Pornography: It’s not just a guy thing.
I unexpectedly had a fifteen year old girl come up to me yesterday and ask for prayer for freedom from a pornography addiction she’d had for years. She probably wondered why I was grinning as she told me. I smiled because I knew what she didn’t—that she wasn’t the only girl to ever watch pornography. I smiled because I loved her bravery for telling me. I smiled because she reminded me of myself as a 15 year old, hooked on pornography too, and I especially smiled because I know there’s a way out for her.
The stigma that pornography is just a guy thing is something which really gets on my nerves. You know how it goes… at all the camps, the boys go off for their “don’t watch porn” talk, and the girls are sat down to discuss modesty.
Pornography negatively touches the lives of women in many different ways.
Pornography hurts relationships.
70% of men aged 18-24 watch pornography, and it is addictive.
As a young woman living in today’s culture, finding a guy who doesn’t have a pornography addiction is difficult, let alone a guy who hasn’t watched any at all. It’s too accessible and too acceptable. My relationships have pretty much ALL been touched by pornography in some way or another. If not from the current effect of porn watching, it’s the long term effects hacking away at the foundations of the relationship. Pornography is an addiction. It brings paranoia, stress, and guilt… and it destroys love. It has no place in a relationship.
Porn hurts children.
Nine out of 10 children between eight and 16 have viewed pornography on the internet, and the average age a child first sees pornography online is 11.
I think the generation before mine underestimates the pandemic of pornography, since the technology for accessing it so easily and privately didn’t exist while they were growing up. I know for certain I will never give my child a computer, tablet or smartphone. Not because I worry my children will turn into sex addicts, but because our culture is so infused with a distorted notion of sex that it is unavoidable. When I first came across pornography, I had no idea it even existed. I simply got hooked on the rush that came from watching it. An addiction is never intentional.
We are created sexual beings by our God, so it is only natural that at some stage all of us, male and female, will want to explore this avenue of our human lives. I will educate my children about pornography at the appropriate time, give them the facts, and let them know why it is bad, so that they have the information to make an informed decision when they come across it. Because in our sex-soaked culture, they will. Following first exposure, the largest consumer group of internet pornography is boys between the ages of 12-17. Keeping it a taboo subject because you think your children are too young to know about it or be watching it themselves is dangerous. Protect them, by educating them.
Porn destroys marriages.
56 percent of divorces involve one party having “an obsessive interest in pornographic websites.” (Matrimonial Lawyers Association, 2003 Study)
Pornography destroys love, relationships, and marriage. I have seen it happen and felt the aftermath of it so many times. I am determined for that not to happen again—to leave it all behind and start afresh in my marriage. But that doesn’t stop me worrying, because the stats show that the chances of pornography wreaking havoc in my marriage is all too possible.
Throughout our lives, pornography affects women’s personal lives, our relationships, our marriages, our families. Our entire society.
Pornography affects me.
It’s not just a guy thing.
Let’s get educated and get talking about it—let’s fight.
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For more information on how a woman can break free from porn, click HERE.
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Jessica Claire studied Music Performance at the University of Canterbury and works as a freelance model and photographer. She is passionate about youth ministry, and feels strongest with either a pen or piano keys beneath her fingers. Jess delights in the insane plans of God. She writes at www.restlesspress.net, an Australasian Catholic online magazine.