You know, when I run across something that has a potential to infuriate me and fill me with righteous indignation, I should know better than to read it. I should click a link, do a search, walk away from the computer altogether. But I can’t. Just like anti-porn activists seem to be helplessly drawn to pornography again and again, so am I helpless to stop myself from reading utter drivel and getting all worked up about it.

I was doing a search online about “encylopedia of sex”, researching something I’m working on for the site, when I ran across this essay. Entitled Pornography – What’s the Big Deal?, it’s a look into how pornography is “destroying” families.

A quote: “I saw my husband lose his soul to pornography. I have held other women and listened to them weep as they told me how their husbands also lost their souls to pornography. Pornography kills the soul, steals the heart, and destroys the mind.”

Hmm. Now I can’t seem to help myself from thinking these men finally woke up, realized there was more to life than being a good Ward Cleaver in a passionless marriage with their “keep the pill between the knees – WannabeProverbs, 12:7” wives and went out to get themselves some!

Here’s the pornography theory as this lady sees it. “Pornography is permanently burned into your mind by a curious mixture of hormones that are released when sexually explicit materials are viewed. As a result of this imprinting process, sex for you will now be linked with fear, violence and shame.”Oh, pul-eeze. You want to know why pornography is linked with fear and violence and shame? Because there are so many people out there trying to make us believe that what is a natural physical and physiological reaction – arousal – is a shameful reaction unless it’s with your spouse, preferably in the marriage bed, preferably with all the lights turned off.My personal favourite: “Eventually, the pornography participant becomes an empty shell of a man. Hollow to the core, he wanders through life, seeking only one thing: fulfillment of the lust that has taken hold of him.”

I can’t decide whether I like the quote better because of its sheer inanity or because of the implication that only men are “ensnared” by porn. Umm, hello? (raises hand) Porn lover here. No penis necessary.

One of those sentences you NEVER thought you’d hear yourself say. <grin>

No wonder our society is so ambivalent, so messed up, in such a love-hate relationship with sexuality. Talk about conflicting messages.

To help to balance the scale here, I share a wonderful essay called The Language of Sex Positivity. It contains a really, really wonderful comparison of how food and eating are handled in our culture as opposed to sex and sexuality. Reading this after the previous essay should help to ease some of that festering indignation. 🙂