On Fake Breasts and Broken Hearts

Now, every time I talk to a woman who has been devastated by her husband's sex addiction, she will inevitably say the same thing: "He says every man uses porn--at least every normal man. And everyone else is lying."

She'll say these words through tears. She'll be baffled, confused, wondering how much of the blame is hers. She'll speak of the life she had dreamed of with this man--her man. Eventually she'll see that her man never existed, the man upon whom she'd set the weight of so many dreams. His problem existed long before he swept her off her feet, though he kept it hidden and will inevitably blame her for it. I know: I've been there.

"Boys will be boys," they say. And yet how many of those who defend pornography see the anxiety of wives betrayed, women who stay awake in bed hour after hour wondering what their husbands, cloistered in the basement, are doing? It's a profound wound, one that is so casually dismissed by our culture.

In his book Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges dedicates an entire chapter to porn. At the time the book was written, he says, approximately 13,000 porn films were being made each year in the U.S. alone.  Worldwide porn revenues exceeded the revenue of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix, and EarthLink combined. Porn is pervasive, and the most committed consumers are between the ages of 12 and 17.

Take a moment to consider that. Age 12. On the cusp of junior high, I spent my spare time squelching through swamps in search of tadpoles. I played with my rabbits and read Choose Your Own Adventure books. I wrote notes in tiny script to my best friend Karen, talking about a boy that I identified, somewhat vaguely, as "cute." By 13, I had started grappling with my feelings for Johnny Depp. He was strangely attractive, and I was beginning to grasp why my friend Joelle liked to meet boys at Calaway Park or the wave pool, or to plaster rock stars on her wall. That year I, too, met a boy at the wave pool, and gave him my phone number. He became known in my household as "Joey Wavepool," and I would do anything to avoid his calls while my family mocked me. (He turned out to be exceedingly boring and could spend hours describing his cat, or asking what kind of music I liked. He was as clueless about girls as I was about boys. It took months to rid myself of him because he kept giving me "second chances" when I stood him up.)

Today's twelve-year-old, on the other hand, has access to "gonzo" porn, a genre featuring (as Hedge puts it) "a lot of violence, physical abuse, and a huge number of partners in succession." A 26-year-old porn actress interviewed by the author describes the acts she was forced to perform. Viewing her symptoms as she speaks, and recognizing them in those who have witnessed war atrocities, Hedges simply says, "What you are describing is trauma." She quietly agrees.

Another former actress describes the very real physical repercussions of porn--the torn anuses, hemorrhaging uteruses, and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), many incurable. A third performer discusses a six-hour session involving 65 men.

A performer and producer summarizes the genre well:

                      "My whole reason for being in the industry is to satisfy the desire of the men in the
                      world who basically don't much care for women and want to see the men in my
                      industry getting even with the women they couldn't have when the were growing up.
                      I strongly believe this, and the industry hates me for saying it. . . . So we come on a
                      woman's face or sometimes brutalize her sexually: We're getting even for their lost
                      dreams. I believe this. I've heard audiences cheer me when I do something foul
                      onscreen. When I've strangled a person or sodomized a person or brutalized a person,
                      the audience is cheering my action, and then when I've fulfilled my warped desire, the
                      audience applauds" (74).
      
I find it profoundly disturbing to see the very real consequences of this callous disregard for women. A 16-year-old in Rio de Janeiro was recently raped by 30 men. Her brutal assaults (the majority of which occurred while she was unconscious) were posted on Twitter and received over 550 "likes" and positive comments before accounts were suspended. Jokes included “Rio state opens a new tunnel for the speed train.” Meanwhile, in Florida, a 15-year-old girl was filmed having (apparently consensual) sex in the washroom at school. Twenty-five boys either participated, or viewed the event, which was then posted online.

It's tragic. It's tragic that women are viewed as objects--that grown men would post close-up shots of the damage to a 16-year-old unconscious rape victim's genitals (one of the men arrested was 41--the approximate age her father would be). It's tragic that hundreds of people would applaud a violent crime online. It's tragic that a 15-year-old girl would be servicing multiple boys rather than folding up notes to her best friend about a boy she thinks is cute. It's tragic that an entire football team--current sons and future husbands--would watch the degradation of their classmate and post it online instead of making an awkward first phone call to a girl they met at the wave pool.

I can't imagine what it's like to be a female teacher standing in a classroom of eighth grade boys while suspecting what was downloaded during the lunch hour. Or sitting at the dinner table with a thirteen-year-old girl who knows far more about anal sex than I do (not something I ever plan to try). Looking at my daughter's preschool classmates, I can't help but wonder how many of them will be watching hard core porn videos by the time they reach junior high. How many will be pressured into sex acts they're not ready for? How many, in the long run, will have spouses with addictions, or get hooked on porn themselves?

Chris Hedges summarizes pornography--and the mentality of a culture that accepts it--so well:

                               Sex is reduced to a narrow spectrum of sterilized dimensions. It does not
                               include the dank smell of human bodies, the thump of a pulse, taste, breath--or
                               tenderness. Those in the film are puppets, packaged female commodities. They
                               have no honest emotions, are devoid of authentic human beauty, and resemble
                               plastic. Pornography does not promote sex, if one defines sex as a shared act
                               between two partners. It promotes masturbation. It promotes the solitary auto-
                               arousal that precludes intimacy and love. Pornography is about getting yourself
                               off at someone else's expense" (57).

Talking to the many wives I've met whose husbands are normalizing and defending their use of pornography (and Christian men seem to be notorious for this), I see who pays the price. We all do. Twelve-year-olds who know what an ATM is. Wives barely able to cope with preschoolers and infants while their marriages sink. Teenage girls who watch porn to learn the mechanics of sex and the acts they will be expected to perform. Teenage boys, barely into puberty, bombarded with naked photos from classmates before they've even managed to land their first fumbling kiss. Spouses more bonded to screens than their human partners. A society that can't differentiate between intimacy and exploitation.

This winter, after a heavy snowfall, a man parked his vehicle near my house and watched me struggle to shovel my walk. I had been ill all week. He got out, came over, and politely asked if he could shovel the walk for me. I thanked him profusely, and when he saw me standing there awkwardly, he insisted that I go inside and rest. He did all of my walks, and my driveway, propped the shovel against a railing, and quietly left. I was so moved.

This, I thought, is what it means to be a gentleman--a real man. Someone who, rather than seeing a woman as a mere prospect, recognizes himself as a man.