Can Guys Who Look at Porn Be Victims Too?

Has the desire not to be Donald Trump become so pronounced that anti-Trump Christians are channeling Trump’s incoherence? Consider one of the reactions to Trump’s out loud thought that women who seek abortions should be punished. With all of the comparisons between abortion, slavery, and Hitler, one might think that someone who encouraged the death of an unborn child might suffer some consequence for her actions. But Rachel Lu thinks mothers who have their children aborted are more victim than responsible agent:

Women seeking abortions regularly report they would prefer to keep the baby if only they had more support. Post-abortive women often experience deep depression and other health problems. When pro-lifers claim women are the second victims of abortion, they aren’t just being politically correct. Many people are hurt by abortion, but mothers tend to pay a much heavier price than the disinterested boyfriends or other associates who frequently pressure them to make the “easy” choice.

Victimhood Doesn’t Preclude Guilt
In saying this, we in no way deny that an abortion-seeking woman does a grave wrong. All sin injures the sinner, and this isn’t necessarily an argument against punishment. Some women, in light of their immaturity and desperate circumstances, may not be very blameworthy when they opt for abortion. In other cases, women kill their unborn children for relatively trivial reasons, and some of these surely do deserve serious blame.

It hardly seems possible that abortion-seeking women recognize the hideousness of what they do. . . .

When we appreciate how gravely abortion harms the involved mothers, we might find ourselves drawing many parallels to suicide.

An interesting comparison might be drawn between abortion and suicide. The Western tradition has generally regarded suicide as gravely immoral, which makes sense from the standpoint of valuing all life. Some might be inclined to argue that a person has ownership over his own life, such that taking it is his prerogative.

They might reflect, however, that such radical claims of self-ownership might bleed fairly easily into the kind of “my body, my choice” rhetoric that is often used to justify abortion. There can be no doubt that suicide causes enormous pain and injury to friends and family members of the deceased; whether or not a crime, it certainly isn’t victimless.

In other words, mothers who seek abortions deserve to be pitied more than judged.

Would this same rationale work for men who view and are attracted to pornography? Some are making a similar case that such men are victims and not fully responsible for their actions:

A growing number of young men are convinced that their sexual responses have been sabotaged because their brains were virtually marinated in porn when they were adolescents. Their generation has consumed explicit content in quantities and varieties never before possible, on devices designed to deliver content swiftly and privately, all at an age when their brains were more plastic—more prone to permanent change—than in later life. These young men feel like unwitting guinea pigs in a largely unmonitored decade-long experiment in sexual conditioning. . . .

But it is precisely here that the picture gets really dark. Pornography has been a ubiquitous fixture in their lives for the better part of a decade. Two dates are important to remember in this discussion. In 2007, broadband internet reaches over 50% of American households. In 2013, smartphone ownership exceeds 50% of the population. That means that at some point around 2007, more Americans than not had access not simply to still images but to free video images of people engaged in sex acts. By 2013, more Americans than not had access to video porn at any time and at any place through their smartphone.

The average age that a young man first encounters pornography is 11-13 years old. That means that countless young men have spent the better part of the last decade with access to moving porn. For many of them, everything they have learned about sex has come from pornography. Their sexual preferences have been shaped by this content.

Imagine if we applied the same logic to guns. Guns kill, people don’t.

If conservatives are going to turn the blameworthy into victims, why do we need liberals?

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