My friend, whom I’ll call “Christian”, is a devout Christian and doctor. He’s one of the few Christians I’ve met who has a heart of pure gold and actually cares about people.
He sent me three YouTube videos asking why people seemed overwhelmingly against the anti-pornographer and in favor of the porn performer. Many have seen these videos, but for those of you who have not; in the order they were sent to me:
GROUPON selling tours of TORTURE PORN studio for second time. – HELP STOP THIS – Dawn Hawkins, Executive Director of Porn Harms, complains about Kink.com coupon.
Dawn Hawkins, Groupon, and Kink.com – Performer Audrey Rose responds to Dawn Hawkins
Man watched violent, child-themed porn on Delta flight – NO ONE CARED! –Dawn Hawkins complains about a man watching pornography on his iPad during a plane ride.
My intention was not to post this exchange with my friend, but to respond thoughtfully and responsibly. Thing is, it’s really good. I’ve edited bits here and there to protect my friend and also make some points more palatable. Having said that, this is what a mature conversation between adults on opposite ends of the porn spectrum should look like.
Christian: [Supplies links to videos and states that the Youtube community is overwhelmingly against Dawn and for Audrey, which surprised him.]
Lydia Lee: Thing is, Dawn Hawkins is the Executive Director for Porn Harms. I know of her now that I’ve seen the videos. I had heard about these.
Just listening to her I understand what could rub anyone the wrong way. I agree with some of it. You don’t think Groupon should offer a coupon to porn production–petition against it. I don’t necessarily think Groupon should offer coupons for porn shows, either. You want someone on a plane to not watch porn in front of you? Fine, ask them to stop. The problem isn’t that she shouldn’t express herself about things that bother her. 1) She heads an organization that seeks to make porn illegal by conflating consenting sex work with human trafficking, which is slavery. They are not the same thing. It’s over broad and hysterical and anyone who opposes her–and people like her; their speech is stifled. In an open forum such as YouTube, where fans and porn performers can say what they want, I’m not surprised that people overwhelming prefer freedom of sexual expression and freedom of speech. 2) She seeks an emotional reaction by making sure she emphasizes that women are degraded and that the porn on the gentleman’s iPad looks like child pornography.
Most fans of Kink.com and their armory know that the sex is staged to look more aggressive than it is, and that everyone is consenting and seeking what happens to them. The gentleman on the plane; it’s highly doubtful it was actually children or she would have had a strong argument to have him arrested once they landed. That’s why she didn’t insist on his turning it off. She also guessed that the other passengers were uncomfortable, but they could have just as easily been uncomfortable by her outburst. I cannot see what anyone else is doing in a cramped plane environment unless I am trying to see it. I have never been in a situation where that was an issue, but I also tend to mind my own space on a plane. If she had serious issues with what she was seeing and had not acted so emotionally, she might have simply asked the guy to stop or spoken in a more private way with the flight attendant and actually been more effective.
This woman and everyone attached to that organization are people that are on the extreme opposite side of say, the Groupon situation. They do not in any way respect another adult’s right to their own sexual agency. They think banning everything fixes problems, but the truth is, it usually causes more harm. I am in no way into bondage and the kinds of shoots that Kink.com orchestrates, but I can appreciate an adult’s right to do what they want as long as I don’t have to be exposed to it. I have never been exposed to it unless I seek it out.
I’m of the opinion that communication can help people with their issues, but only if it is open and honest. Anti-pornographers only offer a wall of shame and criticism that tends to help very few people with actual problems. It’s not that Dawn is entirely wrong, it’s that she tries to pose as an expert in an area she apparently really knows nothing about.
Christian: Thank you so much, Lydia, as always very well written, as all your blog posts always have been. In fact, who knows maybe this will end up there. [lol]
My bias comes from working at [hospital] during my residency at [university], so I got to see many of these sorts of sexual situations go wrong, and I mean *very* wrong. Try as I might to distance myself from it, I could not escape the possible hundreds of cases I saw relating to this type of genre of sexual expression.
There were few fatalities, but certainly more than a proponderence of comorbidities. And when I say comorbidity, I mean serious threat to life, meaning without intervention death is 100% certain, the cases being divided into posterior fornix perforation, and rectal and colonic perforations in that order.
LL: It’s a conundrum for me, personally, because I see it in other things, too. People cliff dive and generally do things that make me wonder why in the world they are driven to such acts. Swimming with sharks? Yikes! And I couldn’t be a stunt person. I once wanted to sky dive until I really thought about it. I just don’t need to experiment with that kind of risk in my life.
Fact is, many people engage in and enjoy these types of acts because it makes them feel more alive. And even pain for some is a necessary thrill. I don’t agree with it, but if we deny adults the right to choose what they are willing to risk for the sake of their own personal happiness, I think we are asking for a bigger problem than the casualties that come with those risks. Some people are just willing to risk losing their life to feel that alive. I was once enough of that kind of person to entertain the thought of throwing myself out of a perfectly working airplane. If someone had told me no, it wouldn’t have mattered one bit. I’d have found a way to do it anyway, and that’s what people will do. They’ll do it underground rather than out in the open where the environment is even riskier.
Christian: I hear and of course agree with your arguments, but I’m starting to learn things that are very disturbing to me. . . I’ve been doing just what your blog suggests, trying to get to know people from the adult industry, and of course as you point out there are many sweet and giving and loving and stable people such as yourself, but I’ll be very honest and open with you. From what I’ve seen so far the incidence of psychopathology is *much* higher in this population than the baseline. And I am genuinely trying to get to know and interact with a broad variety of people both male and female.
I remember getting to know one, and she denied any childhood trauma, or father issues, and even despised the fact that people would even suggest such a connection, yet [she was a certain kind of cutter] and was unable to see that as even perhaps an indicator that she had *major* issues.
The funny thing is that I also find the same if not worse intolerance that is touted as the reason they don’t like the Anti- people on their side. Any signs of my religious affiliation or belief in God immediately makes me a target for many of them. Perhaps its due to prior bad experiences, perhaps not. I just find it ironic that the section of society who says they are the way they are because they want to be tolerant of all, are actually some of the least tolerant people I’ve come to know. Actually they *are* tolerant. . . until I say the reason I do what I do is that I love God/Jesus. Then I’m suddenly evil to them.
I’m still trying figure some things out, but I’m seeing much more harm than good, in fact the worst part of the harm is that it’s subtle, and even unknown to both onlookers and really the person involved themselves until much later.
Although fundamentally I’m in full support of freedom. . . Where do we draw the line, Lydia? Would you advocate everything being legal? How about things that are addictive? How about just for those over 18? And who decides that at 18 all of us are suddenly able to understand all the implications and ramifications of our actions *even if* someone explains it to us. Sexuality is a very plastic area of the brain, and can be *trained* to like and dislike certain things to a greater or lesser degree.
LL: If four out of every five people have been molested or raped or sexually traumatized, then what the antis are in effect doing is exploiting only the consenting adults who are completely open with their sexuality. The politicians and lawyers and people who must have complete control throughout their daily lives, and then submit themselves to being flogged and living with lacerations on their backside in their spare time, are not being exploited. No one is asking them what their childhood traumas might be. Someone working in the sex industry obviously has sex as an emphasis in their life for some reason. Obviously, like everyone else, they have their own set of varying issues–no one can avoid that. The problem is when you start fishing for daddy issues and traces of sexual trauma with complete strangers, you could be triggering these people in ways that don’t help them. If you are a psychiatrist and they are coming to you for help, that’s one thing, but to pry and prod and offer unsolicited advice is the kind of thing most adults don’t appreciate, regardless of the subject matter. Do I think everything should be legal? I think if we placed more emphasis in our society on good, practical education and spoke plainly about sex with human beings who are ready to talk about it (I asked my mother about sex at age thirteen), then we wouldn’t have the constant miscommunication that we do.
Christian, you are the exception, not the rule. There are people whose trauma has been heaped upon them through religion. Do I think everything should be made legal? I don’t think everything should be made illegal. I don’t have the power to make all things legal, so I do not know how to answer an unanswerable question. I appreciate rules and guidelines, but when the few who can’t possibly understand why the majority enjoy something that might be bad for them decide it’s time to crusade and convert or kill the natives, a line is definitely crossed. Unless I look for porn, I don’t see it. Ever. Do I think sex traffickers should be put away? I think prostitution should be decriminalized so that it is no longer in the dark where criminals hide and thrive. I have heard how sex workers are treated by the system, especially if they were slaves. Sometimes they are sent right back into the very home that started their life’s downward spiral. If there are issues to be addressed, why are they only being addressed by law enforcement and game show hosts, I mean talk show hosts? The problem is with the system overall. By making illegal that which consenting adults want to do for their own personal reasons–reasons they may not be willing to talk about yet–it simply feeds into an already damaged system that does not function to rehabilitate people. I had a friend in jail for five years and his letters were heart-wrenching. The tuna he had to purchase for nutrition had so much filler it was barely tuna. In fact, another problem we have is now there are many privately-owned prisons. Privately-owned means the owner generates income off of human slavery. My friend went to prison for getting drunk and threatening his ex-wife. He didn’t hit her, or pimp her out. He is responsible for what he did, but he didn’t deserve to be a human slave for five years.
You are a good person, and I believe if anyone could love and understand another human being it is you, but religion gets shoved down people’s throats. Stop and think about it. If someone flinches when you say “God”, what does that tell you? You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to know there is something to it, right? Catholic priests aren’t a running pedophile joke because people are just gross in conversation. If there’s an actual epidemic in our society, pedophilia/rape is an epidemic, but not among those in the legal sex industry. It’s like John Denver’s poem The Ambulance in the Valley. Rather than put a barrier around the cliff so people don’t fall off, they put an ambulance in the valley. We stupidly try to treat the symptom and never the cause.
The antis are not like you. It’s a bizarre pseudo-parent/child dance among adults. They need to tell their opposite what to do, and in defiance people who are being attacked are not only going to jump to be purely defensive, they are going to do what they do with more passion just because some nosy person doesn’t like it. Where do we stop and respect the adult line? Is someone capable of handling life at age eighteen? It depends on how they were raised, but have you ever taken a stranger in and tried to be parental with them? How well does an adult–whether they’re as developed as you’d like them to be or not–deal with that? How many people have I tried to help who’ve turned on me? Plenty. It’s best to listen and steer. Jesus was a guide, right? He didn’t block another human being’s path. He was patient, and when lost people came to him he told stories to help them see the truth for themselves, because no one likes being told how to think and feel. A rebelliousness inherent in us all rises in defiance when we are ordered about. If someone confides in me their traumas and pains, I listen. That’s all. If they ask for advice, I ask them what they think they should do. That’s what healers and psychiatrists do. As Bruce Lee said in Enter the Dragon, “It’s like a finger pointing to the moon. Do not focus on the finger, or you will miss all of that heavenly glory.” The Word, Buddhist Meditations, etc… these are vehicles to knowing ourselves, the only true salvation. If you want to help, be a guide and set an example. You do already, but in the case of sex workers, you must have respect for them as your equal and not treat them like they’re children. They are easy targets because they’re honest, even if they are still on the path of learning who they are–as we all are. And yes, they can be as closed-minded as the antis, but remember, they are on the defense, not the offense. It sucks being an easy target. You tend to get hit a lot.
To be continued… [I hope!]
For the record, I think just about anything can be addictive. I also think there are too many doctors (pushers) who prescribe medication that doesn’t properly treat the patient because they’re more interested in making the money and in having a returning customer. It’s not that different from a dealer/junkie situation, and presecriptiion drugs are known to be far more addictive and harder to detox from than your average garden variety street drug.
Also, nothing trumps good parenting. Pornographers don’t knock on my door trying to sell me sex, yet Jehovah’s Witness’ do. If I were interested in that, I know how to find it on my own. I don’t need people coming to my home to try and sell me on sex or spirituality.
I’m not saying that there aren’t improvements to be made, but compromises are healthy and necessary. There will always be “lost” people–most of us spend our entire lives “looking for” something–but none of what I’ve said is meant to imply that people in the sex industry are generally “lost” or have “issues”. Not any more than anyone else. If anything, in my experience, people in porn are healthier than most people I’ve met from other industries because they are honest about who they are. Like most of the gay men I’ve met, they are less likely to lie about their intentions. There is a certain air of ease with people not carrying around a lot of skeletal baggage.
Christian left me with a research suggestion, so I hope this conversation continues over the next few days. Comments, thoughts, suggestions are welcome.
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