Porn.. again

It was timely that I happened to come across this article in the Sunday Tasmanian over the weekend. Bettina Arndt says,

"It makes no sense for women to brand their menfolk as depraved for enjoying this latest form of sexual display... just because we don’t get it doesn’t mean we have to shame healthy, red-blooded men for enjoying peep shows."

I disagree strongly. I think that porn is a problem and a big one. I know of at least one mate for whom this addiction nearly wreaked his marriage. The article also acknowledged... "Most of the women — about two-thirds — were shocked, insulted, angry and unhappy when their men turned to the internet for pornography."
I'm interested in stories from readers. Anonymous comments welcome.

 

6 comments:

Anonymous said... 4/02/2007 11:11 pm  

How much of an effect do you think getting married would have on battling porn?

ckjolly said... 4/02/2007 11:20 pm  

one has a flawed view of marriage if he thinks that wedlock solves problems and fixes sin.

Anonymous said... 4/03/2007 5:51 am  

Getting married has practically no impact on the struggle with pornography.

Getting married isn't magic, it doesn't really fix anything.

If you struggle with it before, you will struggle with it after - you just have another person you can hurt as much (or more) than yourself.

Anonymous said... 4/03/2007 9:56 am  

getting married made pornography more tempting for me. This isn't because I think my wife is ugly or anything, but because for most of our marriage, she has had an extreme difficulty with sex - she can't have it without it being really painful, at least, most of the time. We've gradually gotten better at this, but we didn't actually consumate our marriage for a whole year after the ceremony. It's a lot of sexual tension on a guy, living with a woman and wanting so badly to love her in that way, and then to be repeatedly told "no" because she's scared of it hurting again. So yeah, don't get married because you think it'll solve problems. Do it because you love her so much that the possibility of that sort of torment isn't enough to stop you making her the most important woman in the world.

mike said... 4/03/2007 10:11 am  

And yet sweetheart we are told that if we burn with passion to get married...

Mikey Lynch said... 4/03/2007 11:01 am  

*mike*: is that passage talking about more general sexual temptation, or burning with passion in an existing relationship? ie better to marry the person than to fornicate with them

*general*: this thread goes to show
1. that we can't take a simplistic interpretation of a biblical principle
2. we can ignore the biblical principle because of all the exceptions. after all, surely marraige can often provide significant help in this area, even if its not a panacaea.

*my reflection*: marriage helps sex if you let marriage shape your view of sexuality. the appeal of pornography is gratification without relationship (and insecurity and hard work and vulnerability).

i suspect many fantasies build around these insecurities.

in a way this is the stuff Chrsitine's post talked about. we need to sexualise marriage and reposition sex only in the context of relationship.

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