Human trafficking/slavery can be stopped without the help of religion or religious organizations. Indeed, many might argue that religious organizations have contributed to the propagation of slavery, not only throughout history (which is definitely true) but even today.
I would argue that religious organizations do not contribute to slavery today but that religion does. Being religious myself, about to be appointed as a pastor in the United Methodist Church, how can I say that? Well, religion does accord a person the opportunity for hypocrisy: "If I believe this and do these things, then I am good; it doesn't matter what I do in my personal life." The concept of religion opens the door for a person to have two separate beings: to structure an external life around the principles of the religion, feel good and justified for having done so; and then to ignore, because of the external image, what is going on inside the person's mind and heart. Ignoring what's going on inside one's head and heart leads even the best of people to live a secret life, without ever feeling guilty about that secret life as long as it remains a secret. For as long as the secret life remains a secret, the person's better half literally won't be able to comment on the secret personal life. It may sound like I'm describing a mental illness, but I'm not--this is a natural occurrence that all people deal with on some level. Religious people may be more susceptible to the phenomenon of tearing ourselves in two, but the vast majority of people of all faith backgrounds perform the same binary fission. Religion may play a different role, but all people will have to deal with themselves at some point in the pursuit of ending human trafficking.
Of course, on the other hand, all religions that I know of ask for a person's heart and mind. While some people may use religion to split into two halves--the half that is devoted to a god or belief system, and the screwed-up half that the first half can't see--faith and religion are meant to reconcile the two halves of our being into one. The first half of our being must acknowledge that the second half exists, and the second half of our being must declare that it wants to begin the arduous journey to hook up with the first half. The vast majority of us love the idea of power and lust and greed, so bringing the two halves together is not an easy task. Faith and religion, and philosophy, are the tools by which bringing the two halves of our being together becomes easier.
As anyone who reads this blog or has read my book should know, I truly believe that changing our attitudes, thoughts, and everyday actions can change the world--specifically, put an end to human trafficking. The last few posts should make this rather clear: men are particularly good at tuning in to exploiting little girls in other countries and then shutting off the computer to go off to their "normal" lives without ever thinking about what they just did; we laugh at or condemn pornographic actors without ever thinking about how we are jealous, envious, lustful, degraded ourselves. So, pulling together our two halves is, I think, of the utmost importance. And yes, one can reconcile oneself without religion if that person has a great passion for human equality, freedom, and dignity, and at the same time recognizes their own humanness. Yet I do think that religion gives us the proper tools for this task. At the very least, religion gives us the language for the task of acknowledging who we are and how we might end slavery.
With that said, let me share with you the "Sexual Abuse" and "Sexual Harassment" sections of The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church Social Principles. I'll write the "Sexual Harassment" section first, though it is listed second. Notice in both of these principles how sexual misconduct, according to the UMC, is related to power, as I have argued long and hard in my book. Notice also, particularly in the "Sexual Abuse" principle, that personal sexual behaviors, that we might otherwise overlook as personal, are directly linked to and escalate quickly into the worst form of sexual behavior: the use of sex slavery. As I have said again and again, our attitudes can lead to bigger and more dangerous behaviors, and while we may think that we would never watch pornography or never use sex slaves, we shouldn't be so sure. Our second half may have a small beginning, but once the separation occurs in our being, the second half can run rampant without our ever chastising it. The language and theology and philosophy to deal with these problems has always existed, as we see in The Book of Discipline, we just haven't been thinking about it properly or using it.
Showing posts with label pornography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pornography. Show all posts
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
My Relationship to Pornography: A Year Later (Part II)
As far as I'm concerned, the worst aspect of pornography is the attitudes of those watching. But before I get to that it's clearly important that I talk about the effects of pornography on those involved.
Many people will say that prostitutes and porn stars choose the lifestyle which they live. To some extent that is true. They are not actual slaves and so always have a choice. First of all, though, we have to acknowledge that as far as prostitutes go, many are slaves or are essentially slaves. What pimps are masters of is getting their girls, or boys, addicted to drugs that are extremely hard to unhook from, like cocaine; then the prostitute hardly has a choice: if they leave, they'll be poor and unable to get the drugs that they seem to need. Even if prostitutes aren't literal slaves, then, the choice they have is a false one and might as well be slaves. Porn stars are not much different. Men and women, women especially of course, are led into a life with a false choice: many porn stars have left the profession, if it can be called that, and then immediately return because they have been convinced that they aren't good at anything other than having sex with people for money. Once in the "real world" as we call it they find that it is much easier to have sex for half an hour rather than working a 40-hour week. Of course I simplify. Most porn stars are in a number of videos every week. Still, the amount of work that they put in is nothing compared to a full work-week where they cannot use what they have been told is their best attribute: their body. For most porn stars, then, pornography seems to be the only choice that they can make until their body is no longer deemed beautiful. What once was a choice made perhaps as an 18-year old to make some extra money is now the only choice that they can make.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that porn stars do choose pornography without any strings attached to that choice. The fact will remain that porn stars are used and abused during the filming of pornography. Frankly porn stars are used and abused before the cameras are even turned on: they are paid ahead of time for the action about to be performed, with more money for the more perverted actions. If pornography is a profession, then we can imagine that more perverted actions will be performed more and more often with porn stars wanting to make more money. It's not likely anyway that a porn star, even if they entered the industry with the hope of only performing straight sex, would be able to escape the pressure to perform the more perverted roles. The porn industry knows quite well what they want and how to apply pressure to get what they want.
During filming, the woman is told to be perverted and to like being used and dominated. We may say that certain amounts of power domination or roughness in the bedroom is healthy and I wouldn't disagree. A loving relationship between two people is a lot different, though, than porn stars randomly put together in a video and the woman being abused. The effect this has on the female, as said before, is that they begin to think that what they are good for is being used for male enjoyment, and that male enjoyment should bring them pleasure. No longer will the female think that they are worthwhile human beings on their own without being used. Self-image becomes a major issue whether they acknowledge it or not. Surely some will still say that they are choosing the life and that choice brings them ultimate pleasure and fulfillment, but there is no denying that what they deem as fulfillment actually entails having their worth demeaned and destroyed.
I have had the opportunity since my bike trip to watch some documentaries on the pornography industry, which I'll list and talk about in another post, that have only confirmed that anything that destroys the image of the porn star will also encourage the loss of proper attitudes toward sex and the opposite sex in those watching pornography. Unfortunately I know from experience that watching pornography leads more and more to thinking of the opposite sex as a plaything. Granted, I, like other people, might still be a good enough person to see other good qualities in members of the opposite sex. Still, the end hope for interactions with the opposite sex is, indeed, sex. Someone who watches pornography has a much harder time not thinking about sex with just about everyone of the opposite sex that they come across, even if they don't act on it. And believe me, certain expectations develop. It's hard for someone who watches pornography to not expect a girlfriend or boyfriend to do certain things in the bedroom, or out of the bedroom.
Those expectations then carry the image and worth issues that porn stars deal with into normal relations. Girlfriends especially are now expected to act like amateur porn stars. Obviously I don't know to what extent women feel these expectations pressuring down on them, but from personal experience I know that it's hard for a woman to deny a man that they may want to date or are dating. The end result of this is that, basically, we re-create sex slavery in our own bedrooms. More accurately we are re-creating pornography in our own bedrooms, especially when we consider the growing trend of taping ourselves in the bedroom and then posting the videos on the Internet. Taping might also be a healthy expression of loving passion, but the trend of taping and then posting is an indication that we want to imitate pornography. But I argue that we are indeed re-creating sex slavery in our bedrooms. What happens is that we indulge master/slave scenarios over and over again. At the end of the day the man and the woman may still consider themselves equals, but it's hard not to escape the feeling first engendered in the bedroom. And our women expect that and live into that expectation, then further encouraging the attitudes of men everywhere.
The worst part of it all is that men now think that it's ok to treat a woman as a slave of sorts for their own enjoyment. If ever they encounter a woman who has a positive self-image and doesn't want to entertain the notion of being dominated or used or any of that, then the man is now left with a dilemma: stay with the woman and respect her, leave the woman and find someone else who will let him do whatever he desires, or stay with the woman and disrespect her. Believe me, the first choice may be desired by most men, but is also extremely difficult for most men to choose and commit to. Both of the other choices in some way lead to the use of slavery.
If a man who has developed in the ways that I have spoken about from watching pornography only dates and stays with women who will indulge his desires, then essentially he is being told that it's ok to feel the way that he does. That man will then desire more and more domination of women and then, eventually, will cheat on even the woman that gives him what he wants. And the man who stays with the respectable woman with the idea of finding an indulgence to his desires elsewhere will obviously cheat.
Neither situation necessarily leads to slavery. Both situations certainly lead to worsening our ability to properly love and respect women, which is certainly not what we want. Both situations also have developed the attitudes necessary for using sex slaves. Whether or not a man actually will find and use sex slaves depends only on whether or not how frustrated they are and how easily they can find other non-slaves to use and abuse. Having once used sex slaves it's more likely that the man will return and with more intense and perverted wishes. Those wishes might then find their way into relationships with non-slaves, then worsening the attitudes involved in pornography and watching pornography that helped lead to the use of sex slavery in the first place. This is much worse considering that the vast majority of sex slaves are very young... I'm sure we can imagine what the result of using young sex slaves is on the society-at-large. With the attitudes that we are already developing and allowing to develop, the attitudes that are also brought back into society from those who use sex slaves only intensifies the evil situation we find ourselves in.
At some point along the line you may disagree with my conclusions. I think the fact remains, though, that watching pornography affects a whole range of attitudes and actions that can and do lead to the holding and using of sex slaves. Even if the person watching pornography doesn't use slaves, that person brings an attitude to relating with others that may influence someone who has never watched pornography at all to enter into a form of slavery or to use slaves. Pornography is indeed a worse evil than we may think.
Many people will say that prostitutes and porn stars choose the lifestyle which they live. To some extent that is true. They are not actual slaves and so always have a choice. First of all, though, we have to acknowledge that as far as prostitutes go, many are slaves or are essentially slaves. What pimps are masters of is getting their girls, or boys, addicted to drugs that are extremely hard to unhook from, like cocaine; then the prostitute hardly has a choice: if they leave, they'll be poor and unable to get the drugs that they seem to need. Even if prostitutes aren't literal slaves, then, the choice they have is a false one and might as well be slaves. Porn stars are not much different. Men and women, women especially of course, are led into a life with a false choice: many porn stars have left the profession, if it can be called that, and then immediately return because they have been convinced that they aren't good at anything other than having sex with people for money. Once in the "real world" as we call it they find that it is much easier to have sex for half an hour rather than working a 40-hour week. Of course I simplify. Most porn stars are in a number of videos every week. Still, the amount of work that they put in is nothing compared to a full work-week where they cannot use what they have been told is their best attribute: their body. For most porn stars, then, pornography seems to be the only choice that they can make until their body is no longer deemed beautiful. What once was a choice made perhaps as an 18-year old to make some extra money is now the only choice that they can make.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that porn stars do choose pornography without any strings attached to that choice. The fact will remain that porn stars are used and abused during the filming of pornography. Frankly porn stars are used and abused before the cameras are even turned on: they are paid ahead of time for the action about to be performed, with more money for the more perverted actions. If pornography is a profession, then we can imagine that more perverted actions will be performed more and more often with porn stars wanting to make more money. It's not likely anyway that a porn star, even if they entered the industry with the hope of only performing straight sex, would be able to escape the pressure to perform the more perverted roles. The porn industry knows quite well what they want and how to apply pressure to get what they want.
During filming, the woman is told to be perverted and to like being used and dominated. We may say that certain amounts of power domination or roughness in the bedroom is healthy and I wouldn't disagree. A loving relationship between two people is a lot different, though, than porn stars randomly put together in a video and the woman being abused. The effect this has on the female, as said before, is that they begin to think that what they are good for is being used for male enjoyment, and that male enjoyment should bring them pleasure. No longer will the female think that they are worthwhile human beings on their own without being used. Self-image becomes a major issue whether they acknowledge it or not. Surely some will still say that they are choosing the life and that choice brings them ultimate pleasure and fulfillment, but there is no denying that what they deem as fulfillment actually entails having their worth demeaned and destroyed.
I have had the opportunity since my bike trip to watch some documentaries on the pornography industry, which I'll list and talk about in another post, that have only confirmed that anything that destroys the image of the porn star will also encourage the loss of proper attitudes toward sex and the opposite sex in those watching pornography. Unfortunately I know from experience that watching pornography leads more and more to thinking of the opposite sex as a plaything. Granted, I, like other people, might still be a good enough person to see other good qualities in members of the opposite sex. Still, the end hope for interactions with the opposite sex is, indeed, sex. Someone who watches pornography has a much harder time not thinking about sex with just about everyone of the opposite sex that they come across, even if they don't act on it. And believe me, certain expectations develop. It's hard for someone who watches pornography to not expect a girlfriend or boyfriend to do certain things in the bedroom, or out of the bedroom.
Those expectations then carry the image and worth issues that porn stars deal with into normal relations. Girlfriends especially are now expected to act like amateur porn stars. Obviously I don't know to what extent women feel these expectations pressuring down on them, but from personal experience I know that it's hard for a woman to deny a man that they may want to date or are dating. The end result of this is that, basically, we re-create sex slavery in our own bedrooms. More accurately we are re-creating pornography in our own bedrooms, especially when we consider the growing trend of taping ourselves in the bedroom and then posting the videos on the Internet. Taping might also be a healthy expression of loving passion, but the trend of taping and then posting is an indication that we want to imitate pornography. But I argue that we are indeed re-creating sex slavery in our bedrooms. What happens is that we indulge master/slave scenarios over and over again. At the end of the day the man and the woman may still consider themselves equals, but it's hard not to escape the feeling first engendered in the bedroom. And our women expect that and live into that expectation, then further encouraging the attitudes of men everywhere.
The worst part of it all is that men now think that it's ok to treat a woman as a slave of sorts for their own enjoyment. If ever they encounter a woman who has a positive self-image and doesn't want to entertain the notion of being dominated or used or any of that, then the man is now left with a dilemma: stay with the woman and respect her, leave the woman and find someone else who will let him do whatever he desires, or stay with the woman and disrespect her. Believe me, the first choice may be desired by most men, but is also extremely difficult for most men to choose and commit to. Both of the other choices in some way lead to the use of slavery.
If a man who has developed in the ways that I have spoken about from watching pornography only dates and stays with women who will indulge his desires, then essentially he is being told that it's ok to feel the way that he does. That man will then desire more and more domination of women and then, eventually, will cheat on even the woman that gives him what he wants. And the man who stays with the respectable woman with the idea of finding an indulgence to his desires elsewhere will obviously cheat.
Neither situation necessarily leads to slavery. Both situations certainly lead to worsening our ability to properly love and respect women, which is certainly not what we want. Both situations also have developed the attitudes necessary for using sex slaves. Whether or not a man actually will find and use sex slaves depends only on whether or not how frustrated they are and how easily they can find other non-slaves to use and abuse. Having once used sex slaves it's more likely that the man will return and with more intense and perverted wishes. Those wishes might then find their way into relationships with non-slaves, then worsening the attitudes involved in pornography and watching pornography that helped lead to the use of sex slavery in the first place. This is much worse considering that the vast majority of sex slaves are very young... I'm sure we can imagine what the result of using young sex slaves is on the society-at-large. With the attitudes that we are already developing and allowing to develop, the attitudes that are also brought back into society from those who use sex slaves only intensifies the evil situation we find ourselves in.
At some point along the line you may disagree with my conclusions. I think the fact remains, though, that watching pornography affects a whole range of attitudes and actions that can and do lead to the holding and using of sex slaves. Even if the person watching pornography doesn't use slaves, that person brings an attitude to relating with others that may influence someone who has never watched pornography at all to enter into a form of slavery or to use slaves. Pornography is indeed a worse evil than we may think.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
My Relationship to Pornography: A Year Later (Part I)
I write this particular post for three reasons: 1) I continue to believe that there is a close link between pornography and sex slavery, and slavery of all kinds; 2) Being a part of a confession group the past few years I've come to believe that confessing sins and misdeeds or mis-thoughts to others forges a path toward holy reconciliation; and, 3) Most of the people who have found my blog through google have done so by searching the relationship between pornography and sex slavery.
I want to first focus on the second reason. When someone confesses to someone other than God (though for many a confession to another person is simultaneously a confession to God, as I believe it is) they are forced to deal with the pain involved, because confessing is essentially a self-deprecating act. Especially if forgiveness is given the confessor will then be able to feel less and less as if a burden weighs them down and more and more as if new life has been granted. New life is important: if a person feels that they are tainted, then what will stop them from corrupting themselves more? The greatest obstacle to poor actions is the individual's feeling that they are somehow pure and performing the action would ruin everything. Also important to the confession is the reaction from the person/s hearing the confession: they might very well be greatly disappointed, disgusted, angry, etc., but even those emotions are motivation to be better, if nothing else other to be better than the confessor. Hopefully, hearing the confession will also enable the hearers to look into themselves to determine if they have any of the same thoughts, passions, desires, or tendencies that drove the confessor to the act, and then hopefully preemptively change their character.
It's with this last hope that I again present my personal confession regarding my relationship to pornography. A follower of the blog during the bike trip last year might well remember that I talked about pornography a good deal and, near the end of the trip, began to see similarities between myself and those who hold or use slaves. A year later my confession is less revealing but perhaps more enlightening.
Though even before the start of my trip I realized that my own use of pornography was crippling, if nothing else, a fact that only impressed itself more in my mind during the trip, it only took me a couple of months to return to using pornography. The thoughts and emotions involved in my return are what I want to deal with in this first part, and I'll return to the dire warning that pornography and sex slavery are intimately linked in the second part.
One might think that people learn their lessons. When an individual is convinced that the lesson also involves the hope and souls of other human beings, one might think that individual will learn the lesson much faster and for all-time. Indeed I am convinced that my watching pornography does not only condemn myself but also the people that I interact with on a daily basis and, obviously, the people involved in the pornography. So one might think that I would learn my lesson, especially after the specific bike trip that I embarked on. One might and would think.
Fortunately and unfortunately, we humans have been created with a massive amount of passion. Much of that passion is what the Bible might label, "earthly." I truly believe that all passion can have a positive outlet but finding that path is tricky. Whatever the case, I have been unable to permanently curb the passions in me that have found numerous negative outlets. It's almost as if the passions will exist no matter what and, the more I try to shut them off, the more they bubble up inside ready to burst out in a boiling mass of bile. So I give in, on one hand hoping that by giving in I will no longer be torn up inside and thus be a walking time-bomb, on the other hand simply wanting to give in.
Almost all of us act in the way but with different vices. How many of us thirst for a drink, or a smoke, or unleashing a torrent of complaints and insults to someone in private, or whatever else our vice might be. Some of us are good enough that a good book or an upbuilding discourse, as Soren Kierkegaard would say, are all that we need. I wish I could be the same. And some of us exhaust ourselves with work so that we cannot even think about our deemed inappropriate passions, though of course we should not then persuade ourselves that the passions are not there.
This last part, acknowledging that many of our passions are deemed inappropriate but perhaps not actually, is very important. We are human. If you believe in God, then you believe, I think, that God created us to be the way that we are. By relegating certain passions of ours to dark alleys because they are suddenly considered inappropriate is a shame. I've always thought it very funny that our youth can see hours upon hours of violent video growing up, with our encouragement (especially when the violence is dished out by Batman), but sexual images? Those are inappropriate and evil. Quite frankly I don't understand. The effect is that our sexual passions are then swept under the carpet to rot, worsen, and then seek outlets in secret. Cue prostitution (a majority of which is sex slavery) and pornography (which, I argue, leads to sex slavery and other ills).
I'm not suggesting that we as a society swing the pendulum the other way. Pendulums are always risky. In fact, I don't know what I'm suggesting. All I know is that my passions never disappeared despite my disgust with how the passions of millions of others have morphed into something cruel and terrifying and that, without having been taught or not being allowed by society to properly manage those passions, my passions then directed me to return to the thing that I now most hate about my life: pornography.
And over time this passion banished into secrecy has indeed rotted and worsened. Hopes and expectations with women have changed in a way that I despise. Pornography has only quickened the rotting process. But I would not ever want any woman that I'm with to know or indulge these worsened passions. On one hand I could argue that having a respectable woman in my life to date would eventually force the passions to dissipate, but then I might still be hiding; on the other hand I could argue that I need to purify myself of all relations with women so that I don't ever inflict more harm than I already have.
The point of writing all this, as I said earlier, is so that all my darling readers might look inside themselves and reflect. How much of me is in you? If we are all honest I think that much of the character that is in a person who uses or holds slaves is in us, and thus much of me is in you. I am disgusted with myself almost all the time and, reading this, you probably are, too. But that doesn't change the fact that perhaps you should be disgusted with yourself as well. Shame on all of us really. Or maybe I'm just the scourge of the Earth. Either way, I think I provide a good lesson to all of us as we address the issue of human trafficking: it is easy to fall victim to the passions that lead us into using and holding slaves, particularly because those passions seem fairly isolated and innocent at first. Even those of my friends who are religious and respectable, I know of no one who thinks that pornography is wrong to indulge in, though I know of many who will say that the pornography industry is wrong. That is a false distinction: indulging in pornography is not an innocent activity for any individual, no matter how secret or isolated.
Let us not focus only on pornography, however. There are a great many passions that seem innocent or even positive at first glance that we indulge and activate to only find many years down the road that we should not have. I'm not imaginative enough to think of all the passions that I'm speaking of, but I think that if we read and hear my story and then reflect, we each might be able to find what those passions are.
I want to first focus on the second reason. When someone confesses to someone other than God (though for many a confession to another person is simultaneously a confession to God, as I believe it is) they are forced to deal with the pain involved, because confessing is essentially a self-deprecating act. Especially if forgiveness is given the confessor will then be able to feel less and less as if a burden weighs them down and more and more as if new life has been granted. New life is important: if a person feels that they are tainted, then what will stop them from corrupting themselves more? The greatest obstacle to poor actions is the individual's feeling that they are somehow pure and performing the action would ruin everything. Also important to the confession is the reaction from the person/s hearing the confession: they might very well be greatly disappointed, disgusted, angry, etc., but even those emotions are motivation to be better, if nothing else other to be better than the confessor. Hopefully, hearing the confession will also enable the hearers to look into themselves to determine if they have any of the same thoughts, passions, desires, or tendencies that drove the confessor to the act, and then hopefully preemptively change their character.
It's with this last hope that I again present my personal confession regarding my relationship to pornography. A follower of the blog during the bike trip last year might well remember that I talked about pornography a good deal and, near the end of the trip, began to see similarities between myself and those who hold or use slaves. A year later my confession is less revealing but perhaps more enlightening.
Though even before the start of my trip I realized that my own use of pornography was crippling, if nothing else, a fact that only impressed itself more in my mind during the trip, it only took me a couple of months to return to using pornography. The thoughts and emotions involved in my return are what I want to deal with in this first part, and I'll return to the dire warning that pornography and sex slavery are intimately linked in the second part.
One might think that people learn their lessons. When an individual is convinced that the lesson also involves the hope and souls of other human beings, one might think that individual will learn the lesson much faster and for all-time. Indeed I am convinced that my watching pornography does not only condemn myself but also the people that I interact with on a daily basis and, obviously, the people involved in the pornography. So one might think that I would learn my lesson, especially after the specific bike trip that I embarked on. One might and would think.
Fortunately and unfortunately, we humans have been created with a massive amount of passion. Much of that passion is what the Bible might label, "earthly." I truly believe that all passion can have a positive outlet but finding that path is tricky. Whatever the case, I have been unable to permanently curb the passions in me that have found numerous negative outlets. It's almost as if the passions will exist no matter what and, the more I try to shut them off, the more they bubble up inside ready to burst out in a boiling mass of bile. So I give in, on one hand hoping that by giving in I will no longer be torn up inside and thus be a walking time-bomb, on the other hand simply wanting to give in.
Almost all of us act in the way but with different vices. How many of us thirst for a drink, or a smoke, or unleashing a torrent of complaints and insults to someone in private, or whatever else our vice might be. Some of us are good enough that a good book or an upbuilding discourse, as Soren Kierkegaard would say, are all that we need. I wish I could be the same. And some of us exhaust ourselves with work so that we cannot even think about our deemed inappropriate passions, though of course we should not then persuade ourselves that the passions are not there.
This last part, acknowledging that many of our passions are deemed inappropriate but perhaps not actually, is very important. We are human. If you believe in God, then you believe, I think, that God created us to be the way that we are. By relegating certain passions of ours to dark alleys because they are suddenly considered inappropriate is a shame. I've always thought it very funny that our youth can see hours upon hours of violent video growing up, with our encouragement (especially when the violence is dished out by Batman), but sexual images? Those are inappropriate and evil. Quite frankly I don't understand. The effect is that our sexual passions are then swept under the carpet to rot, worsen, and then seek outlets in secret. Cue prostitution (a majority of which is sex slavery) and pornography (which, I argue, leads to sex slavery and other ills).
I'm not suggesting that we as a society swing the pendulum the other way. Pendulums are always risky. In fact, I don't know what I'm suggesting. All I know is that my passions never disappeared despite my disgust with how the passions of millions of others have morphed into something cruel and terrifying and that, without having been taught or not being allowed by society to properly manage those passions, my passions then directed me to return to the thing that I now most hate about my life: pornography.
And over time this passion banished into secrecy has indeed rotted and worsened. Hopes and expectations with women have changed in a way that I despise. Pornography has only quickened the rotting process. But I would not ever want any woman that I'm with to know or indulge these worsened passions. On one hand I could argue that having a respectable woman in my life to date would eventually force the passions to dissipate, but then I might still be hiding; on the other hand I could argue that I need to purify myself of all relations with women so that I don't ever inflict more harm than I already have.
The point of writing all this, as I said earlier, is so that all my darling readers might look inside themselves and reflect. How much of me is in you? If we are all honest I think that much of the character that is in a person who uses or holds slaves is in us, and thus much of me is in you. I am disgusted with myself almost all the time and, reading this, you probably are, too. But that doesn't change the fact that perhaps you should be disgusted with yourself as well. Shame on all of us really. Or maybe I'm just the scourge of the Earth. Either way, I think I provide a good lesson to all of us as we address the issue of human trafficking: it is easy to fall victim to the passions that lead us into using and holding slaves, particularly because those passions seem fairly isolated and innocent at first. Even those of my friends who are religious and respectable, I know of no one who thinks that pornography is wrong to indulge in, though I know of many who will say that the pornography industry is wrong. That is a false distinction: indulging in pornography is not an innocent activity for any individual, no matter how secret or isolated.
Let us not focus only on pornography, however. There are a great many passions that seem innocent or even positive at first glance that we indulge and activate to only find many years down the road that we should not have. I'm not imaginative enough to think of all the passions that I'm speaking of, but I think that if we read and hear my story and then reflect, we each might be able to find what those passions are.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Porn Stars: Used and Abused Part II
When we allow real-life human beings to "make a living" in pornography, we allow them to be less than fully human, 2/3rds human. Because as soon as they are full human beings like us we feel a pang of guilt that we don't want to do deal with. So we reduce to porn stars to slightly less than human.
There are a number of unfortunate consequences of this fact: 1) We tend to reduce anyone who acts like a porn star as slightly less than human, as more and more of an object; 2) As a result of watching pornography, we generally develop a taste for more marginal sexual activity; 3) We secretly seek out people whom we can use as objects to submit to our desire for marginal sexual activity; 4) Our relationships with almost all people of the opposite sex (or whatever sex we are attracted to) are disturbed and corrupted.
Given my faith, I find it extremely regretful that I know the course of these events first-hand. But I also see some hope. Because I have personal experience with the inner process sparked by watching pornography I am not one of those strict Christians who condemn pornography on principle without having any understanding or empathy for those who are trapped in the system; in connection with my faith, I am able to analyze more readily how damaging pornography is on my relationships with others and with myself. So I know that pornography will, eventually, drag us through all four of those listed consequences.
And what is the issue, really, of experiencing any of those four consequences? Well, even if we stop at consequence # 1, we all hopefully can see how close we are to using people for our own enjoyment without any consideration of their enjoyment, without any thought to a reciprocal relationship where the Other's needs are as dignified as our own. Already we are on the path to slavery. Already we can start to get inside the heads of those people who get a kick out of paying $50 to a pimp to enter a room where a young girl or boy is kept 24/7 to do exactly what the client wants. The second we don't look at another human being with full respect and dignity we are already on the path to justifying objectifying others for our own benefit and only our own benefit. And that is exactly what we do with porn stars.
We objectify, even if only slightly, porn stars regardless of whether or not they voluntarily choose or enjoy to do what they do. Of course I want to ask whether it's appropriate to objectify anyone whether they "enjoy" to be made an object or not. My faith tells me that no one is an object and even if someone thinks they enjoy being made an object with the sole purpose of satisfying someone else they are not living fully into the life that they are given, the life of a true and dignified human being.
But do porn stars willingly do what they do? For the vast majority of porn stars the answer is no. Many porn stars join the industry to make a quick buck. Others join the industry because they are told that it will be their best chance at making a living. Those who join to make a quick buck are generally sucked in because whenever they return to "the real world" they find that it is much easier to be told what to do, to be used for a little while, to make money than to work 40, 50, or 60 hour weeks doing something "respectable." I think of the movie Shawshank Redemption. If nothing else the movie shows us that people who spend many years in prison often find it difficult, or perhaps impossible, to return to life outside the prison--no longer do they have someone telling them what to do every second of the day, they don't have meals prepared for them, and now they have to be concerned about developing relationships and doing a job well. Porn stars are much like people who have been in prison for awhile. If at any point a porn star tries to leave the industry they will find it very difficult, it's much easier to submit oneself entirely to another and still "make a living."
Or let's compare porn stars to those who are actually held in brothels. If a pimp can addict his/her whores to cocaine or some other drug, then if the whore escapes they'll find themselves desperate to be under the pimp's control again for easy access to the drug. They're addicted and can't get over the withdrawal. Or the whore is so used, abused, and disturbed that they cannot function properly in society, get frightened, and again return to the pimp. Porn stars are only different by degree, not by kind. Porn stars are used, abused, and taught to submit to the point that "normal" life is no longer possible. They are objectified to the point that only if someone objectifies them can they feel any self-worth. Forget about working in a typical work-place because their self-worth has been reduced to living as an object, which does not occur nearly as regularly in a typical work-place, and the porn star can no longer operate needing to worry about how they will live on their own.
The parallels between porn stars and sex-slaves are really greater than we think, certainly greater than we'd like to think. And the path from pornography to using or wanting to use sex-slaves is much shorter than we'd like to think. The changes in our mental, spiritual, and emotional attitudes toward people are generally slight enough to go unnoticed, but one cannot watch pornography for any significant amount of time and escape from the inevitable desire and/or need to objectify others. Many of us will feel guilty when we use others for our enjoyment. Some of us will then try hard to stay away from pornography, but some will simply push through that guilt and become animals in which all we will do is desire to use and abuse so that we can feel good.
If you watch pornography you are not innocent. We cannot rationalize our habit by saying that we aren't harming anyone or that the porn stars enjoy what they are doing. All we do when we watch pornography, when we allow the existence of pornography even, is subtly giving credence to another much more lucrative trade: sex-slavery, human trafficking.
There are a number of unfortunate consequences of this fact: 1) We tend to reduce anyone who acts like a porn star as slightly less than human, as more and more of an object; 2) As a result of watching pornography, we generally develop a taste for more marginal sexual activity; 3) We secretly seek out people whom we can use as objects to submit to our desire for marginal sexual activity; 4) Our relationships with almost all people of the opposite sex (or whatever sex we are attracted to) are disturbed and corrupted.
Given my faith, I find it extremely regretful that I know the course of these events first-hand. But I also see some hope. Because I have personal experience with the inner process sparked by watching pornography I am not one of those strict Christians who condemn pornography on principle without having any understanding or empathy for those who are trapped in the system; in connection with my faith, I am able to analyze more readily how damaging pornography is on my relationships with others and with myself. So I know that pornography will, eventually, drag us through all four of those listed consequences.
And what is the issue, really, of experiencing any of those four consequences? Well, even if we stop at consequence # 1, we all hopefully can see how close we are to using people for our own enjoyment without any consideration of their enjoyment, without any thought to a reciprocal relationship where the Other's needs are as dignified as our own. Already we are on the path to slavery. Already we can start to get inside the heads of those people who get a kick out of paying $50 to a pimp to enter a room where a young girl or boy is kept 24/7 to do exactly what the client wants. The second we don't look at another human being with full respect and dignity we are already on the path to justifying objectifying others for our own benefit and only our own benefit. And that is exactly what we do with porn stars.
We objectify, even if only slightly, porn stars regardless of whether or not they voluntarily choose or enjoy to do what they do. Of course I want to ask whether it's appropriate to objectify anyone whether they "enjoy" to be made an object or not. My faith tells me that no one is an object and even if someone thinks they enjoy being made an object with the sole purpose of satisfying someone else they are not living fully into the life that they are given, the life of a true and dignified human being.
But do porn stars willingly do what they do? For the vast majority of porn stars the answer is no. Many porn stars join the industry to make a quick buck. Others join the industry because they are told that it will be their best chance at making a living. Those who join to make a quick buck are generally sucked in because whenever they return to "the real world" they find that it is much easier to be told what to do, to be used for a little while, to make money than to work 40, 50, or 60 hour weeks doing something "respectable." I think of the movie Shawshank Redemption. If nothing else the movie shows us that people who spend many years in prison often find it difficult, or perhaps impossible, to return to life outside the prison--no longer do they have someone telling them what to do every second of the day, they don't have meals prepared for them, and now they have to be concerned about developing relationships and doing a job well. Porn stars are much like people who have been in prison for awhile. If at any point a porn star tries to leave the industry they will find it very difficult, it's much easier to submit oneself entirely to another and still "make a living."
Or let's compare porn stars to those who are actually held in brothels. If a pimp can addict his/her whores to cocaine or some other drug, then if the whore escapes they'll find themselves desperate to be under the pimp's control again for easy access to the drug. They're addicted and can't get over the withdrawal. Or the whore is so used, abused, and disturbed that they cannot function properly in society, get frightened, and again return to the pimp. Porn stars are only different by degree, not by kind. Porn stars are used, abused, and taught to submit to the point that "normal" life is no longer possible. They are objectified to the point that only if someone objectifies them can they feel any self-worth. Forget about working in a typical work-place because their self-worth has been reduced to living as an object, which does not occur nearly as regularly in a typical work-place, and the porn star can no longer operate needing to worry about how they will live on their own.
The parallels between porn stars and sex-slaves are really greater than we think, certainly greater than we'd like to think. And the path from pornography to using or wanting to use sex-slaves is much shorter than we'd like to think. The changes in our mental, spiritual, and emotional attitudes toward people are generally slight enough to go unnoticed, but one cannot watch pornography for any significant amount of time and escape from the inevitable desire and/or need to objectify others. Many of us will feel guilty when we use others for our enjoyment. Some of us will then try hard to stay away from pornography, but some will simply push through that guilt and become animals in which all we will do is desire to use and abuse so that we can feel good.
If you watch pornography you are not innocent. We cannot rationalize our habit by saying that we aren't harming anyone or that the porn stars enjoy what they are doing. All we do when we watch pornography, when we allow the existence of pornography even, is subtly giving credence to another much more lucrative trade: sex-slavery, human trafficking.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Porn Stars: Used and Abused Part I
The Church often avoids being transparent. By this I mean that while the leaders of the church, and the people sitting in the pews, often lambaste things like pornography without admitting that they themselves participate in some way in supporting pornography, without admitting that we who strive toward holiness are still a broken people. I will not make that same mistake. I have had a long and torturous history with pornography. Most young males do. But that is no excuse. I was exposed to pornography at an early age before I had developed enough of a conscience to know that it was not the best thing for me, and then it became a drug to me, an addiction that I could not and cannot easily rid myself of. But that is no excuse, either.
You see, my own personal history with pornography has helped me see first-hand that it does, indeed, have disastrous consequences on the lives of all those involved, the porn stars and the audience. Now, first of all, I should respond to a common objection many people raise when "those holy religious folk" condemn pornography: the objection that the porn stars do what they do because they like it. After all, it is a profession of choice. I suppose that if we consider being a professional athlete as a profession, as an occupation, as a job, then so, too, can pornography be a legitimate form of work. Both do what they like. Sure, but in that case I want to call into question the profession-ality of sports as well. Look at the root of that word, profession, and you'll clearly see that the root is profess. That's the same word that religious folk use: we profess Christ and profess that we are Christians. To profess something is to say that it forms the very core of your being. When a person professes Christ that means the love of and for Christ is at the heart of all they do and all they are. What does it say about a person if they profess to sports or sex? Essentially, that the core of their being is sex or a game. Plus, they are now getting paid for what should be a special part of life rather than an industrialized economic source (I'll get more into this in part II).
The issue, then, is that porn stars, whether they actually like what they do or not, have "voluntarily" reduced their self-worth to a person who has sex. Even if we are avowed Darwinists and believe that we are simply another animal, can we not see that there is a lot more to life than sex? If at the core of my being I say that I am a person who has sex, my relations to other people are basically reduced to how much I want to have sex with them and vice versa. I would then find little enjoyment in life if I weren't having sex.
The question of whether or not porn stars actually like what they do, as well as the implications of our watching pornography, will be the subject of discussion in my Part II, but for now I'd like to say that regardless of their enjoyment of starring in pornography, they are no longer truly human. If we believe in God, then they are certainly not truly human. God has created us to enjoy so much more than one little part of our being. And if we don't believe in God and only believe in the human spirit and will, then the person who stars in pornography is still forced to ignore some fundamental elements of animal life, namely family and community. Very few beings in the animal kingdom without developing and relying on a deep sense of family and community built on trust. If one cannot trust another, the herd falls apart. If a group of wild dogs go to feed in a field they have to trust that there will be one on the lookout that will warn the others. How can anyone develop that trust if at the core of their being they are sex machines? concerned only with personal enjoyment? or perhaps concerned only with getting others to appreciate them?
A part of what gives life to, well, life itself is missing from pornography. The porn star must look at themselves as someone who has sex. And yet, all people are fundamentally much more than that. The community of life is fundamentally much more than that. As a lead-in, we the audience of pornography get enjoyment out of seeing the porn star merely as a person who has sex. In fact, in many ways we have to view them that way, much like the American slaveholders didn't want the slaves to become Christian because then they would have to see them as a person that shouldn't be enslaved...
The relationship between porn stars and African slaves is far deeper than we might like to think. At the heart of the matter, we do not view porn stars as real people. In a number of ways the porn stars themselves do not look at themselves as real people. They are merely people who have sex. The second we see them as more than that, we start feeling a little guilty. When we plow through that guilt is when we start running into serious problems in who we are as people. For the sake of the many who make a living being 2/3rds of a person, can we really allow pornography to continue?
You see, my own personal history with pornography has helped me see first-hand that it does, indeed, have disastrous consequences on the lives of all those involved, the porn stars and the audience. Now, first of all, I should respond to a common objection many people raise when "those holy religious folk" condemn pornography: the objection that the porn stars do what they do because they like it. After all, it is a profession of choice. I suppose that if we consider being a professional athlete as a profession, as an occupation, as a job, then so, too, can pornography be a legitimate form of work. Both do what they like. Sure, but in that case I want to call into question the profession-ality of sports as well. Look at the root of that word, profession, and you'll clearly see that the root is profess. That's the same word that religious folk use: we profess Christ and profess that we are Christians. To profess something is to say that it forms the very core of your being. When a person professes Christ that means the love of and for Christ is at the heart of all they do and all they are. What does it say about a person if they profess to sports or sex? Essentially, that the core of their being is sex or a game. Plus, they are now getting paid for what should be a special part of life rather than an industrialized economic source (I'll get more into this in part II).
The issue, then, is that porn stars, whether they actually like what they do or not, have "voluntarily" reduced their self-worth to a person who has sex. Even if we are avowed Darwinists and believe that we are simply another animal, can we not see that there is a lot more to life than sex? If at the core of my being I say that I am a person who has sex, my relations to other people are basically reduced to how much I want to have sex with them and vice versa. I would then find little enjoyment in life if I weren't having sex.
The question of whether or not porn stars actually like what they do, as well as the implications of our watching pornography, will be the subject of discussion in my Part II, but for now I'd like to say that regardless of their enjoyment of starring in pornography, they are no longer truly human. If we believe in God, then they are certainly not truly human. God has created us to enjoy so much more than one little part of our being. And if we don't believe in God and only believe in the human spirit and will, then the person who stars in pornography is still forced to ignore some fundamental elements of animal life, namely family and community. Very few beings in the animal kingdom without developing and relying on a deep sense of family and community built on trust. If one cannot trust another, the herd falls apart. If a group of wild dogs go to feed in a field they have to trust that there will be one on the lookout that will warn the others. How can anyone develop that trust if at the core of their being they are sex machines? concerned only with personal enjoyment? or perhaps concerned only with getting others to appreciate them?
A part of what gives life to, well, life itself is missing from pornography. The porn star must look at themselves as someone who has sex. And yet, all people are fundamentally much more than that. The community of life is fundamentally much more than that. As a lead-in, we the audience of pornography get enjoyment out of seeing the porn star merely as a person who has sex. In fact, in many ways we have to view them that way, much like the American slaveholders didn't want the slaves to become Christian because then they would have to see them as a person that shouldn't be enslaved...
The relationship between porn stars and African slaves is far deeper than we might like to think. At the heart of the matter, we do not view porn stars as real people. In a number of ways the porn stars themselves do not look at themselves as real people. They are merely people who have sex. The second we see them as more than that, we start feeling a little guilty. When we plow through that guilt is when we start running into serious problems in who we are as people. For the sake of the many who make a living being 2/3rds of a person, can we really allow pornography to continue?
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