For many years I struggled with watching pornography; it is everywhere these days; you can’t escape it. There are thousand of free porn sites that anyone ( including those that are minors) can access without any age restrictions; and it isn’t just vanilla porn; it’s hardcore pornography; anything you can think of within legal limits is available mostly for free online. It all too easy to become addicted. And if it isn’t pornography; it’s sensual videos on YouTube ( a lot female youtubers tend to flaunt their sexuality; mostly to attract male viewers) or it’s half naked girls on Instagram or any other social media; just a never ending stream of lust. It almost makes you sick; you see women as objects; you don’t care about their brains and what they have to say; it’s about their bodies. I used to use a metaphor for it; it’s like putting a drug addict in a room and there is a constant stream of free drugs; anything he wants; anytime of day; free of charge. I started thinking to myself; what is this doing to my mind? How is this affecting the way I view women. How do I see myself seeing this endless stream of scantily clad woman all day everyday; and not real women mind you; but pixels and videos; not reality.? I think it got to the point where I couldn’t look women in the face because I felt so much shame at seeing women degraded and abused on a daily basis. I mean how can you relate and have relationships with women when you see them as objects; spit on, kicked, called names, in pain while the crew and cameramen around them laugh at their expense? Something inside of me started feeling hurt by watching this; I was hurt for these women. A thought came to me that at one point they were all little girls; did they dream that one day they’d be having sex on camera for millions to see; to be abused on screen; at risk for contracting AIDS and other diseases; having their family and friends possibly find out about their porn acting and be ostracized ( I read about one young girl who took her own life because a college classmate found her porn audition video; heartbreaking), having those behind the camera making twice as much while the pornstars take all the risks. Is money worth losing your soul over? But something amazing happened when I stopped looking at pornography so much; I automatically respected women more; I saw them less as objects and more as human beings worthy of my respect and admiration. I want to connect with women; I want to relate them; I want to understand women because I felt so bad about watching all of this garbage over the years. It lead me other unhealthy behaviors that I regret; porn is sort of like the gateway drug to other things. For me personally when I turned my life to God; it’s as if he freed me from that addiction. I felt less of a need to look at it because I saw it as ugly and against the kind of life that Jesus would want to me to lead.. I don’t want to preach or demand that porn be banned; because that will never happen. Adults have a legal right to do whatever the hell they want to do but this is something I have wanted to write about for a long time. I want people to see how destructive porn is; how many lives it has ruined; suicides; drug overdoses; aids, ; murders; a huge rate of death within the adult film industry and none of that matters to the pornographer because there will always a cute 18 year girl right out of high school; ignorant to the world that they can use; abuse and throw out like yesterday’s garbage; it’s heartbreaking. I mean this is an industry that refuses to have their workers wears condoms; in this day and age where there is still no cure for AIDS and the rest of us have to use condoms to protect ourselves from disease; the porn industry only cares about money and will put performers at risk to line their greedy pockets; they don’t care who dies as a result of their wickedness. So I for one chose to stay away from pornography; I want a healthy relationship with a woman; I want to feel better about myself. I don’t want to contribute to the abuse and degradation of women; I have respect for them and have many female friends; they are more than objects; they are people I care about it. So I hope I have been honest in this post; this was difficult to write but I feel I needed to say it.
As always, Thank for listening
Dave
It takes a lot of courage to make a post like that. Major props to you for being so brave. 😊
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Thanks I hope by sharing a part of my story maybe someone immersed in porn addiction can break free from it. I think when you can see the ugliness and the disgust factor; it makes it easier to stay away
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That makes perfect sense. And I share your hope. I’m sure you will inspire someone. 😉
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You are so very right… Here are some statistics to put it in perspective…
GENERAL PORNOGRAPHY STATISTICS:
Size of the Industry $57.0 billion world-wide – $12.0 billion US
Adult Videos $20.0 billion
Escort Services $11.0 billion
Magazines $ 7.5 billion
Sex Clubs $ 5.0 billion
Phone Sex $ 4.5 billion
Cable & Pay Per View $ 2.5 billion
Internet $ 2.5 billion
CD-Rom $ 1.5 billion
Novelties $ 1.0 billion
Other $ 1.5 billion
Porn revenue is larger than all combined revenues of all professional football, baseball and basketball franchises.
US porn revenue exceeds the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC (6.2 billion)
Child pornography generates $3 billion annually
INTERNET PORN STATISTICS:
Pornographic websites 4.2 million (12% of total websites)
Pornographic pages 372 million
Daily pornographic search engine requests 68 million (25% of total search engine requests)
Daily pornographic emails 2.5 billion (8% of total emails)
Average daily pornographic emails/user 4.5 per Internet user
Monthly Pornographic downloads (Peer-to-peer) 1.5 billion (35% of all downloads)
Daily Gnutella “child pornography” requests 116 thousand
Websites offering illegal child pornography 100 thousand
Sexual solicitations of youth made in chat rooms 89%
Youths who received sexual solicitation 20%
Worldwide visitors to pornographic web sites 72 million annually
CHILDREN’S EXPOSURE TO PORNOGRAPHY:
Average age of first Internet exposure to pornography 11 years old
Largest consumer of Internet pornography 12-17 age group
15-17 year olds having multiple hard-core exposures 80%
8-16 year olds having viewed porn online 90% (most while doing homework)
7-17 year olds who would freely give out home address 29%
7-17 year olds who would freely give out email address 14%
Children’s characters linked to thousands of porn links 26 (including Pokeman and Action Man)
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Thank for commenting but those are some pretty depressing statistics. When I first saw pornography; it was vhs tapes and magazines and it was pretty tame ( late night cinemax stuff) Now you have 11 yr olds seeing internet pornography; it gets me angry because their brains are so warped by seeing this at such a young age; it just gets to me.
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I salute you for this brave post and having a change of heart about pornography and respecting women.
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I am so glad I stopped looking at it. Women are beautiful inside and out and God helped me not see them as objects of lust; but friends who are there for me; women who listen and care. God truely changed my life. I’m not perfect but things are better.
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