Another bad cop
2 years ago
Friday, February 5, 2010
Religious Women Who Are (Gasp) Porn Users
From time to time, the religious status quo has to acknowledge the truth that the rest of us take for granted. A recent article at Boundless.org on female use of pornography is one such example. I just wonder this: When Christian women use porn, are they heartless perverts that demean and objectify men and children? Or are they poor little souls trapped in sin who need the love of Christ? I suspect there's a gender difference in how we "love" the sinner.
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17 comments:
Post #2 on the Boundless's corresponding blog post was a bit ridiculous, but I don't know that they've been all that dishonest there.
What I did get upset about was when a Boundless editor went around deleting things, such as an old post which looked at romance novels as female porn.
Reading this I was thinking, man that sounds familiar. This could have been written by my friend Rachel.... So less than halfway thru I scrolled down and lo and behold, it IS her. small world.
With all due respect to Erik and to Miss Zoeller, I'm a bit on the skeptical side.
First, can a three year old really dedicate their life to Jesus?
Second, can a three year old really remember being touched "there" by a couple she trusts? Much less being made to feel guilty about it? My 3 yo has no concept of sexuality and nakedness, and I don't expect him to develop one for another couple of years or so.
Now on to the point of the article...I'm not certain about the magnitude of women's problem with visual porn. I suspect that it is mostly a guy thing, and that Zoeller is an outlier. Then again perhaps I am just ignorant to the facts, as the links at the bottom of the FOTF post suggest.
That's not to say that women don't struggle with porn. A great many do, in quantities that I suspect rival or exceed men. But it's not the visual kind. Rather it is the emotional kind, the sort of "respectable" porn that is sold in stores (right next to Bibles and other religious-themed literature, as in the case of WalMart). I peeked in one of these novels recently, and what I saw there would please Larry Flynt's acolytes quite a bit. And judging by the sales volume, quite a few women partake.
I do note that this testimony as well as that contained in the FOTF post highlighted sexual abuse as a gateway into visual porn for women. I note that a similar mechanism exists for boys, in that boys abused as children have a much higher risk of acting out sexually, including committing rape, as adults.
Here's another thing, too. I think this focus on visual porn misses the romance novel threat that ensnares many more women.
I just wonder this: When Christian women use porn, are they heartless perverts that demean and objectify men and children? Or are they poor little souls trapped in sin who need the love of Christ?
We all know the answer to this question: these women are victims (of men, no doubt) that must be showered with sympathy, understanding and patience. How long will we have to wait for some Boundless articles putting women through the wringer for their porn problems?
Anonymous wrote:
Post #2 on the Boundless's corresponding blog post was a bit ridiculous, but I don't know that they've been all that dishonest there.
Indeed - curiously, no one on the Boundless team responded to her claim that her circumstances 'forced' her to indulge in porn.
Hey Anakin, do you remember Sam and Bethany Torode? They were a couple who was associated with Boundless for a while, starting when the then 18-year-old Bethany Patchin wrote an article for them entitled "(Don't) Kiss Me" about saving kissing for marriage. Sam responded, which led to them meeting and getting married. IIRC, they each wrote several more articles for Boundless. They were kind of poster children for doing things the Boundless way and seemed like rising stars in the evangelical publishing world for a while. They married when she was 19 and she got pregnant on their honeymoon, which she presented as a positive thing. They were big advocates of NFP and wrote a book about it, had 4 kids in quick succession, then kind of faded into the background, converted to Eastern Orthodoxy somewhere along the way, and recanted their no-contraception position when faced with the realities of caring for 4 small children in their early twenties on a limited budget. Well, it turns out they recently got divorced, and Boundless has deleted all their writings from their website without saying a word about it. (I know this happened recently since they were mentioned as a success story in the original recent Boundless article about Boundless's 10th anniversary, which is still in the Google cache version, but no longer in the curent version.) If you peruse Bethany's blog, you get the impression that she's now into experiencing more, uh, freedom than she had as a homeschooled 19-year-old newlywed.
I would write a long article on my own blog about this, but I'm studying for a big test right now and don't have the time. I just thought you might like to know since like me you're a long-time Boundless reader and critic.
Well, I, for one, would say that marrying at that age is generally not the best idea. The reason is that people change a lot during the 20s and at 20 don't generally know what they are going to want from life at 30. That's just reality in many cases.
In bygone eras this was dealt with by having tremendous social pressure to stay together regardless and "get over it". That isn't the case today. So it's tricky for these marriages to last, even if the couple is "religious". Even religious folk look at the world and their lives differently at 30 than they do at 20 and may want a different kind of partner as well.
Bethany says she was in an abusive marriage. I have no idea what the facts were.
Hermes,
The events you refer to in your comment remind me of what the Slovenian philospher Slavoj Zizek refers to as "an irruption of the real."
Bethany says she was in an abusive marriage. I have no idea what the facts were.
Most women say things like that. They have to make the man into a monster so that they can justify to themselves the divorce and absolve themselves of guilt. Seen it far too often and my ex makes me out to be a monster as well. I personally just roll my eyes when a woman launches into such stories.
"Most women say things like that. They have to make the man into a monster so that they can justify to themselves the divorce and absolve themselves of guilt. Seen it far too often and my ex makes me out to be a monster as well. I personally just roll my eyes when a woman launches into such stories."
The fact of the matter is that you have no idea whether or not the particular claim in this case is true. The fact that some make such a claim when it's unjustified doesn't mean that the claim is therefore never true. It seems a bit presumptuous and uncharitable on your part to assign blame in this case when you couldn't possibly know all the facts of the situation. I think this is what is meant, in part, by the saying "judge not that you be not judged."
If an assumption is true over half of the time, we do not take our whole lives to find the exceptions and disprove things. There's a reason statistics are important, they can give us an idea of broad trends and what kinds of behaviours or people to avoid.
It is unusual that the marriage was said to be abusive... and it is even more unusual that the husband has not come up with his version of the story.
I love the deletions at Boundless. It shows that they cannot accept that one-time believers in their particular flavor of Christianity can drift away.
Criticism? Attack the motives.
Falling away? Send them down the memory hole, as if they never existed.
Human nature doesn't change.
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Well, it turns out they recently got divorced, and Boundless has deleted all their writings from their website without saying a word about it.
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Deleting and banning are necessary to put on a false front, and insulate people from truths that may... conflict with the message you are selling.
Did I say selling? Why yes, I did.
I read some of Bethany's blog.
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I am a big Lover of Fun. I do have many fun moments with the kids. But I can get very pissy when my style is cramped, and I am feeling quite cramped by the darkness, the cold, the messy house, the never-ending needs. Also, changing a four-plus-year-old's diaper every day really cramps my style. She should be potty trained. But dealing with accidents is more of a pain in the ass than telling her to go change her own pull up. So there you have it.
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So what's going on here? Is Bethany totally useless? Did her mother fail to teach her ANYTHING about raising kids? Both?
Really, this is just weird.
And she was home-schooled to.
Olympic greetings to you all!!
Love, Catwoman (today a very proud Vancouverite!).
Interesting article, added his blog to Favorites
Didn't read the article but appreciate any dialogue that addresses porn issues and women. Many sisters have confessed such issues with me claiming they have no one to talk to about it - but once it becomes clear they are doing nothing [e.g. throwing their computers in a river] to prevent themselves from their 'indulgences' I have a hard time taking them seriously. No one who is truly convicted of a particular sin continues in it. The Bible is clear on those who habitually sin... this is an issue of salvation.
Women using porn are "victimizing victims" in the sense that they are victimizing [and their behaviours are condemnable as much as men's] and victims in the same sense that men are - we can be led to stumble, there is an Enemy, we fail, we fail to see our freedom over Sin as reality. It's easier to absolve ourselves of responsibility and deny the reality that the cross removed every obstacle to our obedience to God.
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