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Couple of thoughts. 1) For DW reading “Fifty Shades of Grey” was liberating. I think it helped to change her expectations of what was normal and appropriate in the bedroom. DW is still very conservative in personal preferences, just that she is more open to accepting that other people’s preferences might be different and still ok. I think that some of our attitudes towards sex and purity become hindrances to accepting and exploring our own sexuality.
2)I agree with the comment that most people think of it as a product. Along that vein – I know many people who don’t eat veal because they detest the process by which is was made. It would still be a stretch to think that anyone that eats veal is a “bad” person. You could extrapolate similar arguments about the use of sweatshops by the textile industry. How responsible is an individual consumer of a product for the worst abuses of that industry? Interesting question and one that defies simple labeling of “good” people and “bad” people.
3) There was a part from my mission journal that I later scribbled out (not really appropriate for posterity). I had struggled with masturbation. I wrote that if I couldn’t get a handle on this then I would be unable to find fulfillment in marriage and family life. I felt that it signaled a character flaw that would prevent me from being content with one woman – that I would end up alone being a “dirty old man”. This was deeply troubling to me as I wanted more than anything to be a great husband and father someday. In retrospect, my feelings of failure and worthlessness were unfounded and unhelpful. DW and I have agreed that I will handle talking to my son about puberty and sex. I hope to defuse any cultural shaming that he might have internalized.
4) I remember bussing tables as one of my first jobs. One of the waiters was an openly gay man. It bothered me that he might have sex with men and perhaps view the males around him sexually (even though he never did anything inappropriate and was a very professional waiter). I decided that all the people around me might have sexual habits and thoughts that were foreign to me. One might be a sadomasochist and I would never know. I felt that it was unfair for me to judge the gay man differently for what might happen in his personal life behind closed doors. I committed to mentally close the door in my mind into inquiry and pondering about his private life and thoughts. I was able to get to know him as a good and professional waiter that earned larger than average tips and was generous in sharing with the bussers. Over time, his sexual orientation was a non-issue.
These are just my thoughts and experiences and may not apply fully to your situation. IOW “mileage may vary.”
Quote:I couldn’t get a handle on this.
Never mind.
😳 😆 Old-Timer wrote:Quote:I couldn’t get a handle on this.
Never mind.
😳 😆 Ok, poor choice of words.
😳 I’m going to break my vow of silence to laugh at this comment from Ray. Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
I know there are couples who go to secular counselors over sexual dysfunction, and professional, non-LDS therapists will advocate porn to stimulate sexual desire. You don’t know what their situation might be — the husband may be suffering from some kind of medical disorder that hurts his drive (such as low testosterone) and the mags are there to improve their sex life. Depending on the kind of porn mags, they may be for the women to increase desire.
In any case, you don’t know what the couple may be experiencing in their marriage, and medically. There have been situations where marriages have tittered on the brink of divorce over sexual dysfunction (whether physical or emotional), LDS Social Services counseling is either unavailable or not able to help — so people turn to therapists who recommend such measures as porn.
I would resist the urge to judge — these people may be struggling to keep their marriage together and the porn is a last resort.
So, I would take the advice of the savior and “be a light, not a judge”.
Great topic! People start this habit for many reasons. For me, I struggled with this for years based on all the reasons in the “Let Virtue Garnish Thy Thoughts” page 9..
Quote:Indulgence in pornography often occurs in a cycle. If you are engaged in this cycle, you may dwell on inappropriate thoughts, scenes, and images in response to boredom, loneliness, curiosity, stress, discouragement, or conflict. Then you place yourself in situations that lead you to pornography. Afterward, you may feel discouraged and repeat the cycle.
I was exposed to Porn well before the internet via dial up BBSes when I was around 14 or so (1992). It has made the addiction a very strong adversary because I was exposed to it so young. This cycle has been on and off my whole life because of the above reasons. Some of those reasons were because I could not get my Wife to be a full LDS member, which made me feel like a failure. I hit absolutely rock bottom earlier in the year. My addition was consuming me from within because of a lot of the reasons above, especially loneliness, stress, discouragement and conflict. I am in the process of repentance and now feel comfortable about talking about it with others. I believe confiding in trusted friends/family and daily prayer is the key. My burdens are lighter but I still have a ways to go.
Sleeping in their bedroom is a little weird for me, I would find somewhere else to sleep. You should also do your best not to judge people. 3rd Nephi 1-2 said:
Quote:“And now it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words he turned again to the multitude, and did open his mouth unto them again, saying: Verily, verily, I say unto you, Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again..
Give us sinners some slack and be nice to us. Remember, sometimes we need an example and possibly you are the right person to be that example. The Atonement is working for me and I pray that others who read this know they aren’t alone. I felt alone and miserable, just like Adversary wanted me to. I am casting the old Heavy_Laden out and hope a newer, more faithful one takes it’s place.
I would ask you to pray for me, but my real name is not “Heavy_Laden”
:wave: Heavy Laden, Prayers are on their way. Thank you for asking. Don’t worry, He knows your name. Bless you for sharing.
Orson wrote:girlygirl wrote:I just can’t seem to piece in my head that if you view it that you are a good person.
It may be helpful to remember there is good and bad in everyone. Even the “heroes” in life have some things that frankly I don’t think we want to know about. Maybe we do at times to help us feel better about ourselves but the point is we all have good points and bad points.
Sometimes I think the best thing we can do is not let our weaknesses bring us down, which may be easier to do if we don’t let other’s weakness take them so low in our minds as well. I really like this.
Ann wrote:Orson wrote:girlygirl wrote:I just can’t seem to piece in my head that if you view it that you are a good person.
It may be helpful to remember there is good and bad in everyone. Even the “heroes” in life have some things that frankly I don’t think we want to know about. Maybe we do at times to help us feel better about ourselves but the point is we all have good points and bad points.
Sometimes I think the best thing we can do is not let our weaknesses bring us down, which may be easier to do if we don’t let other’s weakness take them so low in our minds as well. I really like this.
Thanks Ann, and I want to be clear that the idea is not to excuse weakness and forget about personal growth – but it is to get “unstuck” and have the faith that we CAN make progress toward becoming our best selves, even if our steps forward are the smallest baby steps. We will never gain personal momentum if we always feel our progress is never good enough.
girlygirl, I don’t think you need to apologize. Just accept this is something bothering you. Let’s talk about it and share ideas, and see what happens as we work through vetting out different points of view. The cool thing I hear from you is that you are wrestling with these feelings inside…almost as if something is telling you that you need to learn from this, or shed some certain judgmental attitudes. That’s cool you are open-minded to it.
Here is one exercise that might help you…
go back to your OP, and replace the porn or magazine references with beer or wine.
So the family you are house sitting for drinks alcohol.
We know that is against the Word of Wisdom, and may be something you do not partake of. The church teaches you can’t go to the temple if you drink that, or it may make you unworthy for certain blessings, and that God has told us this. To you, it is a sin. If you were dating a guy who drank beer all the time, it might even make it uncomfortable for you, and you might even break up a relationship because of it, because you want the guy you fall in love with to have the same standards as you, or at least care enough about you to be committed to promise to try to live the same standards as you, and in that…you are building a relationship of commitment and trust. There is also a real risk that the extreme behavior (alcoholism) is a real danger and something you steer way clear of.
However, seeing alcohol in the neighbors house for a respected member of the community who occasionally enjoys some wine with his wife in a responsible way…does that make them repulsive? Do you lump that person in the same category as the drunk who is in jail for beating his kids because he is an alcoholic? Probably not. It is just something you abstain from, but let them choose for themselves, as long as there are no other signs of extreme misbehavior.
That kind of exercise might help you work through the gymnastics on this other issue.
However, I’d say there are limitations on tolerance. Ariel Castro kidnapped girls and was pure evil. I cannot just say, well, that is just not my thing but to each his own. There are limits, and some things are really repulsive. But not ALL things. You can’t get caught in black-or-white, all-or-nothing thinking.
You need to allow yourself to think a person can drink wine AND be an ok person. Some men look at porn in private AND can be good guys and treat their wives fine. You hate porn with a passion AND your sons will grow up and be exposed to it. These thoughts are more realistic and balanced in our mortal experience.
So you might want to consider how you might put your valid opinions and feelings in perspective with what is really important. You have a choice on how to treat your neighbors and still uphold your values.
You don’t need to change how you feel about porn and how you value chastity. But you do need to think through how you can trust others or respect others who have different values than you in order to function in society.
What do you think? Share your views.
PS – if you raise the issue with your neighbors and try to talk about
yourstandards applied to the privacy of theirhome, you can expect to never be asked to house sit again. Thanks again for all of the responses I really appreciate them all.. not really something I can talk to people other then my spouse so its really comforting to get different perspectives to something that literally gnaws at me from time to time. I’v read all your comments over the last few days and theres so many I can’t reply to them all but I just wanted to respond to the last post from Heber13. I have for the most part been a pretty tolerant person even though I have had my own standards. Most of my friends are not members and most of them drink and smoke pot, and for the most part, I don’t see it causing any harm to themselves (unless your talking perhaps health wise) or others so unfortunately that parallel doesn’t work for me.
The problem is when you drink a glass of wine controlled even when nothing bad is coming from it the wine isn’t a victim. In the circumstance of porn the person you are viewing is very much so. Even if you are viewing it with your spouse and using it to spice up the bedroom there is some person out there who you are victimizing and treating as a object to get yourself off. I don’t believe it is right for people to be treated this way. I don’t support this. Even more so if you aren’t PAYING for something that was produced, again, you don’t know under what circumstances these pictures/videos came about. I think of a few years back where some girl was raped at a party in my area (she was given drugs), it was recorded, and put out on the internet. The police said this was a horrible act because not only is she a victim of the rape, but time and time again when this video is viewed and spread she is being victimized again.
So to say don’t judge someone for drinking wine, I can’t really compare that to someone pleasuring themselves over someone putting themselves in degrading and compromising positions. I should also add we are both younger in our twenties but these mags were of girls who seriously looked like they were 16.. It said they were 18 but imo just so wrong to see girls so young posing open eagle for the camera. It really makes me sad and angry
😳 To answer what someone asked earlier about having to deal with porn with my son, my thoughts now are the best I can do is try to not teach him that nudity is a bad thing (we are talking non sexual nudity here) to make the human body less taboo which would fuel his desire for porn, to be savvy to marketing and media (sex sells), and teach him to love and respect people and try to take the “us” versus “them” mentality away (I would never want the people around me I love and care for doing this but I’m fine staring at some stranger I don’t know!).Those are my thoughts so far, and hopefully they will evolve to something better.
I don’t think my relationship will change with this couple, its something private and I don’t know what the situation is to point a figure of blame nor do I want to. I think the initial shock just brought up a whole bunch of other emotions about other people in my life who just talk about porn or strip clubs like the girls/guys in it aren’t even people and I get upset that this attitude is just becoming the norm. THAT makes me angry and frustrated, and I think it just always fans up the same emotions.
Anyway I appreciate the feedback, if you have anything else for me keep the responses coming!
girlygirl wrote:The problem is when you drink a glass of wine controlled even when nothing bad is coming from it the wine isn’t a victim. In the circumstance of porn the person you are viewing is very much so. Even if you are viewing it with your spouse and using it to spice up the bedroom
there is some person out there who you are victimizing and treating as a objectto get yourself off. I don’t believe it is right for people to be treated this way. I don’t support this. Even more so if you aren’t PAYING for something that was produced, again, you don’t know under what circumstances these pictures/videos came about…So to say don’t judge someone for drinking wine, I can’t really compare that to someone pleasuring themselves over someone putting themselves in degrading and compromising positions. I should also add we are both younger in our twenties but these mags were of girls who seriously looked like they were 16…think the initial shock just brought up a whole bunch of other emotions about other people in my life who just talk about porn or strip clubs like the girls/guys in it aren’t even people and I get upset that this attitude is just becoming the norm…Anyway I appreciate the feedback, if you have anything else for me keep the responses coming! Maybe I’m just a callous and jaded selfish jerk but personally I don’t really feel that sorry for porn stars like Jenna Jameson or even no-name amateurs that maybe only do one sex tape and then move on with their lives as far as we really know. To automatically assume they are always victims in every single case seems like a case of projecting your own emotions onto others where if you wouldn’t ever want to do something like that then you think that everyone else should feel the same way. Maybe some people are just more comfortable with this kind of thing than others and mostly see it as a fast and easy way to make money without being scarred for life by it. I don’t doubt that there are some disgusting and abusive things going on in the porn industry worldwide but as far as I’m concerned most of the responsibility for stopping the abuse falls on the women themselves to say no to anything they aren’t comfortable with and law enforcement to to try to make sure they don’t have criminal coercion or people taking advantage minors going on in their jurisdiction. Trying to stop the abuse by trying to give porn consumers a guilt-trip about it is never going to stop it or even make a serious dent in it overall because the demand for porn is always going to be there regardless of what any one man does.
Quote:most of the responsibility for stopping the abuse falls on the women themselves to say no to anything they aren’t comfortable with
I agree with a lot of the first part of your comment and the last sentence, DA, but I disagree vehemently about the quote above. It’s hard to explain how strongly I disagree with it.
girlygirl, If this thread is a debate on the morality of porn use and manufacturing, I would have responded differently.
If the thread is about judging, then my analogy with alcohol is still something I think is valid, because it can be helpful to find a benign subject to test your feelings and conclusions on judging others. I could change the exercise to sabbath day observance and that shopping on Sunday always creates a victim (the store owner having to work) just to satisfy a person’s desire to purchase it on Sunday…but I don’t think it matters. There are victims of alcohol consumption too, even if some of your friends have partaken of it and you haven’t found it to be so bad. That is different than the making of porn, but again, we can set aside those particulars to discuss your reaction to it, if we are avoiding the debate on porn itself.
The idea I was making related to your reaction, and what you said in your OP:
Quote:I’m caught between judging people and feeling passionate about something
You are completely valid in your opinions on porn and how passionate you feel about it. And someone else might feel equally passionate about alcohol consumption or sabbath day shopping.
How you choose to react to others’ choices of what they do in their own house is about YOU.
girlygirl wrote:Most of my friends are not members and most of them drink and smoke pot, and for the most part, I don’t see it causing any harm
So…your feelings on your friends that smoke pot are different than your friends who look at porn. If you found a box of joints in your neighbors house while house sitting, that would be OK, but not the magazines you found? What I hear you saying is you have reasons why the making of porn is so awful to you, that it is never harmless. So to you, that makes sense, and you apply that to ALL porn, including playboy, R-rated movies, or whatever your definition of porn is. I repeat, you are totally valid to have those feelings. But it is also logical others may have different defintions of porn or different opinions on it.
So realizing there may be black or white thinking on the subject can be the thing that might help in figuring out how to deal with this. And if you accept you are a cafeteria person on other things like word of wisdom (you pick and choose what does and doesn’t bother you or what you believe about it), then perhaps that same logic can be applied to this situation with your neighbors, which may help in reducing the emotional response, and reducing a need to judge others to your standards, even while you stay passionate about it for yourself and your family.
I’m not trying to argue for porn here, I’m just presenting a thought exercise so you keep your emotions balanced with logic and reasoning so you don’t burn bridges with friends unnecessarily.
girlygirl wrote:for the most part been a pretty tolerant person
…except on porn for which you have no tolerance for anyone of any kind of porn you find objectionable. Right? That is also OK, you draw the line there.
We should all have boundaries we draw the line on what we think is right vs wrong. But it is how we deal with others andourboundaries that impacts relationships . In many ways, it is very much like having faith, and Fowler’s stages on faith. Your strong beliefs are what you put faith in about porn that motivates you to draw the lines on right vs wrong on that issue (which, is different than alcohol or sabbath day observance). There is no scientific or general proof … just social opinions and various values people in society have, and choose to have faith in your position on porn.
Stage 3 faith is the black and white thinking on the subject of porn. There is a line, and the church has preached to help establish the line. You realize others don’t agree with you, but those are the people who are wrong. You are right. You feel passionate about it. It keeps you safe. You talk to friends every week that affirm your position and boundaries. You feel compelled to go proselyte to convert others to your school of thinking. You use more hyperbole than facts and extreme positions to build up the hedges to protect yourself and your family from the evils of the rest of the world.
Stage 4 faith is the crisis of coming to more information that challenges the boundaries you had in stage 3. You actually love and respect your friends, and don’t understand how they can be good upstanding citizens and really good people when they have those magazines in their house. It doesn’t make sense. Further, you find out how many people in the church look at porn, including priesthood leaders you respect. They aren’t bad people…you wish you didn’t know all these confusing details. It makes you uncomfortable to the point you question your values in stage 3. Maybe porn doesn’t matter…but that doesn’t feel right. While the stories of rape videos on the Internet are abhorrent, that’s not what the neighbors are into. The Anti-porn groups that have affirmed your prior opinions have sensationalized their positions and don’t have all their facts straight. Those sources embellished the stories to make their point, and you now feel silly you believed all the propaganda to the point you judged and excluded other people when you shouldn’t have. You still don’t like porn, but now maybe you wonder if there is anything you should feel passionate about because it can lead to painful realizations. Its so confusing and hard to know what to believe in or what matters in life. Maybe we should just all do whatever we want in life. You feel your head is about to explode.
Stage 5 faith is coming to a realization that you do have an opinion on porn for you and your house. There are certain things that should not be tolerated, like crime (kiddy porn), but what others do in their marriage and in their bedrooms is up to them. You understand why the church preaches so hard against it to make their point, but you process that through your filter of experience to know how to apply it in your life so you don’t HAVE to judge others. Others are not worse or better than you because they have different opinions, but you focus on whether people are good people or not based on their actions, and porn is not an all-encompassing subject. You choose to be friends with your neighbors, and not sleep in their bedroom when you house sit to respect their privacy more. You can still feel passionate about your stance on porn AND not judge others. This can work and relieve the stress.
It can be a similar thought process for LDS church truth claims, porn, alcohol, sabbath observance, or other opinions that you have faith in that motivate you to take a position on one way or another.
I first want to state that I have seen value and truth in the many perspectives that have been shared here. Next I want to talk about my own experience because that is about the only thing that I am an expert on.
I have in my home a budding animal rights activist. At the tender age of six she politely declined eating any thanksgiving turkey in protest of the turkey having to die so that we may celebrate. She has spent SM making pro-animal flyers and then passing them out after the meeting (the flyers depicted different animals getting injured with the caption of “Don’t hurt the animals”). Her love and passion for animals is natural and truly comes from within her. I also believe that as she grows she will encounter tidbits about the meat processing industry that may strengthen her resolve. As much as it may be easier for everyone involved if she could just learn to consume animals like everyone else, I would hate for that to happen and would see it as a diminishing of her unique spiritual light.
We find ourselves in interesting situations where DD refuses to eat meat at the family reunion and explains her objections to it in a less than tactfull manner (my mother’s side of the family have been involved in dairy farming for generations and have gotten defensive to what might be viewed as attacks on their lifestyle). Some have argued that animals don’t feel fear or affection or pain – this is belittling to DD’s position.
So I believe the challenge is how to encourage and validate our daughter’s feelings and position without also feeding animosity and feelings of us vs. them for people that work in the meat industry or consume meat.
I’m sure this analogy has it’s limitations but the crux of the matter is how to view and treat other people who view things differently – even when their perspective goes against our strongest and most passionate beliefs. I love DD. I also love my mom’s side of the family. I don’t want this to be divisive.
I also agree that this should not become a defense or attack on porn itself. What is most important (IMO) is girlygirl’s deeply seated feelings towards porn and how they might challenge her relationships with others.
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