(LifeSiteNews) — Dr. Gail Dines is one of the fiercest anti-porn activists alive — and a left-wing radical feminist to boot. Her book Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality is a devastating look at a truly vile industry, and when she engages her critics on TV panels and in print, she holds nothing back.
I watched her on a TV panel a few years ago, when one unfortunate academic claimed that porn was a perfectly legitimate career. Why then, Dines shot back, do the elites send their kids to Harvard and Yale instead of also presenting them with this “career option”? Why would they do anything to keep their daughters out of the porn shoots that they defend?
The answer, of course, is simple: Because it is quite alright if the daughters of other people endure gang bangs, sexual violence, and degradation for the entertainment of the pornified masses. When it comes to their own children, however, those who enjoy the perverse pleasure of buying and selling girls suddenly rediscover their puritanism.
I thought of this when I spotted a recent news article about Charlie Sheen. Sheen, you may remember, had a very public run with drug use and young porn stars.
One young girl, who later left the industry after her mind snapped under the strain, confessed to aborting a baby that was likely Sheen’s after one of these binges; partying with porn stars and enormous quantities of drugs and alcohol was Sheen’s modus operandi for several years. (Sheen isn’t the only one, incidentally—former porn actresses have told me that many Hollywood stars take porn stars to parties with them for obvious reasons. You’d recognize the names they listed.)
But then Charlie Sheen’s 18-year-old daughter with Denise Richards, Sami, decided to open an OnlyFans account. OnlyFans is a personalized subscription porn service where subscribers pay money to watch the star of the account strip and perform other acts, sometimes on request.
Her mother has defended her decision and even opened her own account in solidarity; Sami has said that “I’m super grateful I have a supportive mom on my side.”
But her father Charlie, patron of many porn stars and one of the actors most publicly associated with the porn industry, has had a different reaction. He does not, he told the media, “condone” Sami’s decision to open an OnlyFans account, noting that “she is 18 years old now and living with her mother. This did not occur under my roof…But since I’m unable to prevent it, I urged her to keep it classy, creative, and not sacrifice her integrity.”
By that, he presumably means that he hopes Sami will not do the sorts of things he paid girls her age to do with him.
Sami Sheen confirmed her father’s opposition, noting that he has not come around but insisting: “I don’t really mind. It’s totally fine.”
She opposes the stigma attached to OnlyFans she said: “I think its just the stigma around it. Everyone thinks it’s just for very raunchy stuff, but you can really post whatever you want on there.” (Which is true, but OnlyFans wasn’t created for patrons to explore the political opinions of wannabe porn stars—that’s what Substack is for.)
When asked if her father would support her at some point, she replied: “I don’t know. It’s kind of personal.” A lot of things are, which is sort of Charlie’s point.
Charlie Sheen is obviously in the right here. He is justifiably horrified by the idea of his young daughter displaying her body to fuel the lusts of men who pay her to take her clothes off. He obviously loves her and feels protective of her, as a father should.
His own failings have not clouded his judgement so thoroughly that he has lost his basic paternal instincts—indeed, his humanity. And from Charlie Sheen’s reaction (here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write), the culture should again be confronted with an important truth: namely, what happens to those girls that get bought and sold until their minds break or their flesh sags? They are daughters. They were somebody’s little girl at some point.
To view their degradation is to participate in it—and to degrade ourselves. The porn industry feeds us daughters, and we fuel the fire with our lusts.
