Both of my parents were having affairs when I was a baby. I was molested when I was six. My mom had a fair amount of free-floating sexuality. My dad did inappropriate things like mooning the camera when I was at his house at age five and six. I also frequently saw my dad naked when I was at his house. Now nakedness is probably fine in cases when the adults are clear about what they're doing. My dad was pickled a lot of the time and was not exactly thinking through his parenting philosophy. He took me to see "The Exorcist" when I was five. He was not vying for any parenting awards.
As I grew older I had started having sex in junior high school and watched porno-flicks with my friends on a fairly regular basis from the time I was twelve years old. We had access to print pornography as well. My friend's older brother had essentially papered his bedroom's walls with Playboy centerfolds. All of these inputs in my early life meant that by the time I graduated from high school I was very confused about sexuality. I had a sense that I was a good person and had the potential to be a good partner to someone, but my childhood experiences had led me to have some pretty serious issues regarding sex and relationships.
My saving grace was the year I spent overseas. As I noted in a recent post, my host-mother, a high school teacher, talked to me one time about "saving it for marriage" and the satisfaction and joy which can come from that choice. Much more than that, the example that her words were grounded in showed me another way. Her words, and her way of living moved me. I did not decide then to "save it for marriage" (too late for that!) but I did gain a strong sense of the value of monogamy, commitment to family and how wonderful a stable and loving family can be. When I returned home I was still mostly clueless but I had a new direction.
Something that has dogged me since I was in high school is pornographic ideation. I know that I am not alone in this. This is not something that I want to have roosting in my sub-conscious and it has taken time to take hold of it. Although I occasionally consumed pornography as a young adult I increasingly had the sense that my urge to do so was connected with a very confused and damaged part of me.
When I was in high school I had a friend who would freely peruse Hustler magazine while in a public place. I saw him do that and thought it was very inappropriate, though I couldn't explain why. Now that I have some distance from that time I have come to some realizations about how I view pornography philosophically.
I believe that pornography, prostitution, exotic dancing and other related industries are basically about slavery. I know this because my childhood experiences were setting me up to perhaps become a sexual slave myself.
Because I was sexually dominated by a babysitter when I was six years old, I have a very strong experience of what it means to be a sexual slave. That experience of mine could have led me in a number of directions. I might have developed a sex addiction. I might have found myself in relationships where I was either the sex slave or the slave-master. I could have found my way into prostitution.
Luckily, none of these possible outcomes became reality for me. My urges would have loved to have dragged me into one of those above-named places. But my intention for myself was looking for another way. One huge help for me was that my grandparents were able to pay for my college. For me, college was a place where I could focus on my studies and be in a relatively healthy environment. It was a free-space where I didn't have to worry about money or how to earn it. It was probably about the safest place I could have been in.
I was in a long-term relationship during my first year of college as well as my junior year. In my second year a friend took me to a strip club. I was certainly aroused but I also had a strong feeling that it just wasn't right. It wasn't healthy. My mind gravitated to the young woman who was giving me a "lap-dance". What kind of life was this for her? I felt this empathy because I knew inside what it means to be a slave to my own sexual urges and those of others. As far I am concerned, making one's living in the sex trade is living in hell. I don't believe in the old-fashioned fire-and-brimstone pictures of hell. Human beings seem tragically capable of creating hell on earth, and sex commerce is a clear example of that sad fact.
I don't believe the urges I've had to consume pornography are "wrong" or make me "bad". I simply do not want them to be part of my regular thought diet. Pornography enslaves my thoughts to a very base level of my physical body. It encourages me to identify myself with my lower self, my most materialistic level. "I don't give a shit about you--I just want a fuck" is what my babysitter was doing to me when I was six. Prostitution and pornography carry the same message to the person who is offering up her/his body in exchange for money. Both the subject of the photo and the guy ogling it are debased, in my opinion.
My higher nature tells me that I am essentially spirit; that my body is a suit of clothing which I am wearing for a while, and which will wear out after a certain amount of wearing it. I have gradually and steadily been trying to identify with my spirit, and not to think of myself essentially as "my body" "my personality" "my issues". There is a greater Self which is standing behind those parts of me. That Self takes on the clothing of those worldly expressions but it knows that it is infinitely greater than any and all of them.
The thing is, consuming pornography yanks me out of my connection with that higher part of myself. It brings me into a place which is more animal in nature, though without the nobility that most animals possess. There is a sultry fog which comes over me and makes me feel degraded and weak. I take in the images just at the physical level and do not try to imagine what life is like for the people who are displaying themselves. I heard once that the majority of porn film stars are addicted to heroin. Based on my own experience of sexual slavery and what I imagine the life of a porn star to be like, that wouldn't surprise me at all. Heroin removes one's ability to empathize or have any feelings at all. Your loved one dies of overdose and all you can think of is how you're going to get your next hit. The fog of sexual slavery has, in my experience, similar elements to that kind of thinking. You lose yourself in the fog and nothing else matters other than giving that urge a hit. One who lives their life that way truly is a slave, in my opinion, whether or not they are under the thumb of a pimp.
Over the past twenty years I have bought pornography on occasion. It has been a few years since I did the last time. Until recently, I felt a compulsion to buy a magazine once a year or so and hold on to it for a few days. In recent years I would buy the magazine while telling myself that it wasn't healthy for me, but buy it nevertheless. In a counseling session I told my therapist about consuming pornography on occasion and talked about it with him. Since then I have lost the compulsion. I think I was close enough to letting it go that just letting out "the secret" was the final straw that let me relinquish the urge.
Beyond the consumption of pornography is having pornographic thoughts. Imagining people pornographically is a way of seeing them in the most material way. We ignore their spirit and see only the body. We forget their soul and focus on our own animal urges. We remove their humanity and see them as a fuck-doll. My own thinking could reach these unpleasant places because I had myself been treated like a fuck-doll when I was at a very formative age. My wound was not healed and so my ideation swarmed around the wound, lighting it up and pointing to it.
Luckily, we do not need to be slaves. We can be free. We have to see the direction where our freedom lies and do everything in our power to go that way. Each step may not seem at all earth shattering. But over time, if we choose to gradually go towards our freedom, we will come more and more into it.
My path of freedom has had several steps to it. One was, when I was eighteen, deciding that I wasn't going to watch the horror movies I had found entertaining as a high schooler. I decided that I wanted to "re-sensitize myself" (those were the words I used at the time) I realized that I had become insensitive in many ways and that my habits were not helping. I decided that I wanted to see movies which had some redeeming virtue to them; that I would avoid the trashy ones and those with gratuitous violence.
Another step I took was to quit smoking. When I was in high school I chewed tobacco. By the time I reached college I realized that chewing was really pretty gross so I took up smoking instead. As a smoker in my early twenties I realized that the smoke was harmful to me but I did it anyway. When I finally got up the will to quit I started to feel differently about myself. In a subtle way I began to respect myself more.
But far and away the best thing I did for my own freedom was to begin a spiritual path. Studying spirituality has given me a completely different frame of reference than I had previously. It is really clear to me that I have a "higher self" and a "lower self". As I learned more and more about spirituality I began to identify myself with the former and to be aware that the latter is active in me but does not represent my essential nature. My freedom lies in my taking this path up and continuing to take intentional steps to develop it. My ability to write unflinchingly about myself, and through that process grow and evolve, is based on the fact that I see myself as a spiritual being.
I don't think that true freedom comes from anything else.
Your comments are welcome.
Warmly, Ben
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