“The Porn Post”

A GW Catholic who is a former grad student but still connected with the Newman Center runs her own blog. She sent me the link to a post she made earlier in the month that has drawn a big crowd to her site. It is quite long but very good. Excerpts of “The Porn Post” are below. To view the full post, please click on today’s title.



The Porn Post


…To address why women find porn a bit lame and not arousing: this is probably because women, in general, crave more of an emotional connection with people. Porn does not give emotional connections, but makes up really weird (and sometimes awkward) scenarios where mind-blowing sex just happens to occur with random strangers. Women, in general, do not sit around waiting for the UPS guy hoping to have pornographic sex with him. They wait for the UPS guy to deliver the latest clothing item they ordered off the internet, sign their name on the tracking device, and send him off with a polite smile. Even if the UPS guy has a nice body and a flirty grin, he is not arousing in that way because we ladies don't build an emotional connection in this 30 second encounter. Sex should not and cannot be made into a purely physical act, forgetting about the emotional union that is formed.

Secondly, the fact that Jake (whose words are in italics below-FG) just brushes off the fact that some of his gal pals (I hope they find a new guy friend now!) find porn disgusting, exploitative, and potentially harmful to the relationship is worrisome. But then again, I guess men statistically value beer, sports, and porn over the women in their lives. If porn offended their can of beer, I'm sure that would be an entirely different story!

Women's biggest question when it comes to their guys' porn consumption: Does he want me to do that? Simple answer: No.

Good to know. But why? Jake's friend "Faisal" answers the question for us:

I wouldn't want my girlfriend to act like that in bed. It's not how I like to think of someone I love…

It seems that Jake has convinced the female editors of Glamour that no harm is done by allowing men to love their porn. Ladies, don't let him convince you. This may only be the published opinion of 102 men and their female editors, but I can guarantee that many of the 137,999,898 men in America also find porn to be a normal practice. While it can be difficult to find accurate statistics on this subject (because, well, it is shameful to admit that you watch porn, as Jake points out), it was cited in 2006 that approximately 70% of men between the ages of 18 and 34 had viewed porn in the last month. 10% of adults admitted to internet sex addiction, and this has definitely impacted marriages:


"At a 2003 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, two thirds of the 350 divorce lawyers who attended said the Internet played a significant role in the divorces in the past year, with excessive interest in online porn contributing to more than half such cases. Pornography had an almost non-existent role in divorce just seven or eight years ago."

Let's follow the money, too. The most recent financial statistics are from 2006, and I can only imagine how they have grown in the past five years. Worldwide, the porn industry rakes in $97 billion worldwide, with $13.3 billion coming from the U.S. The porn revenue in the U.S. alone exceeded the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC at this time, and it was even larger than the combined monies from professional football, baseball, and basketball franchises. It is clear from the money that porn has become a major part of the entertainment industry.

Ladies, we like to think that the good, Christian men in our lives aren't a part of these statistics, but unfortunately, that isn't always the case. Talk to any priest or religious leader, and they'll tell you that sexual deviances (pornography, masturbation, pre-marital sex, etc.) are what they hear about more than any other struggle. Julie wrote a great piece about how important it is to stand by the men in our lives, encouraging and praying for them in their struggles against pornography. For anyone who is struggling with pornography addiction, or who is interested in learning more about it from a spiritual and physiological level, I really encourage you to listen to Matthew Frad discuss how to break free from pornography here and here.

We have to stand against pornography, together. Even when people, like Jake and Glamour magazine, try to convince us otherwise, it doesn't change the truth that porn goes against our very nature. It's time that we re-prioritize the things in our lives, putting the relationships that truly fulfill us above the disordered and artificial ones that do not.