Porn - An Anonymous Poll

[GreenNnice]

Ok women it's time to fess up. Men, if you think you have shame in viewing porn; at least it's viewed as normal for you to do it. Try being a woman with porn issues.
My porn issues started at 4 years old as a consequence of my dad's sex and porn addictions, and his abuse of me and my sister. My brother and I would sneak around and find it which wasn't hard to do since he didn't care to hide it. From about age 8-12 I didn't much pursue it. At 7 because of abuse that I was acutally aware of at the time, I began an obsession with masturbation. Much of the obsession was because no one really explained to me in any way what was occuring, and at the time I didn't yet connect masturbation and viewing pornography. At around 13 my mother began her very public obsession with cybersex. At first she would not allow me to be around, but after she became so obsessed with it going for hours and hours, spending whole days on the computer, she began allowing me to be in the room with her because otherwise we never saw eachother.
I became a Christian, but due to my mother's ambivalence towards all things sexual, I began viewing internet porn and actually connected it to masturbation. It became obsessive and very shameful, and I told no one about it. One day my mother even found porn on the computer history and she joked about the sites he was viewing. Little did she know, it was actually me who had filled up the computer history with porn sites.
During my early teenage years, for obvious reasons, it was an obsession. Eventually it became less and less of one. As an adult I still struggle with it from time to time. I hate it. I don't want to struggle with it. I have pushed through so many time and inevitably after finding victory over and over again, there's a moment of weakness and I fall once more. Unfortunately, because of the shame associated with it, it often become a few falls before I can stand up again.

God bless you for your transparency, Jord. Our victory is in Jesus

well who can blame anyone? the media is showing off explicit footage of sexual content. its become more common and almost a part of life to think the way we do. as kids we wouldnt have been exposed to nearly naked people and think its a fashion, we didnt think about popularity. well yes i did check out porn a couple of times but it always gave me the nastiest feeling in the pit of my stomach, i was very ashamed. but the way i see it, i mean we are all brothers and sisters, and we should love one another =] love thy neighbor. i chose to be single, im done with having relationships that cause me to think and act sinfully. i want to care for others, not to judge them by their looks. sex is the least of my worries, i focus more on God and ask daily what it is I can do for him, not the other way around =] but when i do fall, I remember the free feeling I have when i focus more on my faith and His Love than look for worldly comfort that man has to offer here in the dark world. meaningless desires with deceiving and temporary costs for affliction are no match to eternal life with our Father =]

Focus on the transforming positive , pure positive power of Jesus things, nothing can slip badly into our life IF we understand how great God art. The victory was proven (on the cross) long ago. Dead, and, in the clutches of Satan, in the abyss of lifelessnes, He arose. Victory In Jesus, healthynut

I'M FREE I'M FREE I'M FREE I'M FREE! i mean. achem.
i used to. not quite technical porn.
but definitely in the same category. twas actually my very first post on cc.
definitely it's a struggle for both genders. sexual purity. provocative material online.

but i am pleased the Lord has allowed me to walk in freedom at this point.
The Lord is good to all. He has compassion on all that He has made. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
i don't know why i piped up here. but i did. An object in motion will stay in motion until.........

YESHUA!!! God become flesh. breaker anointing. setting free the captives and giving sight to the blind! BAM! WHAT NOW WORLD. WHAT NOWWWWWW <3

God bless you for your transparency, iwantnothingbutGodsTruth. Amen to your fighting words. God always wins over evil, you must have faith in the depths of jet-black darkness , God will be victorious

----
For you , ladies, all ladies, (and, of course, guys, you too )that daré listen to my favorite all time song that very well likely pulled me from porn's clutch in my 20s.

Click below and you will understand our victory is in our Saviour. King Jesus !


Victory In Jesus with Lyrics - YouTube

 

[Crimeny]

its also interesting to look at testimonies from people turned christian who were working within the industry, kinda gives a fuller picture too eh?

also interesting to note that porneias means immorality and porne means harlot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVAI2TTOcgM

THE IMMORAL INDUSTRY

 

[Cheekygrin]

I wish I could relate, but I just don't get it. Porn seems to be the same old thing over and over again. It's empty and mechanical....boring. When I compare porn to the real deal, it's like comparing a rock to a bonfire. But I DO struggle with wanting to dance too close to the fire. God helps with THAT too.

 

[Cheekygrin]

***

 

[dominicanbeauty]

Im not even gonna lie on this poll my my boyfriend is banned from our house so i don't have anyone to please

me when i get urges yes i look at it but i don't really like the rl stuff anymore i like hentai now because its all

fake animated n it pleases me which is why i love anime

 

[LightningClap0002]

No kisses!

 

[KiwiCA]

Porn can be different for women.

To the women I would ask, do you read sex focused romance novels ? (Mills & Boon type).
Do you linger at magazines with actors or male models with glistening abs, or have a favorite male actor whose movies you quietly enjoy?
Are you getting unrealistic ideas of what to expect from men from romance novels and movies?

 

[KiwiCA]

Also I would include anime soft or hard core porn. It doesnt matter if its animated or not, its still porn and its still lust.

 

[Jordache]

My pastor was speaking on something related today. His message was on focus and attention---where we place our attention and how that affects us. He used porn as an example. If we indulge in porn, we create neural pathways. Therefore when our mind is struggling focus on what is important pur physical brain results to what we've trained it to do---to go down whatever neural pathways we've allowed to be formed through our sin of mal-attention. I was convicted.

 

[Canadian36]

What has this world come to with internet porn anyway? I heard that and many other things online were implemented as a way to cause the masses to get desensitized and as a way to deaden the self conscious.

 

[LightningClap0002]

What has this world come to with internet porn anyway? I heard that and many other things online were implemented as a way to cause the masses to get desensitized and as a way to deaden the self conscious.

Possibly, though I seriously doubt it. It's probably a bit less sinister than that... Much more likely it's a sense of greed. People without love don't stop to truly think about how things will affect others, so planning to desensitize the masses seems beyond the thinking of humans. Maybe that's satan's plan, but I'd be pretty doubtful about anyone here knowing the specific details of satan's plan.

 

[Sandor]

WARNING:

The following comment isn’t about defending porn or condemning it. It’s ONLY relevancy is to discuss porn in its relationship to Mathew Chapter 5, AND THAT’S ALL this comment is about.


Comment begins -


I never intended this to be my first contribution to a post. I was on my way to the “introduce yourself as a newbie” section, and I saw this one.


One of the strange things about this issue of porn (and I mean pornography, not obscenity), is that the human mind is capable of rationalizing nearly anything to suit its interests, and the male mind, if it wanted to, can turn most anything into pornography. When they were big about a decade ago, Victoria's Secret would send us a catalog every two weeks. (Well, to my wife, and not “us”. Ha!) I would bring it to her and say, “Here’s my bi monthly porn mag.” I suppose the joke got old, but the woman I married has been kind to me, so she always gave it a smile.)

I know many would use the biblical comment about the lust in the heart as an argument against porn, but I wonder if that works.


We’ll never know the extent and context to which Jesus meant in this regard and we can’t ask him to clarify it.


There was no porn (in our use of the word) in his day. There was only the looking at, and lusting after women who were not married to you (his words in this instance appear to be directed at the male population), or coveting a woman that is another’s, that is breaking an old testament commandment, who were real persons you could see on a regular basis.


But what about imaginitary creations? Plenty of modern porn involves stuff drawn up (for nearly the sole purpose of carnal lustful thoughts). It’s hard to imagine thinking of cartoon women in the same way as having lust in your heart for a real woman.


What about photos of real women who you’ll never meet? Jesus’s world also didn’t have this as a possibility. 99.9% of ancient Roman times meant one SAW a woman and then thought lustfully about her. In RARE circumstances, one could see her image, because she was famous, but that’s not worth a discussion over. Today, porn photos and movies on the internet feature women who you’re having lustful thoughts over, but have no (real) chance of meeting. So lustful thoughts can’t/won’t lead to the same possible wrongness as they might in biblical times.

In Ancient Rome, if you saw your neighbor’s wife, and she saw you, and she saw how you looked at her, and she was bored at home, this may be trouble, and this is the kind of thing Moses’s commandments were concerned about. But looking at a photo of a woman who lives 5,000 miles away, or one who is in your city, but you’ll never meet, and if you did, you wouldn’t know she was the porn star you saw on your computer, - can you really “covet” her, in the Moses sense?


I guess I have a hard time buying into the idea that one can be adulterous in one’s heart with a photograph or J-peg.

 

[chiclet01]

I have to respectfully disagree with you, Sandor.

Coming from the OTHER side of things, I was married to a man with a porn addiction. I didn't realize it when we were dating and during the first part of our marriage, but it became very clear over time. Without getting into details, he was never satisfied with our marriage sexually no matter what. He began to prefer his porn to intimacy with me, to the point that intimacy pretty much ceased between us. You can't tell me that he was not being adulterous in his heart with those photographs and jpgs when he preferred them to the woman he had vowed to spend his life with.

The argument that "you'll never meet the people you're lusting after" is very flimsy, I think. Because you don't have to meet someone to lust or covet after them. The internet has shown us that you don't even have to meet someone to feel as though you've fallen in love with them. It is a very dangerous line to walk and a very dangerous deception to get caught in. It's a battle of the mind and the heart, and because it's not one that can be seen usually... it's one that's easy to say doesn't exist because we can hide it better.

I think one of the perversions that's worked its way into our society now is that sex is meant primarily for our entertainment and pleasure, not as an intimate act meant for a husband and wife. The "purpose" of it has become warped in our society so that there's "no harm" in a few pictures, etc.

Like I said, no disrespect at all. But I just have to disagree.

 

[Sandor]

Hi chiclet01,

Hi Chiclet,

Cool name, btw.

I'm not certain that I "belong" on this section of the board. That was, in fact, my first post ever here, and I didn't understand I was in the singles forum. I just saw the topic and made a comment.

First, you are very respectful in your disagreement. Not a problem.

I think what you wrote could be written on any chat board, and had no special comment that applied to Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists &#8211; name it.

Many couple's marriage can be wrecked by an obsession of nearly any kind that takes them from intimacy.

In this instance, it&#8217;s an obsession that not only kept your ex on the computer and away from you, but the presumption is that he created a fantasy construction that no woman in the real world could compete with.

Some men can use their porn interest and honestly include their lover with their fetish, but many can&#8217;t. They&#8217;re simply too embarrassed to say, &#8220;Honey, this turns me on. It&#8217;s just between the two of us; would you consider playing with me this way?&#8221;

Yeah, that&#8217;s not often out of the mouth of a lot of men. For tons of reasons.

But an obsession is really tough to compete with.

I wonder about many aspects of how video games and movies portray women looking like the .0001% of possible women out there, with size 2 bodies, and Playboy after-market breasts, and a general anorexia in the look they all have.

Same with tons of women on local news channels.

I can go on about this, so I&#8217;ll stop as I don&#8217;t mean to get on my soap box.

But you may have missed my overall conversation point, which is what I attempted to discuss. That is, the comment attributed to Jesus in the Book of Mathew, where Jesus talks about men who lust after another woman. My argument is that specific statement doesn&#8217;t have to do with porn, but with one real man located in the same area as another real woman.

Anyone hearing those words spoken to them could only have attributed the words to their lives, which included nothing anywhere near the computer based and published material that is our pornography.

I don&#8217;t believe enjoying porn is in the same category as the real world moment one could have experienced in the first century AD.

Hope I clarified matters.


Sandor

 

[niceguyJ]

My argument is that specific statement doesn’t have to do with porn, but with one real man located in the same area as another real woman.

Anyone hearing those words spoken to them could only have attributed the words to their lives, which included nothing anywhere near the computer based and published material that is our pornography.

I don’t believe enjoying porn is in the same category as the real world moment one could have experienced in the first century AD.

Okay...of course they didn't have computers and the internet then. However, I believe the Bible applies just as much now as it did then. Now we do have the internet, television, magazines, etc. which can all be avenues to viewing things we shouldn't. I think the scriptures very much apply to those things today.

As to the last statement I bolded, I can see someone trying to use that as a weak justification to view porn. It's still lust. Lust is still a sin. Of course if you physically go through with the act you've sinned in the body too.

1 Corinthians 6:18 - New International Version (NIV)

18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.

Either way it's still sin.

 

[chiclet01]

Hi Sandor.

Thank you for responding and explaining further. It's nice to be able to disagree without things getting nasty.

I still have to respectfully disagree, however. I think that in reference to that scripture, the fact that he specifically said "in your heart" (as opposed to the actual, physical act of adultery), He was referring to the battle of the mind. In that case, it wouldn't matter whether the woman was right next to him or thousands of miles away. The point is keeping our minds and hearts pure. Just because technology has made it easier for the lust to be secret (people can ogle jpgs to their hearts content without anyone ever knowing) and more accessible doesn't mean that it's a sort of loop hole or doesn't count, I believe.

You said that you don't think "enjoying porn is in the same category as the real world moment one could have experienced in the first century AD." And to an extent, I agree... but not in the way you might think. I think the porn that's out there now is far beyond anything most men and women would have been able to see in the first century AD. This makes it worse to me, rather than better.

Now... you make EXCELLENT points about how difficult it is in this day and age. Our society is SATURATED with lust-inducing images. It's promoted and encouraged, even! You don't have to watch porn to get caught up in lust. It's ridiculous. What to do about it though.... I don't know.

 

[ijustwanttheTruth]

i also have to agree with my sister on this point. It's not a matter of WHO / WHAT we are lusting over/ coveting... it's more the fact that our minds and hearts go there.
ya know. before God gave me the victory and before i was able to quit and stay resolved, i can't even count how many times i had quit the sexual addictions, but then went back and completely justified it when the temptation arose.

we can convince our minds that something is ok. but our hearts and our spirits know better. we can rationalize and justify til we're blue in the face. But God will still have the last word.
i remember one time i felt REALLY loudly in my spirit. that what i was doing was idolatry, and that i was making a sacrifice at the altar of an idol.

i didn't completely succeed at quitting that time. i only made it a month. but ya know what? God sees every time we quit sin. He sees every single time we say no to our flesh and yes to Him. and He counts that YES as righteousness. don't give up fighting for purity bc God will never give up fighting for our souls.

God bless you all. with PURITY.
FREEDOM.
TRUTH.
GLORY.
LIGHT.
AND HIS BEAUTIFUL PRESENCE. in Yeshua's name.

p.s. greenNnice thanks for blessing me

 

[Sandor]

I do place things in their historical context and I can’t see myself operating differently.

Many of the statements included in the bible have with in them a built in series of social morays and educational guidelines. This is not a bad thing, nor is it a conspiracy, as it were. Passages in the bible were included and intended to give people a moral compass, and usually based on a paternal bias than one that reflects a balanced male/female, equal power structure.

Again, this is not a “bad thing”, merely a refection on the times.

Yet, from my point of view, many parts of the bible’s language and viewpoint cannot be translated to modern times, unless the point is an overall compassion.*

Since the advent of birth control in pill form, nicknamed, “the pill”, for the first time in world history, women in industrialized nations were able to have sex without the risk of pregnancy, and they could control to a great extent (it’s not prefect), when or if they became pregnant. It is no accident that women taking full time jobs as a normal activity in western nations happened right afterward.

Once women had a paycheck, they began to work politically for pay equally relevant to their male co-workers doing the same thing.

I’m 51, and I remember the owners of companies I worked for getting openly angry over statutes passed by Congress requiring equal pay for all employees. Thirty years later we take this, in America, to be a normal and expected aspect of life. I haven’t met anyone recently who supports the capitalist being able to pay women less than men (though I suppose such people are “out there”.)

The world we created now means a woman can bring home the bacon, buy herself a car and borrow money from a bank without any help from a man.

In the First Century this technology didn’t exist, and women were bound to the fortunes of the men they married. Period.

If you were a father of a girl child, as she began to become a woman, she was going to have a husband and her life with him would include siring children and helping him run a household. There were generally no exceptions to this, for the most part anyway. Whether one likes or dislikes this, in hindsight, doesn’t matter, it was the only way they lived.

This was average life, and getting your daughter to a decent sort of chap became an obsession for fathers once their daughter rounded 12 or 13 years. He only had a few years after that, and he loved her and wanted to do right by her. So did mom, of course, but the final decider in this matter was definitely daddy.

Most everyone knows in these days the father had a tough time finding the right guy and the bachelor male was in a good position to make certain demands on the daughter’s family. The bride’s side of the family paying for the wedding is a hold-over from the concept of dowry, where the bride’s father bribed the groom’s family to take in his daughter. If he wanted grandchildren, this was THE only way to do it. No one went on dates, or went to college, and the mixing of 16 year olds at parties didn’t exist.

And the groom began to demand his bride be chaste also, and this one was a biggie. I never thought it important myself, and was raised during a time when the attitude was that in a person’s late teens, they become responsible for themselves along these lines. In fact, where I live, and probably where you live, boys and girls find themselves able to be alone at nearly any age.

But most definitely, girls go on dates with guys at 16, sometimes 15, and the question of deciding whether to remain virgins after that becomes a highly personal one, with the teenager in ultimate control over the matter.

That’s how it is.

Now let’s use NiceguyJ’s choice of scripture, the NIV:

Divorce
31
"It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.'

32
But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.

Those words make sense to all that I wrote above, but have no relevance to modern times.

Remember I wrote above “overall compassion”* ?

My point was that if you approach the scriptures in this manner, you’ll have a better time dealing with it than if you try and take things Jesus said in the First Century and try to fit it into our times.

Most people don’t support simple and easy divorce, or a revolving door marriage, but most everyone I know supports the notion that a woman leaving a husband who beats her (once, twice, three times – you pick it), is doing the correct thing.

Verse 32 cannot be construed to mean anything other than what it means.

We can argue a whole bunch of opinion as we might, but in the First Century a woman didn’t have means, and today she does. It is on this basis that the statement can’t be relevant, except in a way of guidance toward kindness.

There are many other examples.

Ijustwantthetruth,

I don’t think I want to agree with you in your comment of,



“It's not a matter of WHO / WHAT we are lusting over/ coveting... it's more the fact that our minds and hearts go there.”

His statement was, “anyone who looks at a woman . . .” – and that to me only means a genuine, approachable woman.

I’m not saying Jesus is giving people a free pass to enjoy porn. I’m saying that the old testament citation he was commenting upon had to do with real people in real proximity to one another, and the attempt to help them from cheating on one another.

Anyway, hope I didn’t bore.

Sandor

 

[chiclet01]

Hi Sandor,

I'm a little confused.... were you responding to me in that post? I wasn't sure if any of that was responding to what I last posted.

Thanks!

 

[chiclet01]

Anyhow... I thought I'd talk about some of the things you brought up in your post anyhow (whether you were talking to me or not LOL).

It is true that the world we live in is constantly shifting and changing. It has been since the beginning of time. The truths of the Bible are not just for those specific time frames when they were recorded, however. The basic principles of them are eternal. Now, you have to look at them in context both historically and with what else is said around them in those scriptures to gain full understanding of what those basic principles really are, and that's a lot deeper than most people want to go, honestly. They'd like to be able to read the words, laugh at them if they don't fit exactly with our modern culture, and then dismiss. Or (and sometimes worse), read them, incorrectly apply them in a legalistic manner (aka Pharisee, sadly) to the modern world around them all while claiming holiness but having no understanding.

What I have been trying to say from the start of our discussion (and again, I'm so thankful it has stayed a reasonable discussion! ) is that the basic principle is to guard the heart and mind from sinful influences. It corrupts our thinking which inevitably corrupts our actions. This particular example was pointing out that just keeping up appearances (or looking legally/technically like you've done nothing wrong) is not good enough. That we are to strive to keep our hearts and minds pure as well.

I could get into a looooooong discussion on how I feel some of the verses regarding divorce have been taken out of context and blown up to become something it was not meant to be... but I don't think this is the thread for that (and honestly every thread I've tried to have that discussion in has ended with someone basically telling me I'm just justifying my own "sin" of divorce and therefore my argument is invalid... I have learned about throwing pearls at this point.).

But hopefully that makes sense. Yes, historical context is relevant and important. Not as a means to dismiss Biblical principles as invalid, but to show what the basic heart and intent of those principles are and why they are relevant and valid.

My two cents... or a dollar and a half by now, huh?