Porn is Everywhere

While I agree with the Fight the Drug campaign, this post is not in association with their website.
These are my own observations and ideas.

So this post has been swirling around in my head for quite a while now, but I've never really known where to start. So I'm just going to start typing and see what happens.

We need to stop normalizing porn.

Let me start out with one of my Facebook statuses from a few months ago:

Here's the thing, to most of the world, pornography isn't a big deal. To much of society, it's totally normal for teenagers to view pornography and experiment with masturbation. To the world, there is nothing harmful in it. Many men and women don't seem to mind if their significant other views porn here or there. I've even heard of marriage counselors that encourage couples to watch porn together before they are intimate with each other to help arouse them.

And even if someone isn't okay with what is considered to be porn, they're still okay with the normalization of the constant bombardment of sexual images, speech, and ideas.

Let me see if I can explain. I'll start with some examples and then go more into why we shouldn't be okay with living in a sexualized culture.

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Commercials:

We don't even have to watch those sensual cologne commercials to see a sexualized ad. Beer ads, ice cream ads, even fast food ads often use a sensual theme to make their products seem more appealing.

Internet ads:

On many websites, especially movie viewing websites it seems, the ads on the sides all seem to have pictures of provocative women with lots of cleavage accompanied by captions such as "Meet hot Asian singles near you!" Or "Meet beautiful, exotic women who need your company." Or some other type of message that involves offering hookups with various types of attractive women near you.

I've had ads pop up on YouTube and Spotify that were definitely not things that I would want my future kids to see and hear. And it's near impossible to filter the raunchy ads out!

Even the silly little games on my phone have inappropriate advertisements! I have a game called "Word Cookies" where you have to find all of the words that you can make out of a set of 6 letters. It's a nice little word challenge game and would be great entertainment for a learning kid except for the ads. Many of them are fine; ads about Tetris-like games or realtors. But one ad in particular always really bothers me.

It's for a game called "Choices" where you're put into different situations and have to decide what to do. The choices given in the ad involve finding a boyfriend/spouse cheating on you in bed and the choices given are something to the effect of "Yell at them" or "Join them!"

Excuse me. What?

Why are we making it seem like joining your cheating boyfriend and his side chick or side dude in bed is a valid option? Where has virtue and integrity gone to in our society? What happened to wanting solid, lasting relationships?

Then there are the ads that pop up in your junk/spam email and suggested articles on Google Now. Why the internet thinks that I want emails with fairly explicit pictures of lingerie or sex tips I could not tell you. And the fact that Google Now on my phone decides to show me an article about Disney Princess lingerie because "You have shown interest in Disney" doesn't make a ton of sense to me. What if that phone belonged to a 12 year-old girl that was really in to Disney and all of a sudden she's got sexy lingerie ads popping up on it?

And I can't say that I'm not interested in the ad because it's lingerie, only that I'm not interested because it's Disney. Dumb.

Misc:

I worked at a fair for a couple of summers when I was in high school with a couple from my church that owned their own business. When work was slow enough, I was allowed to go walk around the fair. I would check out the different booths and walk around the area with rides. That particular area always kind of disturbed me. There would be a structure set up as a house of oddities that had practically naked women on it! There would be a huge picture of a woman that was half human and half snake. The bottom half of her would be a snake's body/tail, and the top half would essentially be boobs. And there were pictures like that all over the fair equipment! Huge pictures of sexy ladies with barely covered (or uncovered) massive boobs.

That is NOT what I would want my kids to see as we walk around the county fair.

Media

Books:

*Disclaimer* This section gets into some deep crap, so feel free to skip it.

Okay, so I've heard bits and pieces about Fifty Shades of Grey over the last few years, but never really knew what it was about. I just had a vague idea that it had a lot to do with sex and I knew that it was really popular. So I finally looked up a summary because I couldn't understand why a novel about sex would be so popular. I was completely horrified to see just how far society has fallen.

People are obsessed with these books and movies and all I'm getting from the synopsis is that it's about a girl being manipulated by a powerful man to start a purely sexual relationship focused on violent sex. The Wikipedia synopsis says that "It is notable for its explicitly erotic scenes featuring elements of sexual practices involving bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism (BDSM)." So basically it's all about violent sex. Oh good.

I've never read the book or seen the movie and absolutely will not EVER. But even reading the synopsis makes me sick to the stomach. And it makes me even sicker to think that so much of the world is just lapping it right up! It's a bestseller. Personally, I feel like the author should be checked out for psychopathic/abusive tendencies. I'm literally getting nauseous just writing about it, so I'm just going to leave that there.

Movies/TV:

Again, I've never seen this, but let's talk about Game of Thrones for a second. This article talks about how Game of Thrones is pornographic and how no one cares because it's a show, not a porno. Again, normalizing sexual explicity.

Then there are shows like Friends and How I Met Your Mother that show one night stands and affairs as humorous.

One of my roommates was watching Friends one day and I overheard one of the characters talking about a woman, I don't remember what he said exactly, but it had to do either with wanting to have sex with her or that he recently had. And then I hear another one of my roommates say "and he's engaged." I went into my room and cried (this instance was after I'd been sexually abused).

Then there are less obvious examples. For example, my friend and I started watching the first Back to the Future movie just a couple of nights ago (I haven't watched them since I was a kid) and we ended up turning it off soon after Marty McFly meets the younger versions of his parents. You want to know why? Because the reason that his dad got hit by his future father-in-law's car is because he fell out of a tree that he had climbed for the specific purpose of watching his future wife changing her clothes. And then Marty ends up getting hit by the car instead and his mother comes in to take care of him when he wakes up and she keeps trying to look under the blanket where he's only wearing underwear and also keeps touching him intimately.

So his dad is a Peeping-Tom and his mom is a total creeper and that's supposed to be hilarious instead of immensely disturbing. Um, okay.

Why This is a Problem 

So now we can see how we are living in a super-sexualized culture, but you already knew that (whether you've really thought about it or not). But why is it such a big deal?

To most of the world, porn is seen as either totally fine, or bad, but not terrible. Let me tell you why it is terrible. Pornography really is a highly addictive substance just as much as cocaine and alcohol are. Think I'm exaggerating? Allow me to attempt to explain.

The definition of addiction according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) states that:

Addiction is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social and spiritual manifestations. This is reflected in an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviors.

Addiction is characterized by inability to consistently abstain, impairment in behavioral control, craving, diminished recognition of significant problems with one’s behaviors and interpersonal relationships, and a dysfunctional emotional response. Like other chronic diseases, addiction often involves cycles of relapse and remission. Without treatment or engagement in recovery activities, addiction is progressive and can result in disability or premature death.

While pornography is not included in the DSM with other addictions, I think that it's pretty clear that it fits under that category.

When you watch porn or masturbate, dopamine is released which causes a feeling of pleasure/euphoria. Thus you are rewarded for viewing porn in the same way that you are rewarded for drug intake. Oxytocin is also released, literally creating an attachment between yourself and a screen and/or yourself and your own body which means that, over time, abstaining from viewing porn and masturbating becomes more and more difficult.

There are also other adverse effects of addiction.

I was talking to a friend of mine recently and we talked about what has happened to me this year. I talked to her about the role that pornography has played in the events of this past year and she seemed to be having a difficult time seeing how someone could make the jump between looking up pornographic images and committing a felony.

But then we talked about the things that this person has been going through over the past few years. In the last few years she has struggled with alcoholism to the point where she had actually stolen alcohol in the past. I commented that she's not the type of person to just steal things and how it's interesting how the addiction to alcohol drove her to do things that she would never have done on her own.

She got this kind of "Oh." look on her face. All of a sudden, what my ex-fiance did made just a teensy bit more sense. It certainly doesn't justify it, but it is just that much easier to understand what might have been going on. Anyone that knows my ex never would have expected him to do what he did. But addiction can only too easily lead to beyond terrible decisions.

*This is also awful*

It reminds me of this horrific episode of NCIS that I saw part of while my mom was watching it. This was over 4 years ago that I saw this and it still haunts me. In this episode, a man swallowed a bag of some hard drugs and then was killed. His sister, who was also addicted, cut him open and started partaking of the drug from inside her dead brother's body. That scene still bothers me. How could someone be driven to do something like that?

How could someone be driven to steal money to fund drugs? How could someone be driven to kill for drugs? How could someone hide cameras in their fiance's apartment to fuel a sexual addiction?

In my psychology class we learned about Ted Bundy and I was shocked to learn that in his final interview, he talked all about how he was a porn addict and how that eventually led to his molestation and murder of 36 women. (I understand that porn was not the only catalyst for Ted Bundy's actions. As with any addiction-related crime, there are a lot of factors that go into it, but addiction only makes everything else worse).

My teacher took a moment to warn us about pornography. He said that he's sure that there were people in that classroom that were struggling with porn and he understands that that can be difficult to overcome. But he told them that if they have started to view any kind of violent porn, then they need to stop immediately. Once sexual pleasure is associated with violence, the problems escalate immensely.

Ted Bundy is an extreme example, but there are more every-day representations as well. It's not hard to find shows, books, or real life examples of an individual getting bored with their S.O. and going off and finding someone else to make things exciting for them again, resulting in cheating. Pornography sets unrealistic expectations for intimacy. After watching an airbrushed, arranged sexual experience, one begins to believe that porn is how sex always is (or should be) and anything else will only disappoint and leave one seeking out a more thrilling experience.

So basically loyalty and commitment go out the window.

I mean, where do you think that sex offenders come from? I don't think that they just decided one day to become criminals.

And here's the thing, if we compare an addiction to porn/masturbation to that of a drug addiction, I find porn to be scarier in a lot of ways. Think about it. If someone is addicted to drugs and goes to a rehab center, accessing the drug would be incredibly difficult while there. But if you're a porn addict, not only is it way too easy to access porn, but even if security is tight enough that you can't, you will still have access to your own body. It would be really difficult (and inhumane) to take away someone's hands and pleasure centers. Because of this, pornography and masturbation are extremely hard addictions to kick because they're both so readily available.

And that's why porn shouldn't be normalized. Addiction needs to be stopped before it's started and pornography should be treated just the same as any other addiction. Society needs to be educated about the dangers of pornography, the adverse effects, how to prevent forming an addiction, and how to kick a porn addiction. Those who struggle with porn should be able to find the support that they need to help them to overcome.

This post has gotten REALLY long and I could talk about this subject for forever, but I'm going to wrap things up here. But please, if I have opened your eyes at all to the damaging effects of having a sexualized society, learn more about it. There are organizations such as Fight the New Drug and Covenant Eyes that you can find on Facebook that give lots of great information about the dangers of porn and how to fight it. I'll also add some links to the bottom of this post here that give some more information on some of the things that I've talked about.

But let me just say this. If you are struggling with porn and you see me around wearing my Porn Kills Love shirt, know that I don't hate you. I hate porn. I hate what it can do to people's brains. I hate the suffering that I am going through that porn greatly contributed to. But I understand that porn really is a drug. So as long as you're fighting against it, I'm here to love and support you.

Know that there are others out there that care about you and will not revile you because of your struggle. Also know that you can't fight this alone. Reach out for help. Reach out to your friends and family. Reach out to professionals. Reach out to God.

Fighting is not an easy path. I've never had a sex or drug addiction, but I've watched those that I love fight it and I know that it's extremely difficult. But it will be worth it. Being honest will be worth it. Fighting will be worth it. So don't give up. Keep fighting.

You can absolutely overcome this. I know it.

Blog post by my friend Lacie Anne about her experience being with a porn addict:

https://adventuresoflacieanne.wordpress.com/2017/10/18/loving-a-porn-addict/

Ted Bundy's final interview:

http://www.pureintimacy.org/f/fatal-addiction-ted-bundys-final-interview/

Info about the release of hormones during sexual experiences:

http://rheg.vastserve.com/articles/love-chemistry.htm?i=1

Game of Thrones and Porn:

http://www.covenanteyes.com/2016/02/02/if-you-are-watching-game-of-thrones-you-are-watching-porn/?utm_campaign=porn-circuit&utm_content=52687250&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

Porn Basics:

http://fightthenewdrug.org/get-the-facts/?utm_source=rock_the_basics&utm_medium=fighter_app&utm_campaign=rock_the_basics_become_a_fighter

National Center on Sexual Exploitation

https://endsexualexploitation.org/

Video about fighting addiction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg&t=2s

Article about how Elizabeth Smart's captivity was only made worse by porn:

http://foreverymom.com/family-parenting/parents-hear-elizabeth-smart-pornography-made-worse/