Giving in to DH's porn "needs" = Good Wife or Bad Wife?
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Anonymous
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"Porn is one of those misuses that is so wrong, you don't even need to be aware of the full meaning of sex to see its harmful effects."
Out of curiosity, say DH and I make home videos of ourselves having sex, which we watch later to get ourselves in the mood to have sex again. Is that wrong? Also, what if DH takes it with him on business trips to masturbate? Are those forms of porn ok? |
ThatSmileyFaceGuy
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Quite OK and pretty damn hot I would say. |
Anonymous
It's ok with you, Smiley Face Guy, but is it ok with Church lady? |
ThatSmileyFaceGuy
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I'm not worried about what "Church Lady" thinks. And the questioning poster shouldn't worry about that I think. They should only be worried what their spouse thinks since the video is for them and them only. |
Anonymous
Well, I'm kind of interested to know what church lady thinks. Because she says that marital sex is the best possible sex and that no other sex can compare. She also thinks that pornography is basically evil and that it ruins marriages. So the PP would like to know if her home movies are ok in church lady's world. |
Anonymous
These are very thoughtful questions. The answer is simple, but the explanation is long, because it involves trying to understand some of the greatest mysteries of our existence. Can you bear with my morning-sickness-addled brain? This will probably take more than one post. To begin, you have removed some of the most offensive aspects of pornography--the unfaithfulness and the exploitation and degradation of strangers. You've enclosed it within a marriage, inside the private love of a committed couple. The presumption is that anything within a marriage is automatically fine, even good. But no matter how secular you are, I'm sure you could come up with some examples of sex within marriage that are still wrong. Marital rape is the most extreme example, but thinking back to some other topics on this board, what about when sex is just tolerated? Used to get something? Withheld as punishment? Painful for one spouse, but demanded by the other? There are countless scenarios that we could all agree are not good. But do we know WHY they are not good? Is there a rulebook somewhere out there that explains WHY sex NEEDS to meet certain standards to be good? What also becomes obvious is that there is a range of good and bad sex. Not in terms of pleasure, but in terms of rightness and wrongness. This is another topic that comes up on this forum all the time. Which is worse, adultery as a one night stand or as a year long relationship? Cheating with someone who has kids versus someone who is childless? An emotional affair or a physical affair? Vanilla porn or child porn? Etc. Some things strike us as really really bad, while others are more understandable, more forgivable. And how do we make those value judgments? If you're coming from a background of 20 years of total promiscuity, as is your spouse, along with an extensive porn habit and an open marriage, your perspective will be very different from someone who married young, a virgin like her spouse, who believes sex is sacred. Perhaps this is where PPs would say, exactly, Church Lady. Go have your prudish life, and let us have ours. Especially within our own marriages. It's our private business. There is no rulebook. We write our own rules. Let me put that perspective aside for a little longer. Because I want to answer PP's specific question. What could possibly be wrong with homemade porn? Isn't it just a celebration of the joys of awesome married sex? Isn't it great that my husband wants to masturbate to my image, instead of some porn star? I'll need to continue later. But hold onto these premises for now: #1. There are actual rules for sex, whether we acknowledge them or not. We bump into them all the time, but usually can't quite articulate a coherent whole. The coherent rule book does exist, though. #2. There are degrees of offense, and culpability. An analogy could be our federal and state laws on rape and murder; but those human laws are just a reflection of an absolute standard that we can fail in varying degrees. #3. Our ability to grasp the whole meaning of sex AND ACTUALLY LIVE ACCORDING TO IT will be influenced by where we are starting from. If we are already comfortable with porn and objectifying people for personal gratification, the full meaning of sex will seem impossibly idealistic at best, repulsive and undesirable at worst. Out of time...will try to answer in full later... |
Anonymous
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I'm probably talking to myself, but I might as well finish what I started:
Before going on, I want to note again that my premise #1 is what most people would reject. Freely consenting adults can do whatever they want, because their free consent confer legitimacy on their actions, right? No one really believes that. Well, they believe it for their own actions, but when they come across something that feels wrong, they say it is because "free consent" is lacking. Like statutory rape--a 16 year old girl is not old enough to freely consent. Or arranged marriage--a woman in a repressive patriarchal society cannot freely consent, because she is misinformed of her worth and her rights. Or date rape--a woman cannot freely consent when she is buzzed, or drunk, or high, or feeling peer pressure. Problem is, why does "free consent" confer legitimacy, when billions of people do not, will not, and have never, agreed with that standard? Go to Afghanistan and ask a sheik about that idea, and see how far it gets you. So maybe cultures get to write their own rules, instead of individuals. But then we are forced to accept sexual practices that we find truly abhorrent. In fact, we can't say ANYTHING is actually wrong. No, it doesn't work. It helps us on a private level, but it leaves a lot of exploitation and violence go. Maybe you still insist there is no celestial rulebook. Fine. Just suspend disbelief long enough for me to finish my explanation, and never fear--Church Lady will not be taking away your porn or telling you how to live your marriage. It's a free country. Back to the answer... |
Anonymous
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Whether secular or religious, certain conditions must be met when a couple exchanges wedding vows. The vows must be made freely, totally, faithfully, and with awareness that children might come into the marriage, and if they do, the couple will be responsible for those children.
Sex, or consummation of the marriage vows, is a renewal of the marriage vows every. Single. Time. Total self-giving, selfless, nothing held back. That is chastity within a marriage. Chastity does not equal abstinence, though sometimes chastity may require abstinence. Chastity is the virtue that removes selfishness from love, that makes love authentic and real and complete. All humans are called to chastity, because all humans are called to love. When the love is within a marriage, all sexual expression of love must be chaste, as in, an honest expression of the marriage vows. Adultery and sexual violence are obvious breaches of true love, of chastity. But there are more subtle and insidious violations, which we all feel sometimes. Sex performed dutifully. Sex demanded rudely. Sex while thinking of someone else. Work flirtations. Sex feared because it might bring an unwanted child into the relationship. Homemade porn is not problematic because it shows too much, but because it shows too little. The couple objectifies one another, and themselves. They reduce their personhood to film. They take intimacy and make it not intimate. The beauty of intimacy is its immediacy, its vulnerability, its exclusiveness, its trust, its uniqueness. It is always unique, like a bolt of lightning. No matter how much lightning we capture on film, it never, ever could express the fullness of the experience, because it has to be experienced to be real. How much more so for sex, which involves persons, with wills and feelings and bodies and souls, and not just a chemical reaction of energy and matter. Is homemade porn just as dreadful as child porn? No. It begins with legitimate intimacy. But where does it go? What if it is viewed by the wrong person? What if it desensitizes the couple to the mystery of their love? What does it tempt the couple--the man, especially--to reduce their intimacy to? A performance? Sex should be just lived, in all its power and creativity. True love is not all pleasure. True love involves risk, sacrifice. True love is hard work. And every single human being is going to fail true chastity sometimes, because we are fallen creatures. That does not change the truth about love, and sex. Sex is the most powerful, creative force in our material world, because it can create life; it is also potentially the most destructive force when misused. Sex includes our basest instincts and our highest aspirations, pure selfishness and pure self-giving. It can mean love or the opposite of love. Living the truth about sex is sublime, intensely joyful, a taste of heaven. Compromising the truth about sex means sadness, even suffering. So is it the worst offense against the full meaning of love when husbands and wives exchange intimate pictures, even film? Is it destructive when they come apart from each other, if it is because they are longing for each other? No, definitely not. But it is a compromise of the ideal, and so risks undermining the strength of their love for each other, even as it gratifies legitimate human needs and desires. Last chapter next... |
Anonymous
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I can't do justice to this question here. If you want a full discussion, read Theology of the Body, or Theology of the Body for Beginners, or Good News about Sex and Marriage.
Or don't. Write me off as the batty, repressed, deprived, too-serious Church Lady. Go back to your fabulous sex lives. I won't be looking in anyone's windows. It's your life to live, to be sure. But if you're still suspending disbelief, just think for a moment, what if? What if there are reasons why your gut tells you some sexual practices are wrong? Why are some so very very right? What if sex was designed to be pure bliss, total creative pleasure, and if you knew the Designer's plans, you could have that joy all the time? Would that be so bad? |
Anonymous
| NP here. I think the Church Lady is awesome. I may not be Catholic, but I am sympathetic to almost all of what she's saying here, and I have always had ethical problems with pornography. Moreover, I don't believe in God. I believe the same basic things but from a secular place. I have always been mystified by the porn apologists. Exploiting people for sexual gratification (even when you can argue that they have chosen to exploit themselves) is just so obviously wrong. It is as obvious a moral evil as slavery (yes, I said it). |
Anonymous
This. [clapping and cheering] |
Anonymous
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Thanks for taking the time to write that Church Lady-- very well put. (Maybe a tad defensive, although I was laughing along with you at points.)
There are some things I think I could argue with, but for now I'm better off just hearing what you said. Or, more important than your specific answer to the question about homemade porn, your explanation of underlying premises really hits home. |
Anonymous
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Seriously? 3 people actually agree that it is wrong for a married couple to film themselves having sex? I do understand the problems with the exploitative nature of pornography but there is no part of me that understands why a married couple would be "compromising an ideal" or "undermining the strength of their love." To me, this is incredibly twisted thinking but then I really don't think that if there is a god, he or she cares what kind of sex we have. I would hope there would be much bigger items on a supreme being's list of priorities.
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Anonymous
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Church Lady, Your post is the most uplifting I have ever read on DCUM. Although I am a moderate Catholic, I would have thought there was nothing wrong with homeade porn but you have totally converted me.
I will read the books you recommended because I struggle in a virtually sexless marriage. I don't just want to stay; I want to feel good about staying and love my DH more than ever instead of resenting him for condemning me to a monastic life. I want to love him like God intended. Thank you and please keep posting. |
TheManWithAUsername
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Don't be so sure. She/they are all just "Anonymous." |