well, as on Nov. 10 when the military reported an increase in sexual assaults from 1,700 in 2004 to 2,947 in 2006. Here, the Bunny Trojan horse trots through the recent Pentagon decision to sell pornography on military bases in violation of the 1996 "Military Honor and Decency Act."
Meanwhile, an Associated Press study released Oct. 22, found over 2,500 educators in over five years punished for sexual abuse with many more such crimes unreported. The AP report cited a 2004 congressional report that concluded 4.5 million out of 50 million students in American public schools "are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade."
So thousands of VIP professionals, well-educated, esteemed men and women, doctors, lawyers, teachers, clergy, police, justice officials, legislators and the like, as well as many thousands of "uneducated" folks, are annually arrested for child predation.
These predators are carriers of a sex crime epidemic that breached our city walls during the 1960s sexual revolution led by a cadre of Kinseyan sexual psychopaths.
Our nation is well past "the tipping point" of sexual pathology. Until our universities have the courage to face our past mistakes and teach the truth about the Trojan horse-and-bunny history of the sexual revolution, our predatory population will continue to expand, recruit and breed ever greater numbers.
You do the math.
November 10, 2007
By Judith Reisman
© 2007
http://drjudithreisman.com/
Can important lessons still be learned from history and cherished Greek mythology? In 1184 B.C., Sinon, a Greek spy, tricked the Trojan leaders into bringing Ulysses' wooden horse into their walled city. The destruction of Troy, and the enslavement of her women and children, is now legend.
But how could the lesson of Troy's costly naiveté apply to our own times?
Cast your memory back to 1948 when Alfred Kinsey's Trojan horse of "sexual liberation" and his fraudulent "sexual education" harangued our tolerant, Judeo-Christian walled city. Our rates of STDs, family breakdowns and sexual crimes against women and children reflected those restraining religious beliefs and laws.
By 1953, Hugh Hefner, Kinsey's "pamphleteer" smashed through our city walls with his Playboy bunny, and the "sexual revolution" had begun. Elite professors swiftly took up the new values, recruiting students to the sex and drug revolution. Hefner's smiling Playboy bunny, the modern sexual Trojan horse, would torch our civil society – "no fault" divorce and skyrocketing sexual crime and disease were on the way.
See the Kinsey/Hefner fallout in the daily child abuse arrests of influential college educated leaders, legislators, doctors, lawyers, military and Justice Department officials, teachers, clergy, professors and the like.
(Column continues below)
Mainstreaming "adult" pornography inevitably created a lust among perhaps millions who now seek their endogenous opioid thrills in child pornography and abuse.
What follows are a few current reports from my "VIP Child Abusers" file. These are men (and increasingly women and children, despite the lack of VIP women in this recent list) who risked their professions, reputations, families, finances, everything to attain that state of fear, shame and lust the predator experiences as sexual arousal to children.
Thus does the child predator transition from high arousal euphoria to depression and dysphoria, endangering more and more children.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Nov. 6 arrest of Robert Singer, the chief operating officer of the National Children's Museum, charged with deliberately distributing child pornography to a child.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Nov. 6 arrest of Irving Mittleman, a University of New Haven professor charged with flying to Detroit to have sex with two children.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Oct. 31 arrest of Barry Mentser, former staff attorney for Franklin County Children's Services, Ohio, for "importuning and attempted unlawful sexual conduct with a minor."
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Oct. 30 arrest of University of Hawaii professor Marc P.C. Fossorier for arranging sex with a 15-year-old girl.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Oct. 26 arrest of John Eric Gilliam, a ,
Seminole, Texas, paramedic for possession and transportation of hundreds of child pornography images.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Oct. 26 arrest of Troy, Ohio, pediatrician Robert Reinhold for "1,700 images … [many] depicted minors engaging in lascivious displays or engaging in acts of sexual activity."
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Oct. 27 arrest of Victoria County Texas, Sheriff Mike Ratcliff for aggravated sexual assault and criminal solicitation of a minor with a handgun.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Oct. 25 arrest of John P. Duffy, a "well-known local sports announcer and former weekend news anchor for ESPN Radio 1250" in Pittsburgh, Pa., for child pornography.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the Oct. 3 arrest in Fayetteville, Ark., of Michael V. Fortino a nationally televised motivational speaker, for transporting child pornography across state lines.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse during the notorious (now almost forgotten) Sept. 17 arrest of federal prosecutor John David R. Atchison, a U.S. Justice Department, official for soliciting sex with a 5-year-old girl. He allegedly said the child would be unharmed. "Just gotta go slow and very easy. I've done it plenty." Atchison was a member of the Florida Bar Association since 1984 and president of a youth athletic organization.
See the "sexual liberation" Trojan horse when reading on Sept. 14 of the arrest of Louis J. Stroschien Jr., listed as the principal of the Shelby County Catholic School in Harlan, Iowa, for enticement of a minor for sex.
The "sexual liberation" epidemic is of course reflected in violence to women as well, as on Nov. 10 when the military reported an increase in sexual assaults from 1,700 in 2004 to 2,947 in 2006. Here, the Bunny Trojan horse trots through the recent Pentagon decision to sell pornography on military bases in violation of the 1996 "Military Honor and Decency Act."
Meanwhile, an Associated Press study released Oct. 22, found over 2,500 educators in over five years punished for sexual abuse with many more such crimes unreported. The AP report cited a 2004 congressional report that concluded 4.5 million out of 50 million students in American public schools "are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade."
So thousands of VIP professionals, well-educated, esteemed men and women, doctors, lawyers, teachers, clergy, police, justice officials, legislators and the like, as well as many thousands of "uneducated" folks, are annually arrested for child predation.
These predators are carriers of a sex crime epidemic that breached our city walls during the 1960s sexual revolution led by a cadre of Kinseyan sexual psychopaths.
Our nation is well past "the tipping point" of sexual pathology. Until our universities have the courage to face our past mistakes and teach the truth about the Trojan horse-and-bunny history of the sexual revolution, our predatory population will continue to expand, recruit and breed ever greater numbers.
You do the math.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Share Your Story
Women can share their story on Mothers Against Porn Addiction's blog by emailing us at mothersagainstpornaddiction@yahoo.com.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Thursday, May 31, 2007
The Porn Myth
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."
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."
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.
Friday, April 27, 2007
My Shoulders Are My Own
My Shoulders Are My Own
By: Rain
Sad really how something so trivial can push someone over the edge. I’m looking down it right now.And it looks more appealing than where I am standing… way more.
I’m tired of it all. All of it.
I’m tired of explaining it over and over and over. I’m tired of being the only one truly working to keep this all going. The one walking upright, and on her own feet. And you know…. Down there, off the edge… looks like all those people are standing stronger and straighter than I am, with out the added weight to their shoulders. They can finally live truth. I want that.
I’m tired of dragging him along, he’s too god damn heavy. Wish for once he had his own two feet. Or use them. Wish for once, I could walk on my own with out looking back to make sure he’s coming, following me along in the path I’ve cut out.
I don’t want to point the way anymore. I am tired. Wish for once, he’d walk beside me in this… just beside me… and do it all on his own, while I get to stroll along and learn.
But, you know what I get when I step away and refuse to carry him? His screams that I need to pick him back up, help show him the way again… “I can’t do it alone, you already know how, so do it for me!!! I won't find my way and it will be your fault!!”
He never sees that he’s crushing me, he doesn’t care.
He doesn’t see that I’m at the cliff, looking back and forth, trying to decide what to do, where to go.. over or back. He’s too busy screaming from the ground. He doesn’t see, and he doesn’t care. He can’t, simply because he won’t.
If only he could just stand up, use his feet, walk over and take my hand… Walk next to me through this… the decision would be easy. I would go hand in hand on this journey and not even look back at the cliff.
I would embrace the fight again. Embrace him. But he doesn’t stand on his own, and I’m afraid he never will. So I stand here, looking back and forth. Back and forth… At him and the cliff…But, no matter which direction I chose to take, one thing is certain from here on out…
My shoulders are my own and I will no longer carry him. He’s on his own. I hope to not hear his screams for very long.
By: Rain
Sad really how something so trivial can push someone over the edge. I’m looking down it right now.And it looks more appealing than where I am standing… way more.
I’m tired of it all. All of it.
I’m tired of explaining it over and over and over. I’m tired of being the only one truly working to keep this all going. The one walking upright, and on her own feet. And you know…. Down there, off the edge… looks like all those people are standing stronger and straighter than I am, with out the added weight to their shoulders. They can finally live truth. I want that.
I’m tired of dragging him along, he’s too god damn heavy. Wish for once he had his own two feet. Or use them. Wish for once, I could walk on my own with out looking back to make sure he’s coming, following me along in the path I’ve cut out.
I don’t want to point the way anymore. I am tired. Wish for once, he’d walk beside me in this… just beside me… and do it all on his own, while I get to stroll along and learn.
But, you know what I get when I step away and refuse to carry him? His screams that I need to pick him back up, help show him the way again… “I can’t do it alone, you already know how, so do it for me!!! I won't find my way and it will be your fault!!”
He never sees that he’s crushing me, he doesn’t care.
He doesn’t see that I’m at the cliff, looking back and forth, trying to decide what to do, where to go.. over or back. He’s too busy screaming from the ground. He doesn’t see, and he doesn’t care. He can’t, simply because he won’t.
If only he could just stand up, use his feet, walk over and take my hand… Walk next to me through this… the decision would be easy. I would go hand in hand on this journey and not even look back at the cliff.
I would embrace the fight again. Embrace him. But he doesn’t stand on his own, and I’m afraid he never will. So I stand here, looking back and forth. Back and forth… At him and the cliff…But, no matter which direction I chose to take, one thing is certain from here on out…
My shoulders are my own and I will no longer carry him. He’s on his own. I hope to not hear his screams for very long.
By a Recovering Pornography Addict: D-day
D-day
Hi, I’m Herb. I’m a recovering pornography addict and compulsive masturbator.
I have read hundreds of posts by the partners of porn addicts talking about D-day. I take that to be the day that the awareness of the addiction and the extent of involvement in pornography became a reality. D-day is always a day of extreme pain. I have understood that D-day may not be a single event but a series of revelations, each more painful and revealing.
Addicts talk about bottoming out. That’s what I want to talk about. My personal D-day if you will.
A number of years ago I met my wife after work to shop and she had a few more errands to run so we parted and I headed home. I made a beeline for a small town north of us to return a porn video I had rented. My hope was to get home before her so she wouldn’t wonder where I had been. I dropped off the video and got home, relieved that she wasn’t there so I wouldn’t have to lie. Some amount of time passed and the phone rang.
When I answered she said; “I don’t want you to panic but I’m at the hospital in the emergency room.” She had t-boned a Lincoln Continental at highway speeds. She was, fortunately, not badly injured but the car was totaled.
My heart almost exploded in my chest. I said: “I’ll be right there” and proceeded to break every traffic law written to get to the hospital; the whole way praying that God wasn’t going to hurt her because of me. I got to the hospital and she was all hooked up to IV’s and monitors but looked ok, a little ashen.
Do you know what she said when I got there? “Where were you, I’ve been calling for over an hour?” The look in her eyes, the tone of loneliness and abandonment was like white hot iron. I wish I could have just dropped dead on the spot. The SHAME washed over me in torrents. Is that understandable at all? I wasn’t there for her because of a porn video—How insane is that?
This was my D-day. The day the shame and realization of the depth of my addiction came home to me. I had had suicidal thoughts before but I really wanted to die after that. I was worthless and evil and completely beyond redemption. It hurt.
I started active recovery that day. I established my own boundaries. I knew I was addicted, I think I always had. I resolved never to bring a porn vid or mag ever again into my home. I know, you’re saying great but you’re still protecting your habit. That is true. But I had to start somewhere. I had to de-escalate somehow.
It took me years to get past that. I did well for a long time then got a new career with hi-speed Internet and one (go ahead and laugh) inadvertent exposure to on-line porn image and BLAM, I was active in addiction again. The shame and feelings of worthlessness returned as if they had never been gone. They provided a rich environment for the addictive cycle to continue to spin.
That is the short story of my D-day. It took too long and too much pain to get any meaningful sobriety. It took confession and counseling at church, it took discussion with me wife (and that is like puking up the shame all at once) and it took work and reading and learning about addiction. It took a trusted friend to be able to open up with.
Pornography almost killed me and it is destroying lives and soul everyday. Sometimes it’s hard to own the past we have created but we need to take ownership of today and become sober. We need to look forward to tomorrow with hope and not the fear addiction breeds. We need to save our lives, no one else can do it for us.
Hi, I’m Herb. I’m a recovering pornography addict and compulsive masturbator.
I have read hundreds of posts by the partners of porn addicts talking about D-day. I take that to be the day that the awareness of the addiction and the extent of involvement in pornography became a reality. D-day is always a day of extreme pain. I have understood that D-day may not be a single event but a series of revelations, each more painful and revealing.
Addicts talk about bottoming out. That’s what I want to talk about. My personal D-day if you will.
A number of years ago I met my wife after work to shop and she had a few more errands to run so we parted and I headed home. I made a beeline for a small town north of us to return a porn video I had rented. My hope was to get home before her so she wouldn’t wonder where I had been. I dropped off the video and got home, relieved that she wasn’t there so I wouldn’t have to lie. Some amount of time passed and the phone rang.
When I answered she said; “I don’t want you to panic but I’m at the hospital in the emergency room.” She had t-boned a Lincoln Continental at highway speeds. She was, fortunately, not badly injured but the car was totaled.
My heart almost exploded in my chest. I said: “I’ll be right there” and proceeded to break every traffic law written to get to the hospital; the whole way praying that God wasn’t going to hurt her because of me. I got to the hospital and she was all hooked up to IV’s and monitors but looked ok, a little ashen.
Do you know what she said when I got there? “Where were you, I’ve been calling for over an hour?” The look in her eyes, the tone of loneliness and abandonment was like white hot iron. I wish I could have just dropped dead on the spot. The SHAME washed over me in torrents. Is that understandable at all? I wasn’t there for her because of a porn video—How insane is that?
This was my D-day. The day the shame and realization of the depth of my addiction came home to me. I had had suicidal thoughts before but I really wanted to die after that. I was worthless and evil and completely beyond redemption. It hurt.
I started active recovery that day. I established my own boundaries. I knew I was addicted, I think I always had. I resolved never to bring a porn vid or mag ever again into my home. I know, you’re saying great but you’re still protecting your habit. That is true. But I had to start somewhere. I had to de-escalate somehow.
It took me years to get past that. I did well for a long time then got a new career with hi-speed Internet and one (go ahead and laugh) inadvertent exposure to on-line porn image and BLAM, I was active in addiction again. The shame and feelings of worthlessness returned as if they had never been gone. They provided a rich environment for the addictive cycle to continue to spin.
That is the short story of my D-day. It took too long and too much pain to get any meaningful sobriety. It took confession and counseling at church, it took discussion with me wife (and that is like puking up the shame all at once) and it took work and reading and learning about addiction. It took a trusted friend to be able to open up with.
Pornography almost killed me and it is destroying lives and soul everyday. Sometimes it’s hard to own the past we have created but we need to take ownership of today and become sober. We need to look forward to tomorrow with hope and not the fear addiction breeds. We need to save our lives, no one else can do it for us.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Awards Dinner Honors Anti Porn Efforts
May 8 Awards Dinner honors anti-pornography efforts
San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer will give dinner's keynote address
by Barbara Stinson LeeIntermountain Catholic
SALT LAKE CITY — If the face of the Hon. John Harmer, a former California state senator and lieutenant governor, appears worn and tired it’s because he is fighting a 40-year battle with images he doesn’t like to look at and words he hates to read. Harmer, the founder and chairman of the Lighted Candle Society, now in its sixth year, is leading a charge against pornography, whether it is found in magazines and books, movies and television, or popping up into our homes uninvited via the internet.
Harmer doesn’t fight this battle alone. On May 8 at the annual Guardian of the Light Awards Dinner at Little America in Salt Lake City, Harmer and the Lighted Candle Society will honor Michael Reagan and Pamela Atkinson for their efforts. San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer, former president of the Utah Coalition Against Pornography, will give the keynote address at the dinner.
Reagan, the adopted son of the late President Ronald Reagan and his first wife, Jane Wyman, is the host of the conservative radio talk show, “The Michael Reagan Show,” is syndicated through Radio America. He will be honored for his anti-porn efforts on the national level. Atkinson, a local activist who took over the reigns of the Utah Coalition Against Pornography from Bishop
George Niederauer after he was named archbishop of San Francisco, will be recognized for her anti-porn stand on the local level.
In an interview with the Intermountain Catholic, Harmer said it is through the efforts of people like 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. A lot of our money has gone to those organizations. I wanted to fill a void.”
Harmer has found that void – it is research and the training of law enforcement 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
In a new book Harmer co-wrote with Bountiful Researcher James B. Smith, “The Sex Industrial Complex: Americas Secret Combination, Pornographic Culture, Addiction and the Human Brain,” Harmer takes on corporate entities and the powerful movie industry “that are profiting from the production, distribution, and financing of pornography. They support each other and use presumably independent entities such as Planned Parenthood and the ACLU (The American Civil Liberties Union) to protect themselves.”
“The Sex Industrial Complex,” Harmer’s editor notes, “documents the rise and cultural saturation of pornographic propaganda and ideology throughout the 20th century. From the ACLU to MTV and motion pictures; Harmer lays out the history, social implications, and societal impact of a worldwide pornographic culture.”
Harmer said the research of Dr. Judith Reisman, to whom the book is dedicated, “reveals that frequent use of pornography creates addiction and brain damage in the structure and the function of the brain. Through the use of fMRI’s (functional magnetic resonance imaging) we can now watch the human brain react to the stimuli of violence and pornography.”
Dr. Reisman’s research and that of the University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Mary Ann Leyden, Harmer said, provide the protocol for an estimated $2 million – $3 million study the Lighted Candle Society intends to undertake and publish on the harmful effects of pornography on the human brain.
“People have no idea how powerful and dangerous these images are and how pervasive they become to a person addicted to pornography,” Harmer said.
For further information about the Lighted Candle Society, The Guardian of the Light Awards Dinner, or “The Sex Industrial Complex” go to: www.lightedcandlesociety.org.
John Harmer, founder and chairman of the Lighted Candle Society, is a tireless fighter in the struggle against pornography. Working from offices in Washington, D.C. and Bountiful, Utah, he brings to light the dark world of pornography that is supported by some of the most reputable companies in the U.S. They have found that pornography is a profitable business.
San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer will give dinner's keynote address
by Barbara Stinson LeeIntermountain Catholic
SALT LAKE CITY — If the face of the Hon. John Harmer, a former California state senator and lieutenant governor, appears worn and tired it’s because he is fighting a 40-year battle with images he doesn’t like to look at and words he hates to read. Harmer, the founder and chairman of the Lighted Candle Society, now in its sixth year, is leading a charge against pornography, whether it is found in magazines and books, movies and television, or popping up into our homes uninvited via the internet.
Harmer doesn’t fight this battle alone. On May 8 at the annual Guardian of the Light Awards Dinner at Little America in Salt Lake City, Harmer and the Lighted Candle Society will honor Michael Reagan and Pamela Atkinson for their efforts. San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer, former president of the Utah Coalition Against Pornography, will give the keynote address at the dinner.
Reagan, the adopted son of the late President Ronald Reagan and his first wife, Jane Wyman, is the host of the conservative radio talk show, “The Michael Reagan Show,” is syndicated through Radio America. He will be honored for his anti-porn efforts on the national level. Atkinson, a local activist who took over the reigns of the Utah Coalition Against Pornography from Bishop
George Niederauer after he was named archbishop of San Francisco, will be recognized for her anti-porn stand on the local level.
In an interview with the Intermountain Catholic, Harmer said it is through the efforts of people like 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. A lot of our money has gone to those organizations. I wanted to fill a void.”
Harmer has found that void – it is research and the training of law enforcement 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
In a new book Harmer co-wrote with Bountiful Researcher James B. Smith, “The Sex Industrial Complex: Americas Secret Combination, Pornographic Culture, Addiction and the Human Brain,” Harmer takes on corporate entities and the powerful movie industry “that are profiting from the production, distribution, and financing of pornography. They support each other and use presumably independent entities such as Planned Parenthood and the ACLU (The American Civil Liberties Union) to protect themselves.”
“The Sex Industrial Complex,” Harmer’s editor notes, “documents the rise and cultural saturation of pornographic propaganda and ideology throughout the 20th century. From the ACLU to MTV and motion pictures; Harmer lays out the history, social implications, and societal impact of a worldwide pornographic culture.”
Harmer said the research of Dr. Judith Reisman, to whom the book is dedicated, “reveals that frequent use of pornography creates addiction and brain damage in the structure and the function of the brain. Through the use of fMRI’s (functional magnetic resonance imaging) we can now watch the human brain react to the stimuli of violence and pornography.”
Dr. Reisman’s research and that of the University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Mary Ann Leyden, Harmer said, provide the protocol for an estimated $2 million – $3 million study the Lighted Candle Society intends to undertake and publish on the harmful effects of pornography on the human brain.
“People have no idea how powerful and dangerous these images are and how pervasive they become to a person addicted to pornography,” Harmer said.
For further information about the Lighted Candle Society, The Guardian of the Light Awards Dinner, or “The Sex Industrial Complex” go to: www.lightedcandlesociety.org.
John Harmer, founder and chairman of the Lighted Candle Society, is a tireless fighter in the struggle against pornography. Working from offices in Washington, D.C. and Bountiful, Utah, he brings to light the dark world of pornography that is supported by some of the most reputable companies in the U.S. They have found that pornography is a profitable business.
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