3 minute read
By: Shane James O’Neill
The Porn Oscars
WHy We Pursue porn
Kevin D. Williamson describes how every year the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino is packed out for the Adult Video News awards ceremony (AVN) — also known as the “Porn Oscars”. Presentations are given, new products are displayed, vendors of toys and technology cram rooms from wall to wall, and porn stars give presentations, winning awards and selling their latest books. The scene is filled with excitement and energy, as sweet fragrances mix with the smell of angsty sweat. The content, emotions, chemicals, and even the odor all come together to create the feel of sex. But that’s where the likeness ends. People don’t actually want sex, they just want porn.
Brothels are around the corner of the hotel where beautiful women and men are trained for pleasure. The cost of soliciting sex at one of these pleasure houses is less than the cost of the AVN ceremony. Cheap and legal sex is waiting in bed up the street, but people are coming for the porn.
Related Article: Why People are Having Less Sex
The desire for porn over sex becomes even clearer once we realize that several porn stars at the AVN also work as prostitutes at a wide variety of brothels. Yet people pay more to see them at a porn convention, where they can only look, than they do to be with them at a brothel, where they can do far more than look. Using these “stars” as tools for imagination is what people really want, not the reality of knowing them and holding them. We want puppets, not people.
As one writer puts it, people don’t want “a sexual experience they want a pornographic one.”
Sex will Save Me
Many people believe that porn is a placeholder for sex. They think, when sex cannot be easily had then porn is a great alternative. Yet, thousands of people in marriages sneak off during the day to find pleasure alone, in isolation and secrecy. Married folk know they’re trapped but won’t look at the closing walls until they find their spouse looking at them with shame and heartbreak.
Unmarried people see all of this and cynically look down at the infidelity of the married, believing that when they get married their porn problem will go away, ‘cause porn is just a temporary substitute: “Sex will fix all my problems.” The unmarried believe porn isn’t the problem if it’s just a shadow of the real stuff — once the real stuff comes along, porn will go away.
Sex Drive
The libido is a person’s sex drive. Research shows us that porn isn’t a substitute for sex in a person’s libido, rather porn takes over and consumes a person’s libido. The more porn is used the more that sex drive hungers and thirsts for porn: porn is not an alternative for those who are waiting, porn becomes the substance of our longing. You cannot watch porn and expect to have an affectionate, faithful sex life — whether you’re in one now or hoping for one in the future.
Williamson puts it this way: “As porn becomes less of a substitute for sexual relationships and more of an end unto itself, we are entering an era in which sex is, at least for some section of the population, post-human.” Porn subverts our sexual identity; it doesn’t condition us for sex it conditions us for something entirely other.
Humans are not static beings; most often it isn’t whether or not you’re watching porn, but if you’re moving away from porn or toward it. It’s alright to be journeying out of porn, but it’s not okay to continue journeying into porn.
If you view porn, be honest with yourself and start sharing with trustworthy people who will help you. If you think marriage will save you one day then all you’re doing is developing a sin so that you can give that pain to another person. Just because porn is a personal sin doesn’t mean it is a private one. Strive to know humans and develop your own humanity, not dehumanize people and forsake your humanity.
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Shane James O’Neill is the Editorial Director for Proven Men Ministries. He is currently working on a graduate degree in apologetics at Liberty University’s Rawling School of Divinity.