Let’s talk about porn: Part Two
What does abortion have to do with porn? They are both the end game.
Abortion and pornography are, in different ways, the extreme of what we get when we stop treating sex like something sacred or important. The dictionary definition of the verb “pervert” means to “alter (something) from its original course, meaning, or state to a distortion or corruption of what was first intended.”
Porn perverts sex. When you pervert sex – when you make it about using other people, making money, or titillating the masses – you distort and corrupt it. Creating life and bringing two married people closer together – that’s the intended purpose of sex. Not profit. Not recreation.
I’m old enough now to know I was wrong when I said “Porn saves families.” I’ve literally seen it do the opposite to families. I’ve watched women I know struggle on two fronts: one, they’re devastated to learn that their boyfriends or husbands are addicted to porn, and literally can’t stop watching and lusting after other women, and two, they’re not supposed to mind. It’s supposed to be no big deal.
It’s almost de rigeur for comedians to talk about men watching porn and how all men do it and all men lie about it and this is reality and women should accept it.
Well, sorry. I don’t accept it. I don’t care if he knows her name or not – if my husband lusts after another woman, that’s infidelity, be it ever so humble. And when young men become hooked on porn before they’re even old enough to have relationships, it gives them dangerous, violent ideas about sex, and some seriously disturbing ideas about what women are supposed to look like and how they are supposed to behave.
I am one of those women who is not okay with porn, and that includes live soft-core porn – i.e., strip clubs. Yes, I’m that wife. I’m the annoying bee eye tee see aytch who won’t let my husband go to your bachelor party if I know you’re going to have a stripper. (And, yes, I can, within reason, tell my husband he can’t do things, just as he can tell me I can’t do things. Marriage is a contract.)
And in case you’re wondering, I won’t go to bachelorette parties if they involve male strippers. For one, respect is a two-way street. I don’t want to objectify a dude, even if he likes it. And for two, gross.
My home is a porn-free zone. You can roll your eyes and think I’m deluded, but I trust my husband, and moreover, I married a guy who shares my values, and who is concerned that what was once thrilling – Betty Grable in a short skirt and tight top – is now not enough.
Where soldiers used to pin up photos of scantily-clad, smiling, wholesome, Marilyn Monroe-type gals, they now go for silicone-enhanced, spread-eagled, air-brushed hoochies with hair extensions and false eyelashes and three pounds of eyeliner, replete with strategic bleaching and waxing, all splayed out, nothing left to the imagination. It’s more than offensive; it’s also aesthetically troublesome. It says not only that we are amoral, but that we are just, well, trashy.
I accept that I live in a postmodern freak show of a land where I can see things walking through the mall that would not even have been shown on late night television thirty years ago. I accept that my husband is going to inadvertently see what would once have been called soft-core porn just because we happen to have cable. And I’m not going to freak out every time he does.
But, ladies, we need to make a stand. We need to refuse to accept the menace of pornography in our lives. No matter what the fauxminists say, the sex trades do prey on women. They do hurt women.
And we need to stop buying the idea that being “cool” with porn means we’re enlightened and liberated. It means just the opposite. It means we’ve bought a patriarchal lie that selling our bodies, taking pills that subvert our bodies, and allowing our children to be ripped out of our bodies is somehow good for us.
It isn’t. We should know better.
Make your home a porn-free zone. Make your life a porn-free experience. Don’t give in to the temptation to objectify other people, and don’t believe the lie that when your significant other or husband or wife looks at porn, it doesn’t affect you. It does. The viewer of porn disrespects the people he watches, himself, and his significant other.
As women, if we’re going to demand respect, we need to give it. A culture of life starts with respecting human beings enough to say no – not only to their killing as unborn children, but to their degradation as adults. We need to recognize and reject the perversion of sex and the objectification of humans that leads to abortion.
To build a culture of life, we have to say NO – unapologetically – to pornography.
Source: LiveSite News
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