Church Grammar
The New York Post ran a fascinating article this week on the amount of violent and pedophilic pornography found in the possession of prominent terrorists over the years. Here’s a snippet:
Porn is a global phenomenon, produced and consumed everywhere and increasingly by people of all ages — deforming the sexual development of young viewers. Watching it desensitizes the viewer to sexual aggression and strengthens existing beliefs that support violence toward women.
It is routinely very violent: 82 percent of the top-rated porn scenes involve physical aggression (slapping, spanking, gagging); 49 percent contain verbal aggression (name calling, insults). The perps are male, 94 percent of the targets are female.
It’s easy to imagine pornography’s empowering effect upon would-be jihadists, who may unable to afford the price of a wife or a prostitute, who are young, without normal sexual outlets and already predisposed to violence towards women — and to pedophilia.
Let me say clearly, as the article more or less does, that this isn’t merely a Muslim problem. Though this article draws some interesting parallels between jihadists and porn, no doubt, it stumbles upon a broader issue: the way in which porn leads to the degradation of women. While I wouldn’t say that any sort of porn is “normal,” porn is often more than two actors having consensual, “routine” sex — it’s men dominating women (and sometimes vice versa), quite clearly treating them as inferior, worthless, animal-like creatures.
As a person who was steeped deeply in porn consumption growing up, it’s been difficult for me shake the way porn has affected my marriage and my general views on sex. As I wrote last year, men want to recreate what happens in porn scenes in their own bedrooms with their wives (or, in the case of some, with prostitutes and sex slaves). This leads to unfair expectations on women, and worse, leads to women being treated as soulless pleasure-bots.
And this is why the cultural acceptance of works like 50 Shades of Grey should terrify us. If your wife wants to mimic themes of the movie in privacy of your home, that’s another conversation for another day (and one that would worry me, too). But the truth is, 50 Shades seeks to normalize the very thing that leads to sex trafficking, sex slavery, and even discontent marriages (“why can’t you be more like so-and-so?”). The ripples are endless.
The Christian outcry over 50 Shades has been borderline over-the-top. Everyone has an opinion about it. But why shouldn’t we make every attempt to sound the horn? The gospel is so far-reaching, so universe-jolting, that there are countless “hills to die on,” and we should all take a hill or two. This isn’t a bad one to climb.
The subjection of women, in Muslim cultures and in numerous other cultures like our own, must be battled. Men, the world’s experts at demeaning and abusing women, must be on the front lines.
A starting place? Treat pornography like the abhorrent abomination that it is.
Women, the world’s most abused image-bearers, must be defended. And they must fight back.
A starting place? Avoid 50 Shades of Grey like the plague.
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