http://www.oversoldthemovie.com/

Christianity Today and other notable Christian publications have written about the movie and done interviews with the cast and crew, including my ex-pastor and church planter, Dave Cowan.

First, I will be entirely honest and come entirely clean. I personally like porn. So does my partner. It is something we do together on occasion as part of our sexual activity.

At the same time, I believe that one of the greats problems of today’s society is tremendous social immaturity about how one’s own actions and decisions affect one’s self and others. I believe that, as a result of this growing trend (which I think is based on many ways in which modern society has removed people from the consequences of their actions… here I am speaking less of personal sin, even, than of many of the effects of capitalism unfettered by moral restraint from inside or from without) pornography IS incredibly dangerous. For those who live so irresponsibly, however, /everything/ is dangerous. Even things far less sinful than pornography.

In some cultures (including some corners of so-called-Christian American culture) marriage itself is an act of ownership of a woman and a form of prostitution and slavery no less objectionable than pornography. Yet marriage is taken to be a sacrament. I personally believe marriage to be of great personal and social importance and core to the development of the family. Yet it too can be perverted.

I want to apologize for my poor mastery of links, I use a blog that allows me insert links in my own postings without mastery of HTML.

The following is about prostitution and not pornography, and the moral question is ignored in favor of questions of personal liberty and free choice. However, I think certain aspects of personal liberty and free choice are themselves a moral question if we accept the doctrine of free will.

http://www.wendymcelroy.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.160

Images of pornography haunted my psyche for years. I think the images have left but there is much I have to do to feel better once again about my relationship to my sexuality.

Pornography, I feel, is not something that is empowering for anyone. It spiritually disempowers those who make it and those who watch it.

Being celibate for a while now has made me feel much more at peace with my sexual identity.

Apparently there was a book recently written on this subject that I have wanted to check out for a while by a sociologist who also wrote a book on white privilege. It’s called Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity

In your “topic” list, you put “dumb stuff” as well as other topics– and porn isn’t dumb at all.

It is deadly.

I was exposed to it at 12 and it changed my sexuality for the worse for the rest of my life. The man who showed me this shit was thinking he was doing me a favor. But instead he hurt my future sexuality, by establishing sexual patterns and expectations that would be destructive for my future spouse and I and took years to overcome. In some ways, I am still overcoming it.

Not only that, as Prism Magazine recently pointed out, in the modern day, porn is intimately linked to sex slaves and prostitutes. No matter what they claim in porn sites, pornogrphy is simply glorified prostitution, and often glorified sex slavery, with the ones paying for the act to be performed are thousands of miles away from the acts they pay for.

Next time anyone pays for porn, he needs to remember that he is paying for a prostitute and possibly perpetuating slavery.

One last comment on the sexual revolution: We need to remember that the revolution wasn’t only for women. Yes, there was a lot of freedom for women to do as they please, sexually and certainly there is much more opportunity for a woman to express her sexual needs that there never was before.

But for many men, the sexual revolution was just a new lever to get more sex and to be able to openly speak about their “needs”. For women, the sexual revolution was freedom. For many men, it was slavery to their own desires and addictions.

Steve K

Thanks for your honesty. First, I want to say I’m not picking on you. Guys all over, from all different religions and backgrounds look at porn.

As a capitalist I want to say that if a woman takes off her clothes for a feee and agrees to being looked at and if we are willing to pay her asking price then I’m fine with it. But……….

While you may think that porn affects you minimally I would say that porn affects our society in a very negative way. Everytime we purchase porn, every time we look at porn, we give our okay on the product, the lifestyle, the companies, and the personal views of the people who operate this business. We live in a society which objectifies women’s bodies. I have to say I am disturbed by this trend. As I’ve gotten older this fact has become clearer to me (I’m 28).

The Porn “Community” objectifies women on a dangeruos level. It rewards them for being “whores” and, like Chrissy, disavows them for leaving the lifestyle. Look at the way these men have treated Chrissy and tell me that long years of being porn purveyors hasn’t affected them. Look at Chrissy and all she has overcome and tell me she hasn’t been affected by this vile business.

We’ve thought that this stuff is normal and acceptable and the industry has no more shame associated it with. This shit is bad, man. It’s really bad.

And pornography is a perversion of that.

Also, ask him how he would like someone looking at his mother and sisters the way he looks at those women in porn?

I echo what Luke said about sexuality in feminism. It’s about giving people real choices and options to do what is best for them, not what someone else is demanding.

I hear this alot too from guys. Yeah, I guess I’m lucky or something that porn has never been an issue for me. Then again I have other issues. Like being me, for example.

“Interesting insight into the dynamics of pornography, that the fantasy of fully dominating a woman sexually aroused by seeing her as a sexual object gets translated into real-life (verbal) violence against that woman even when she’s made it clear that she no longer is in that role.”

Absolutly, Luke. I wonder how this manifests itself toward other groups. Do you think that the same reasoning we would use to objectify these women is the same we use to commit violence against groups of people? In other words, we say to ourselves: “Let’s use these-people/this-person to meet our needs/satisfy our desires/quench our hate.”

“pop culture portrays Christians as nothing but a bunch of hypocrites.”

But we are. But so is everybody else.

“They discount the idea of this woman being a new creation in Christ out of hand, and their comments reflect that.”

Yeah. I get the feeling that they still want her to be a object for porn, not a new creation throwing off the shackles of this world. In way they see Chrissy cheating on them. Not doing porn anymore means that she has new loyalties.

“I’m not sure you’re right about a woman’s role in the porn industry being typical of what the sexual revolution of the last century tried to gain for women.”

I don’t think it’s typical. But it has made certain behaviors more mainstream and these things don’t seem to be good.

I’m not sure you’re right about a woman’s role in the porn industry being typical of what the sexual revolution of the last century tried to gain for women. The point of that revolution was for women to reclaim ownership over their own sexuality and express it and use it in ways that they wanted, rather than to have women’s sexuality be a possession of men. It wasn’t about “being as sexual as men.” It was about an individual being as sexual as she wanted to be in the way/s she wanted to be. It wasn’t about giving men anything really. Attempting to gain power in a male-dominated world through giving them sex is a truly ancient pattern that has been present through all of history. Understanding one’s sexuality as an expression of one’s own desires and needs rather than someone else’s was what was new with feminism and the sexual revolution.