Comments from a messageboard thread:
At 1st..I was angry at God..I thought why did God let this happen to me? I am a good person,I try to live a respectable moral life.
Then a calm came over me,and I realized it wasn't Gods doing. God gave us free will so we can make the right choices,and find our way back to him. P*rn imo is truly evil,it is truly the work of "the devil" and of mans weakness for lust.
I think some of these men can save themselves,if they really see the problem as a whole. It's not just p*rn,it's not just mb. It's how womyn are seen and valued in their minds,how our role in society is placed. They have to place value on every womyn,no mater how "lowly" she might be...or they might not ever win this.
Two books I thought I might mention,if you're feeling mad as hell and don't mind getting madder:
'Against our will' -by Susan Brownmiller
and
'Who Cooked the Last Supper: The Women's History of the World'-by Rosalind Miles
Now that might just be a feminist who happens to also be evangelical or something like (I leave aside the question of when those sorts of faith are compatible with feminism and when they are not.) But then one sees this on the same site:
Overcoming temptation is easier with an Accountability Partner. That's why Covenant Eyes is effective. It is NOT a filter -- but it does restore your freedom to choose.
Fully endorsed by: "Promise Keepers Men of Integrity"; Steve Hewitt, editor and President, "Christian Computing Magazine"; by "Focus on the Family"; and by No-porn.com.
Benefits and Features:
* Tracks every web visit and sends an e-mailed report to the accountability partner(s) of your choice.
* Removes the secrecy of using the Internet. Reports can be sent every seven, 14 or 28 days.
"I'm not religious, so I was pleased to find out that using this doesn't require religion. It is just common sense."
As Belle puts it:
o noez, doesn't require religion, it's only endorsed by FOCUS ON THE FAMILY and PROMISE KEEPERS. i can totally understand why some "radical feminists" (hi, one angry girl! you've been cited in there!) would be sympatico here! I mean, they're only using software that's a-ok with frigging FOCUS ON THE FAMILY and PROMISE KEEPERS. Absolutely! Certainly much better allies than, o I don't know, female sex workers who don't happen to agree with you about whether their job is so terrible that they need to stop and repent forthwith, but DO agree with you wrt reproductive rights, gay rights, whether or not it really -is- a woman's -only- rightful place to sit at home by her husband's side and raise kids...
you stupid, stupid fucks.
and yeah, -nice- with the eye and the whole thing, not at all
Handmaid's Tale.***
Please, do tell me another one about how the ONLY reason I could -possibly- be more concerned about rabid anti-porn/kink/etc/etc/etc "feminists" than, I don't know, Playboy, or "raunch culture," or the harm my queer pro-domme friends who make indie pr0n are causing to anxious straight womyn who can't keep their husbands at home, is because I luuuuuurrrves the porn so very, very much.
NOT because o i don't know not only does it SOUND like right wing fundamentalism a lot of the time, not only is it -possible- that right-wing fundamentalists use this shit to further their own agenda (that no-porn board has literally hundreds of thousands of postings, apparently tens of thousands of regulars if you buy their "survey" numbers, or did), but in -some- cases we are in fact talking about -the very same people.- That's a lie! That never happens! And, y'all (y'all know who you are) are SO RIGHT to be so much more willing to work/engage with these people than someone like this.
I'll skip the bit with the terribly earnest young man who's convinced he must be entirely chaste because he has a homosexual orientation -and- is a Christian, but -for some reason- just can't stop looking at Those Pictures or thinking Those Thoughts, can anyone help? or indeed the guy who's convinced he's an "addict" because he still jerks off once a week, and the very helpful woman who may or may not be a "feminist," it's a bit ambiguous from her login and other posts, who suggests imagining his dead grandmother looking on every time he starts to lapse, hey, whatever works, right?
BONUS ROUND: The Ableism Boogie, because women who choose sex work must be crippled in their brainpan, and of course a crip's the worst thing to be:
...And I don't buy the BS about women do it because they like it and they want too. If a woman likes it and wants to then she is mentally, emotionally, and spiritually retarded, just like I was when I was also under the influence of these man-made lies. To me it's like taking advantage of the handicapped in our society, in soul torturous ways, and calling that ENTERTAINMENT for MEN. That's soo messed up, in soo many ways, it's no wonder we can't wrap our hearts and souls around it. It's insanity, and sane people don't do it.
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Comments
i've seen similar sorts of, "let's make nice to the right wing fundamentalist ladies, they have the right idea about pr0n and with a little coaxing we might get them to understand about, um, other important stuff, whatever that is. well, we'll ignore the "reproductive rights" thing for now, but meanwhile: yes! it IS a sin! if that's what works for you! go with that! go with the shame! yes!" at genderberg, when it was still public. i mean both talking about and talking to actual commenters there.
i mean, that's also true of a lot of -other- people? it's just, when it sounds this consistently "old job, new job" and at the same time these people are insisting they're RADICALLY different from anything that came before, the bad patriarchal shit i mean, at the ROOT, welll...
Hell, i came dangerously close to ending up in that exact hybrid ideological place myself, as i started reading stuff with fairly-radical feminist undertones while still an evangelical Christian, and it's very, very easy to see "opposing the degradation of women" (when you have an absolutist view of what is and is not "degrading to women") and standing up for the rights of women" as pretty much the same thing... and add to that the usual authoritarian-socialist thing of "we must stand up for people's rights whether or not they want to stand up for them, or see them as meaningful rights, themselves"... and i could seriously have ended up as a Christian version of Twisty et al.
All i can say is, thank fuck i discovered libertarianism...
And with the disability angle... that, for me, shows the anti-libertarian sentiment right at the heart of it. The assumption that some people (whether that's disabled people, BDSMists, sex worker women, all women, or whatever) do not have the right to define their own liberation, and therefore need to be "protected from themselves", and so that every possible interaction with them, unless it's that of a "benevolent" "protector"*, is necessarily "taking avantage of them", or "exploitation", or whatever.
*ooh, look what the radical feminist criticism of patriarchy is. Pot and kettle, anyone? Yes,radfems, you are acting EXACTLY like the patriarchy you so despise... in fact, you might as well be it, to be honest...
Sex-positive feminists were worried about the alliance back then then, and it's not good to know that it keeps getting closer in the anti-porn movement.
I know this is unrelated but i thought you would like to read this.Tragic in my book.