WARNING: The following contains disturbing content of a violent and sexual nature.
November 25, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – The ugly influence of digital pornography is in the news cycle once again, this time in a brutal article in The Star noting the social impact of porn use bleeding into the bedroom in real life.
On the heels of a report in The Atlantic that warned of a sharp rise in the practice of choking during sexual acts (with almost a quarter of adult American women reporting that they felt fear during intimacy as a result), Lyndsay Nyawira of The Star interviewed several people who confirmed this trend.
One woman in her early thirties, speaking under a pseudonym, noted that she passed out after her date asked for permission to choke her. When she came to, the man apologized. “I’m sorry I got carried away,” he told her. “When I saw you hurting, it really turned me on.”
This is a direct result of pornography, produced for the explicit purpose of arousing the viewer, that showcases and mainstreams violence against women—so much so that women report getting regularly asked if they can be choked or strangled, as people decide to try out what they are watching online. One key culprit in all of this, The Star noted, is the torture porn trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James, which introduced to tens of millions of people the idea that inflicting pain on a sexual partner was normal and even romantic.
In fact, these trends are escalating so quickly that even some porn directors are sounding the alarm. One female porn director who calls herself “Erika Lust” told The Guardian that the “strangulation and choking scenes now dominate porn,” and this is having a predictable real-world effect on relationships and sexual interactions in society at large.
“Face slapping, choking, gagging, and spitting has become the alpha and omega of any porn scene, and not within a BDSM context,” she noted. “These are presented as standard ways to have sex when, in fact, they are niches.”
Just to translate what she is saying there: This sort of violence is taking place not simply in select categories of pornography, but is now standard across the board. In short, this is what the majority of people are consuming when they use digital porn, and that is why so many women are reporting that sexual intimacy is often accompanied by fear.
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As The Star put it:
When a direct threat to life is slowly normalised, “it means that a woman whose partner chokes her might not report it – and if she does, it might go nowhere,” says Erika. “It means that if a woman dies this way, judges and juries feel ‘this is how people have sex now’ and questions aren’t always asked.”
[…]
“Many people’s first exposure to sex is hardcore porn”. This, she says, teaches kids “that men should be rough and demanding, and that degradation is standard.”
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: The pornography that is mainstream today is far more violent and depraved than the pornography that was mainstream barely a generation ago, and it is inculcating new sexual values into our society at large that frame violence against women and girls as simply another fetish or sexual preference, rather than the reprehensible and indefensible assault that it actually is.
One hopes that the reader of this column would recoil at the story of a man apologizing to a woman after hurting her by explaining that her pain had “really turned him on.” But the reality is that every day, millions of people are logging on to arouse themselves to the sight of women and girls, some acting, some reacting, in fear, pain, and agony to the horrific sexual violence that now dominates the porn industry that has successfully conquered and colonized the minds of a generation.
Jonathon’s new podcast, The Van Maren Show, is dedicated to telling the stories of the pro-life and pro-family movement. In today’s special episode, Jonathon speaks with Covenant Eyes leader Dan Armstrong about Lamar Odom’s exclusive interview highlighting his pornography addiction. Odom spoke with Covenant Eyes about his severe addiction to pornography. You can subscribe here and listen to the episode below:
