An Eyeful and Self-Control

Chewy, Chewy, Chewy. You've been spending too much time away from home.

My fellow poster at this blog has posted an attention grabbing article (see below). At first I thought someone had hacked the site and was posting unapproved. And I did consider deleting the picture itself but I figured in the name of scientific inquiry....

But seriously it started me thinking on a couple of thoughts that had begun churning about since the post "Naked Celebrities and the The Porn Myth."

The Porn Myth- by Naomi Wolf is a really good article about one of the many dangers of porn, namely that it turns men off the real thing. One of the many other dangers is that it creates an unnatural appetite or rather exaggerates the already high sex drive of most men to unnatural proportions. Both of which would make excellent posts but not ones which I'll focus on now.

The Porn Myth article rightly points out how the hper sexualization of society has caused a whole generation of women to feel they have to compete with porn.

Here is what young women tell me on college campuses when the subject comes up: They can’t compete, and they know it. For how can a real woman—with pores and her own breasts and even sexual needs of her own ...!”)—possibly compete with a cybervision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer’s least specification? (The Porn Myth)

Look at the picture (in the interest of health and science of course) posted by Chewy as a (relatively speaking) mild example.

But the article also raises the question, at least indirectly, of how radical feminism has created part of the problem. Namely, in the rush for equality of pay, we have gone to a point of equality-period. Meaning, the wrong headed idea that men and women are the same. They are not, of course and the differences go far beyond biology. But one of the results of this philosophy is that women have become more like men. They drink more, smoke more, consume more pornography, fight more and are ending up in prison in greater numbers than ever before.

The study quoted by Chewy (though a 200 hundred sample study hardly qualifies as a study- hmm-could this be something else?) brings up another issue. Namely, self-control. A lost concept that has gone the way of the Cornish language, nearly extinct. If a study such as the one quoted is accurate (or real) does it make it a proper course of action for a Christian?

The "manly-action of self-control"--teach that as a concept today, somewhere, anywhere. That is, teach young boys who are growing into manhood that becoming a man means learning to control oneself and the passions, that that is a manly thing to learn. Our society teaches the opposite: express your passions and indulge your lusts, just as soon as you can feel them.

When self-control isn't nurtured by the sort of parental discipline that it takes to help little boys behave, then self-control is killed in infancy, so to speak, and the child, despite growing biologically, will remain an adolescent, children in adult male bodies, able to "have sex" but unable to truly father and raise children. (merecomments)

And it creates a vicious circle as men raised without such discipline then raise young men who have no idea what ideals to aspire to. Education used to be a place where such virtues were evidenced in literature and the like, but not today.

In his notes and exposition on Proverbs 5 in Daily Reflections (February 24) Patrick Henry Reardon says this:

...the godly and productive life of a man normally requires the proper governance of his home. It is the teaching of Holy Scripture, however, that a man cannot govern his home unless he can govern himself. Self-control and discipline, therefore, are among the primary requisites of a good husband and father, and these are qualities to be developed from an early age. Consequently the Book of Proverbs is emphatic on the prohibition of sexual activity outside of marriage. Sex outside of marriage is also outside of God’s will.
A man’s marriage, in fact, can be damaged long before the marriage takes place. Sex before marriage often involves exploitation and disrespect, and it always involves irresponsibility, selfishness, and rebellion. These are bad habits to learn, not qualities in a man that will make him a good husband and father.

Amen

Naked Celebrities and The Porn Myth

Recently, Allure magazine made the headlines, at least briefly, with five beautiful women it convinced to "bare all" for its magazine. The blurb went like this:

Allure asked five celebrities to bare it all for the camera. Learn what they had to say about self-esteem, their bodies, and stripping down; for more of our revealing interviews with them,...

"Self-esteem, their bodies and stripping down." There are many posts possible in these few lines. But I was drawn to one in particular. Mainly, why would they do this? What is the motivation for a beautiful woman to want to share that gift with the world and what is the difference between this and stripping and frankly, prostitution, because stripped (sorry) to its basic argument isn't that just another form of sharing yourself with others for their amusement?

OK perhaps the last part goes to far and I've actually asked more than one question there but still...

I was reminded of an article that I read many years ago, from feminist writer Naomi Wolf. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I was able to find the article, which in part said this:

I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. “Can’t I even see your hair?” I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. “No,” she demurred quietly. “Only my husband,” she said with a calm sexual confidence, “ever gets to see my hair.”
When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husband—the kids are not allowed—the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.

She must feel, I thought, so hot.

Compare that steaminess with a conversation I had at Northwestern, after I had talked about the effect of porn on relationships. “Why have sex right away?” a boy with tousled hair and Bambi eyes was explaining. “Things are always a little tense and uncomfortable when you just start seeing someone,” he said. “I prefer to have sex right away just to get it over with. You know it’s going to happen anyway, and it gets rid of the tension.”

“Isn’t the tension kind of fun?” I asked. “Doesn’t that also get rid of the mystery?”

“Mystery?” He looked at me blankly. And then, without hesitating, he replied: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sex has no mystery.”(more)

Much the same thing was said in the book "Everyman's Battle". One of the suggestions to men struggling against the lure of pornography and its addictive qualities and consequent detriment to marriages was to "starve their eyes" during the course of the day. Because to do otherwise, particularly with pornography (but in other ways too) cheats our spouses (and future spouses) of full devotion.

Wolf understands this:

The reason to turn off the porn might become, to thoughtful people, not a moral one but, in a way, a physical- and emotional-health one; you might want to rethink your constant access to porn in the same way that, if you want to be an athlete, you rethink your smoking. The evidence is in: Greater supply of the stimulant equals diminished capacity. (more)

After all, pornography works in the most basic of ways on the brain: It is Pavlovian. An orgasm is one of the biggest reinforcers imaginable. If you associate orgasm with your wife, a kiss, a scent, a body, that is what, over time, will turn you on; if you open your focus to an endless stream of ever-more-transgressive images of cybersex slaves, that is what it will take to turn you on. The ubiquity of sexual images does not free eros but dilutes it.(more)

Yes, I've seen the pictures. They are beautiful and, I might add, tastefully done but something still nags my mind about it all. That these beautiful creations have felt the need to share their charms with many for sake of self-esteem and curiosity rather than with one in favor of chastity and mystery.

Pornography and the Courts

By way of Mere Comments an article on "global porning" and while, like one of the comments at MereComments I would disagree with the idea that the biggest problem the Muslim world has with us is our smutty culture, this article makes some good points, chief among them, the ludicrous position that, "The idea that pornography is “speech,” within the meaning of the first amendment, and thereby protected by the Constitution..." It also highlights the destructiveness of this material on society.
From Public Discourse

President Obama’s choice of David Ogden for Deputy Attorney General is not of concern to Americans only. The world-wide explosion of pornographic material, and its exploitation through the internet, is to a great extent the result of legal activism in the United States. Legal activism is a threat at the best of times—a way in which elites and special interests can circumvent the democratic process and impose themselves on the majority. In the case of pornography it also opens the way to a temptation against which ordinary people are inadequately protected.

Porn exploits the existing screen-addiction, induced by TV and the internet, in order to catalyze a far worse addiction, which is the addiction to vicarious sex. Psychologists, philosophers and social critics concur in the judgment that this addiction is immensely damaging, not merely in undermining family relations and exposing children and other vulnerable people to sexual predation, but in destroying the capacity for loving sexual relations. It is one of the great social diseases, and it is looked on with dismay by the majority—including a majority of those who are addicted to it.

Yet it is legal activism in America that has paved the way for the world-wide flood of pornographic material, and for the world-wide revulsion against a society and a culture that seems to find nothing wrong with it. The issue of pornography is therefore not just a major domestic problem: it is, or ought to be, at the top of the foreign policy agenda. For President Obama to be making overtures of conciliation towards the Muslim world—something that is certainly needed—while appointing to high legal office one of the most virulent advocates of a culture that poses the greatest threat to Muslim society is, it seems to me, indicative of a deep confusion—a confusion inherent in the essential negativity of liberal politics.

The idea that pornography is “speech,” within the meaning of the first amendment, and thereby protected by the Constitution, is so absurd that it is hard for an outsider to see how American judges have been persuaded to accept it again and again. Of course porn is big business, and can afford to keep beating at the doors of the courts. But the real reason for the legalization of pornography in America lies in the culture of the liberal elite and in the strategy of legal activism whereby that elite continues its relentless assault on majority values. Porn has been incorporated into the “culture war” precisely because ordinary Americans see it as a threat to family and religious values....(more)

Cleaning Up The Internet

From Zenit:

ROME, JAN. 18, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Governments in a number of countries are raising concerns over the way in which the Internet is allowing unlimited access to all sorts of pornography....

...In Canada a local magazine, Macleans, put the problem of pornography and the Internet on its front cover in the June 18 issue last year. The accompanying editorial noted the incongruence of having ratings systems to protect children and teens from violent or pornographic content in cinemas and for the sale of DVDs, and also for television broadcasters, but no controls over Internet content.... (read the whole thing here)

Tis the Season for Porn?

From Townhall:

...We all know how far the pornification has gotten. A mainstream movie apparently treats the subject as cute and fun ("Zack and Miri Make a Porno") and it runs at the multiplex next to "Four Christmases" and "Madagascar." Hotels offer pornographic movies and omit the titles from the final bill. Victoria's Secret graces every mall -- and its windows resemble the red light district of Amsterdam.....

...Last week the Witherspoon Institute convened a conference on pornography at Princeton University and invited scholars from a variety of fields to contribute. The statistics are mind-numbing. ...

...Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, author of "The Brain That Changes Itself," noted that pornography use actually changes the brains of consumers. Like other addictions, pornography use breeds tolerance and the need for more intensity to get the desired result. He quoted Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons," in which a college kid asks casually, "Anybody got porn?" He is told that there are magazines on the third floor. He responds, "I've built up a tolerance to magazines I need videos." Tolerance is the medically correct term, Doidge notes, which is why pornography becomes more and more graphic.
The men (and they are overwhelmingly men) who become hooked on this bilge are often miserable about it. They know that it affects their capacity to love and be loved by real women. As Doidge explained, "Pornographers promise healthy pleasure and a release from sexual tension, but what they often deliver is an addiction, tolerance, and an eventual decrease in pleasure. Paradoxically, the male patients I worked with often craved pornography but didn't like it." Hugh Hefner, the godfather of mainstream porn, apparently does not have normal sex with his many girlfriends. Despite the presence of up to seven comely young women in his bed at a time, he uses porn for sexual satisfaction. Think about that. ..(more here)