Pornography is tearing apart the fabric of our society. You may think this is an overstatement. After reading, “The Social Costs of Pornography” by the Witherspoon Institute, I think it may be an understatement.

In 2008, the Witherspoon Institute sponsored the first multidisciplinary exploration of the social costs of pornography. Scholars from various fields including philosophy, psychology, and medicine were included in the forum. Every major shade of religious belief was represented, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, agnosticism, and atheism. And both the left and right in American politics were present. They all agreed that there is a substantial multidimensional, empirical record of the harms pornography brings to society. Obviously, such agreement is rare.

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From Roe v. Wade to lesbianism to birth control, women’s liberation movements have made it their platform to give women a right over their own bodies.

Some good and some not so good have come out if it. But fast forward to today, and we see that women are once again in a fight for liberation.

But this time, it is a personal fight and one that is more often fought all alone. In the last ten years especially, our culture of sexually provocative advertising and media have aided in the trans- formation of women from sexually submissive into sexually aggressive...and sexually obsessed.

As such, this is resulting in a rapidly growing addiction to pornography and sexual promiscuity among women today.

In the New York Times last year an article was written about me, groups I lead, Dirty Girls Ministries, and this whole issue of women’s addiction to pornography.

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We often get fixated on the elephant. The big pink elephants that stomp around the rooms of our lives. You know which ones I am talking about. It's the ones that no one else likes to talk about. You step around it. You fix the things it breaks. Problem is pretty soon, you just can't ignore it anymore.

So let's say you get to that point. The rare occasion of acknowledging the elephant for what it is. What happens once we get the elephant out the door?

As you can imagine, elephants leave behind quite a mess. A path of destruction that trampled on everything you worked so hard to build... and don't forget the piles of umm ..... stuff ..... it also left behind.

It's not pretty.

You see it's not just the elephant we have to worry about. We also have to take time to clean up after it’s gone. You might not be able to see the elephant anymore, but the scent lingers and will soon take over.

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Crystal Renaud is Founder and Executive Director of Dirty Girls Ministries, a non-for-profit ministry helping women struggling with pornography and sexual addiction. Founded by Crystal in February 2009, the desire of Dirty Girls Ministries is to break through the stigmatic barriers that are keeping women in bondage to this addiction. Crystal has used the experience gained from her own 8-year pornography addiction to counsel hundreds of women as well as writes and speaks in various venues on the topic. 

In your book "Dirty Girls Come Clean," you write about your personal battle with pornography addiction. When were you first subject to pornography and how did you come to believe that you were addicted?

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Last post, I shared the background and abstract of this paper, sent to me by the author in response to an article I wrote for The Curator. Here is the paper in full. I hope it will help people to wrestle with this issue not just on the basis of morality, but on the undeniable psychological findings of this professor and psychiatrist, treating a woman with a past in the porn industry and the effect her past has had on her teenage daughter.

 

Toward the bottom of the paper, there is an area for discussion. I enourage you to respond.

 

# # #

 

SASHA GREY, SIGMUND FREUD AND JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOERTE
THE PRIMAL SCENE REVISITED:

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In May 2009, I wrote an article for The Curator, “The Dehumanization of Sasah Grey,” in response to an article I read in Rolling Stone about the reigning princess of porn (April, 2009). Some of you may recall that I reposted that article here on Ferry Dust recently. Part of what prompted me to repost it here was that, because of Google alerts, the article was getting some attention from people who came across it while researching the porn industry and, more specifically, Sasha Grey.

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Sometimes I feel like I understand pornography and sex-related-addictions; other times I don’t.

I’ve soaked in realms of food/eating/exercise disorders long enough to empathize and see parallels, but there remain loose ends.

Walked into a video store last night and while checking-out, a slightly rushed, older gentleman walked past me toward a door marked “Adults Only,” which had gone unnoticed to me to that point.

“Sir, I need to see your ID,” the young clerk said.
“I’m in here all the time,” the man responded, “why do you always have to ask?”
“It’s policy, sir.”

He showed the clerk his card, never making eye contact with me, and proceeded through the white door.

Feeling naïve and taken-back, I proceeded with my check out. The clerk didn’t say anything, but his eyes told me he was sorry. He seemed to hate seeing various sides of this as much as I did.

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It’s a disarming question, to be sure.

I’ll give you the easy answer—right up front with no waiting. My first answer is an unequivocal Yes—Did you really need to ask?  My second answer is a much slower No—and I’m glad you asked.

First of all, the reason you clicked on this piece has everything to do with your own self-assessment. You wanted to either 1) Make sure that you’re not alone in your own behavior, 2) See if your holiness level is a lot higher than other women’s, 3) Determine if being a Christian makes any difference in the way people live their lives, or 4) Succumb to the deep curiosity that men and women have when it comes to private sexuality.

Human beings are often critically aware of their own DNA-encoded predisposition to everything God-dishonoring, and that includes sexual perversion (If you don’t believe that pornography is a form of sexual perversion, then stop reading because we won’t agree on much from here on out). I’m not one of those editorialists who believe that all your hang-ups come from society’s misguided Victorian ideals or mother-imposed guilt trips. I’m a believer in the Fall, a writer who accepts both the evidence from my culture and the Bible’s words in Genesis 8 that “every inclination of [man’s] heart is evil from childhood” and in Romans 3 that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

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