Tomorrow I have the privilege of speaking at Pepperdine University with Dr. Ken Canfield on a fun topic.
Porn.
I wouldn’t call myself a resident expert on the subject, but I am very passionate on how I see fantasy affecting my generation. A couple months ago, I shot a video on fantasy to share some stories and hopefully get people engaged on the topic.
Ask my friends…I love talking and learning about porn and fantasy.
With a grin on their face, many have asked me, “So how exactly are you doing research?”
I often joke to keep it light, that’s just who I am by nature. So for those who don’t know me, I need to say that I take the repercussions of pornography and fantasy very seriously. It can be heavy and disturbing to study.
Amidst my joking, my heart is to help. Please know that.
Love and Respect (Now) is a division of Love and Respect. Please be considerate.
From My Heart
All of the Love and Respect Now Posts…In One Place!
Emerson & Sarah Eggerichs on Marriage, Parenting, Family of Origin, Work & Death
Fighting for Love (and Other Potentially Hazardous Cliches)
Well played, Joy. My friend Sarah Jaggard works at Pepperdine, maybe you’ll see her tomorrow. She’s groovy.
Kelly, Thanks for the encouragement. I’ll send your husband a gold scarf and see what it does for you.
I pray that as I pursue this that people don’t think I am minimizing the extreme violence and and serious result pornography can ultimately have…but we can only be responsible for where our own fantasy takes us. The first step is awareness, otherwise we won’t ever become sensitive to how we may be hurting God’s ultimate design for our sexuality and what expectations we are putting on others. Your words were right on!
Michele,
“Jaggard” is a sweet last name. I hope I meet her!
Joy! This is awesome! Thank you for shedding “Light” on such a dark topic. If women, who are emotionally oriented, have a hard time putting down romance novels and ignoring “chick flicks”; then imagine how much harder it is for men, who are visually oriented, to ignore porn. Keep doing what you are doing and good luck at Pepperdine! May God use you in a huge way!!
p.s. loved the snort-laugh. 😀
Good stuff girl.
Joy, this is a great. I know this is not an easy topic to address. Especially when you are challenging both sexes to take ownership of the problem. Thank you for bringing up this discussion with humility and a genuine desire to help. Coming from a man’s perspective I think you are dead on in challenging both sexes equally in taking ownership of our failure to take God’s gift of intimacy seriously.
Word Joy – this was awesome. Did you ever read Trouble in Paris at L’Abri? It’s not about sexuality, but a lot about our unrealistic expectations of the world.
Such good stuff…I’m forwarding this link to some friends. I miss youuuuu.
I just found your site from a friend’s recommendation. I’ve appreciated what I’ve seen so far . . . especially this post. You’re right on target. I’ve been doing research on women and pornography for the last few years. It’s a frightening landscape that most people aren’t talking about let alone acknowledging. Thanks for drawing attention to the role of the things we put in our minds in blocking the intimacy we long for.
Your blog is amazing. I’m totally aware of Love and Respect – did wonders for my parents’ marriage. Here’s what I want to know. What’s the difference between thinking about sex and fantasizing? Oh, and who’s your friend? 🙂
Just realized there were a number of comments I haven’t responded to on this video!
Jenny – I have read parts of Trouble in Paris (confession: I rarely read an entire book.) I did quote the book here. The parts I read of the book were right on. I miss you too!
Sheryl – Please continue to keep me posted on your research! loveandrespectNOW@gmail.com
Tripp – I just watched the “swimming” video on your site and might have wet my pants when he wet his.
Annnnd transition…to answering your great question re: thinking about sex and fantasizing…
It may just be semantics, but in my opinion, someone “thinking about sex” can be sterile. (-: Like a 5th grader in sex education, a gyno, etc. Fantasizing then could be when we take what sex is and imagine it in a way that causes arousal. Imagination is not reality…and for something that God created for us to do with another person, fantasizing can create false expectations.
I think that masturbation (which you so eloquently conversed with yourself about here, which is often hand in hand with fantasy, needs to be something that people figure out for themselves. I think if we believe that God calls us to a higher standard in life, that may mean not engaging in all things that feel good all the time, even if the world see’s it as healthy. So that might call for discipline. And not because masturbation is the end of the world, but because it is so easy to walk into sexual temptation through that act. This sexual temptation could be objectifying people who are not our spouses and imagining them performing things that they have never performed or can not perform.
It can’t be about rules–it has to be about the heart. Do we believe God cares about this matter? If we see from scripture that he doesn’t, then we shouldn’t worry. But there is SO much about sexuality in the Bible that I feel like we have to be a tad more sacred with it than we have been.
However, on the flip side are people who try to be so “good” that they end up suppressing every aspect of their sexuality and that’s not what God calls us to either.
Ultimately it has to be deeper than a “Do” or “Don’t.” But that leaves us all feeling like we still don’t have an answer…which was evident in a lot of the answers on your blog post on masturbation.
I was just reading Hebrews this morning (pat me on the back for being holy) and came across this verse: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12:11
I will never be perfect, but I think it would be helpful for me if I tried to live in a way believing that disciplining some of my thought life (which is never easy) can be helpful in the type of harvest that my life produces with our without a husband. Sometimes I struggle believing God can meet me in that place. So for me, it can often come down to an issue of belief…
Phew. Sorry that was long. So cool that your parent’s enjoyed my parent’s book. I will let them know–it’s always encouraging for them to get that feedback.
Also…I might post your dating game video on my blog. Speak now or forever hold your peace. “I love arians.” Personally, I would have picked #1. He had me at “hips.” Now, for my friend…I am unsure who she would have chosen. She probably would love you for “who you were on the inside” or something shallow like that.
Just realized there were a number of comments I haven’t responded to on this video!
Jenny – I have read parts of Trouble in Paris (confession: I rarely read an entire book.) I did quote the book here: https://www.loveandrespectnow.com/?p=1694. The parts I read of the book were right on. I miss you too!
Sheryl – Please continue to keep me posted on your research! loveandrespectNOW@gmail.com
Tripp – I just watched the “swimming” video on your site and might have wet my pants when he wet his.
Annnnd transition…to answering your great question re: thinking about sex and fantasizing…
It may just be semantics, but in my opinion, someone “thinking about sex” can be sterile. (-: Like a 5th grader in sex education, a gyno, etc. Fantasizing then could be when we take what sex is and imagine it in a way that causes arousal. Imagination is not reality…and for something that God created for us to do with another person, fantasizing can create false expectations.
I think that masturbation (which you so eloquently conversed with yourself about here, http://trippcrosby.com/2009/06/self-convo-masturb/ which is often hand in hand with fantasy, needs to be something that people figure out for themselves. I think if we believe that God calls us to a higher standard in life, that may mean not engaging in all things that feel good all the time, even if the world see’s it as healthy. So that might call for discipline. And not because masturbation is the end of the world, but because it is so easy to walk into sexual temptation through that act. This sexual temptation could be objectifying people who are not our spouses and imagining them performing things that they have never performed or can not perform.
It can’t be about rules–it has to be about the heart. Do we believe God cares about this matter? If we see from scripture that he doesn’t, then we shouldn’t worry. But there is SO much about sexuality in the Bible that I feel like we have to be a tad more sacred with it than we have been.
However, on the flip side are people who try to be so “good” that they end up suppressing every aspect of their sexuality and that’s not what God calls us to either.
Ultimately it has to be deeper than a “Do” or “Don’t.” But that leaves us all feeling like we still don’t have an answer…which was evident in a lot of the answers on your blog post on masturbation.
I was just reading Hebrews this morning (pat me on the back for being holy) and came across this verse: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12:11
I will never be perfect, but I think it would be helpful for me if I tried to live in a way believing that disciplining some of my thought life (which is never easy) can be helpful in the type of harvest that my life produces with or without a husband. Sometimes I struggle believing God can meet me in that place. So for me, it can often come down to an issue of belief…
Phew. Sorry that was long. So cool that your parent’s enjoyed my parent’s book. I will let them know–it’s always encouraging for them to get that feedback.
Also…I might post your dating game video on my blog. Speak now or forever hold your peace. “I love arians.” Personally, I would have picked #1. He had me at “hips.” Now, for my friend…I am unsure who she would have chosen. She probably would love you for “who you were on the inside” or something shallow like that.
C.S. LEWIS ON MASTURBATION
C.S. Lewis wrote a correspondent:
“For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back; sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman. For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover; no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself. Do read Charles Willliams’ Descent into Hell and study the character of Mr. Wentworth. And it is not only the faculty of love which is thus sterilized, forced back on itself, but also the faculty of the imagination. The true exercise of imagination in my view, is (a) To help us to understand other people, (b) To respond to, and, some of us, to produce art. But it has also a bad use: to provide for us, in shadowy form, a substitute for virtues, successes, distinctions, etc. which ought to be sought outside in the real world–e.g., picturing all I’d do if I were rich instead of earning and saving. Masturbation involves this abuse of imagination in erotic matters (which I think bad in itself) and thereby encourages a similar abuse of it in all spheres. After all, almost the main work of life is to come out of our selves, out of the little, dark prison we are all born in. Masturbation is to be avoided as all things are to be avoided which retard this process. The danger is that of coming to love the prison.”
– Letter to Mr. Masson. March 6, 1956. Wade Collec tion. Wheaton College, Wheaton, Ill. – Quoted in Leanne Payne, The Broken Image, p. 91.
@Tim Wright,
shouldn’t the appetite that leads to completion be love rather than sexual urges
I find it ironic that my computer is blocking this video with the very program I downloaded to keep me from watching porn…………………hmm. And I don’t “keep from watching it” because I think it’s ickyy (though I suppose it could be considered so). I had to implement the program because I struggle with porn.
Me, a girl.
Forget the “romance novels and chick flicks are women’s porn.” What if a woman watches the actual thing? I’m tempted by it. I watch it. I act out because of it. And it affects my entire life and thought process negatively.
I’m currently reading two books on the topic. May I mention them here? To further your research, you see. =)
1. The Dirty Little Secret: Uncovering the Truth Behind Porn by Craig Gross
2. Every Woman’s Battle: Discovering God’s Plan for Sexual and Emotional Fulfillment by Shannon Ethridge
You’re cool as ever, Joy. Thanks for tackling this topic. Wish I could watch the video, lol.
ive been a faithful reader of your blogs for some time now am definitely not a fan of porn whatsoever, am a fan of people who don’t bury their desires but instead speak openly with their lover about how they feel. they should not feel like their doing something wrong because they have fantasies…. the word fantasy is very vague and also blown out of proportion at time… However, i am not a fan of people who prejudge others who don’t think exactly like them because that goes against everything a Christian person preaches… God loves All & if you worship God then you should be more like God & love all… Love means you listen with an open mind & you speak to people of all different types & who have a variety of beliefs… Not close people off who don’t think exactly like you. thank you.
I’ll repeat exactly what i told one of my friends today.. It’s the close minded actions of the most religious people who actually are steering me away from religion.
This is awesome Joy! Just as today’s society tells men we are to love, love, love, but the women are not told to respect, this pointing out of the Romantic Novels or movies paints a picture we men are never going to live up to just as pornography clouds the minds of men as to what sex will be like in marriage. They wool has bean pulled over all our eyes! Great video, thank you for sharing!
This has given me some perspective to what women want. I never understood what the “Romance” was or is. Perhaps I will submit that as a question?
Kelly thinks...
OMG, this just cemented my giant girl crush on you. I hope that won’t make my husband feel inferior. I mean, there’s NO way he could pull off a gold scarf.
All joking aside, thank you so much for drawing that parallel between romance novels/films and pornography. Although the sting of finding out a man has been trying to fulfill his sexuality via pornography is no doubt agonizing, I’ve known lots of guys who endure the slow burn of not measuring up to Edward Cullen. We try to say that one form of fantasy is more sinful than the other, but I’m not convinced. Does either of these two things lead us to God? Probably not. When we turn away, do we usually find God waiting for us? You betcha.
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