(Women, Girls and Pornography)
Pornography is absolutely chauvinistic! Like rape, men invented pornography. Pornography degrades women in the worst imaginable ways. It humiliates women and girls. It treats women as mere disposable objects of temporal gratification. It has nothing to do with love and commitment, fidelity and integrity, respect and tenderness.
Pornography is violent fantasy portrayed in various forms to include magazines, comic books, virtual reality games, films, and on the Internet, which is available to our children. The Metropolitan Library System refuses to block hard core porn sites from our taxpayer purchased computers. There will always be those who defend violent pornography as an art form or a First Amendment “right,” that is, until it victimizes their mother, wife or daughter.
Pornography exploits and dehumanizes sex.
Human beings, especially women, are treated as sex objects.
Pornography, in most cases, is preoccupied with the female anatomy and it
therefore denies humanness. It
fragments women into body parts without a mind and spirit.
Even though most pornography is preoccupied with female anatomy (at the expense of personhood and the women’s soul), it actually denies humanness. It treats women as genitalia. It reduces sex to the level of animal drive and copulation. Pornography degrades women’s dignity, intelligence, political autonomy and personality. It reinforces sexual stereotypes and promulgates a demeaning message about the role of women in society. It causes men and even women to harshly compare women’s bodies with that of porn stars.
Pornography is also paradoxically antisex.
Healthy sex is a human bonding between two people in love.
The Judeo-Christian scriptures speak of sex as making a man and a woman
one flesh. God invented sex and
meant for it to flourish in a marital union. However, pornography actually robs
sex of its intimacy and of its bonding mystery.
Pornography encourages (and has been the admitted reason for)
sadomasochism, physical abuse, incest, voyeurism, bestiality, necrophilia,
torture and humiliation of women and girls.
Seven hundred thousand women and girls are sexually assaulted each year. In our nation a woman or a girl is raped every 46 seconds. By the time you read this article, two women or girls will be raped. One in three American girls will be sexually molested by age 18.
Studies tell us that 86% of rapists admitted viewing and reading
pornography on a regular basis and 56% of rapists admitted actual imitation of
pornographic scenes in committing sex crimes.
Of 36 serial sex murderers interviewed by the FBI in 1985, 81% admitted
using pornography. One study
concluded that violent sexual materials taught men to believe that women are
responsible for preventing their own rape and that they should not resist a rape
attack. Pornography depicting
“pleasant” rape sanctions “the rape myth” and places all girls and women
at risk.
Pornography is not a victimless crime.
Its main target is girls and women!
Pornography promotes the victimization of women.
If you are a woman and fear being alone at night, or if you fear men’s
attitudes are transformed by the images of pornography, you are already a victim
of pornography. Pornography denies
women’s civil rights and liberties by contributing to their harassment and
subordination.
It is discouraging that very few churches, synagogues and mosques are actively combating pornography, but it is shocking that feminists and women’s organizations are so silent on an issue that attacks their very being!
No matter what your political or religious persuasion, this is a cause that must be fought first and foremost by women. Let us hear from you. Please join us in this winnable cultural war.
--Paul Wesselhöft