I'm ending up doing a series on porn. Since I'm a fan of "Read Your Own Mail" - I'm writing this from the view of a wife whose husband is using porn.
The truth is that this is far, far from being a "male user / women victim" sin.
* 34 percent of female readers of Today's Christian Woman's online newsletter admitted to intentionally accessing Internet porn in a recent poll.
From ChristiaNet:
"The poll results indicate that 50% of all Christian men and 20% of all Christian women are addicted to pornography,"
Do more men use porn than women? yes.
But here's a twist - if you figure in "erotica" - and add the typical "romance novels" to the mix - what figures are you going to get? How many women who really wouldn't like their husbands to use porn, have a collection of "romance novels" and know exactly where "the good parts" are?
In my view, the bottom line is this:
If you are a wife who is reading fiction and enjoying the fantasy of a "knight in shining armor" - whether or not it's erotica - and if you'd like your husband to be "a little more like that..."
You are every bit as much importing an outside ideal onto your spouse, as is a husband who is looking at air-brushed images on a screen.
So when we write about porn and put all of the blame squarely on men, we're missing half the boat.
Milly
Without a doubt the way that you are portraying porn here men and women use it and they want their spouses to be someone different. My ex liked it while I hated it all. It’s a skewed view of real life.
But the reality of porn is drug use, child molestation, rape, and a whole lot of daddy issues. Women often turn to making porn for those reasons. That’s the difference between a romance novel and a porn movie. Not that I’m really into romance novels. But the women in the novels aren’t real and stuffing something up their noses. Porn can’t be rightfully compared to a romance novel because Lucy of the manor wasn’t afraid to fall asleep at night because daddy crawled onto of her. Porn is a sick twisted world and will pay the price when the end comes.
MzEllen
Post authorI agree with the "supply side" - unless you're talking about "amateur" stuff. "Normal" people uploading sexually explicit material for their own exhibitionist kick.
on the consumer side, I'm not sure the damage is all that much different. I was into "romance novels" and it did do damage
Moonshadow
My MIL reads paperback romance novels. She even calls them trashy but she defends them because they are inexpensive and if she misplaces one, it isn't the end of the world.
I've never been attracted to fiction or novels in general, much less romance. Although I do remember being intrigued twenty years ago by that racy, sexual encounter in "The Fountainhead."
Milly
I can see how getting a false sense of what the world "should" be can do harm. I guess the way I was raised gave me a bit of an edge. My dad would stop at the drop of a hat for flowers that some poor person was selling for whatever reason. Bring them to mom but he didn't climb any trellises to give them to her. I didn’t ask that my ex be like that because I knew not all men had the kind of view of life. Dad felt like he was helping a person out and giving mom something nice.
Romance novels weren’t anything that I wanted to read until I was divorced I read a hand full of them calling them mind candy. It’s what I needed. I’m back to reading other books now.
I think reading those are okay if you are planted on the ground.
Porn on the other hand is never okay
Keith
Well put. Although the two genders are drawn to different forms of escapism - we are all human. Both genders want something they don't have and find different ways to fantasize about it. The trick is calling a spade a spade and letting go of the escapism as sin. Only then can we truly change and enjoy the live we have been given.