Who's afraid of finding porn addictive?

A few months ago, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and Playboy model Pamela Anderson co-authored a piece on pornography for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

It was a scathing attack on the “addictive dangers of porn” and described all those who watch it as “losers”. Boteach is a hard line Jewish scholar who talks about the “harmful effects” of masturbation. Anderson’s claim to fame is fairly well known.

Before she had this radical feminist epiphany of the McDworkin kind (because there are also feminists who make, watch and support porn), Anderson had appeared on the Playboy cover for an incredible 14 times, strutted along a California beach with her ample assets concealed in a barely-there bikini titillating millions of television viewers, and initiated legions of adolescents, including this writer (whom she now disparagingly terms as losers), into the world of porn with her infamous "Pam and Tommy sex tape" in the late 90s, long before RedTube and Pornhub was even an idea.

True we should not hold someone’s past behaviour against them while judging their present actions. Human beings can change. But only in the beginning of this year she posed again for Playboy (for the 15th time) and its founder, Hugh Hefner, the grand daddy of porn, to mark the last of its nude issues and also posted a nude photo of herself on instagram, around the same time she wrote the WSJ article. This actually makes Anderson well, a hypocrite.

The joint article by the strange bedfellows — an anti-masturbation crusader and a professional titillator - was quickly endorsed by Alexander Lucie Smith, a Catholic priest and doctor of moral theology. Writing in the Catholic Herald, a UK-based Roman Catholic magazine, he exhorted more entertainment stars and religious leaders to speak on porn so that the government is forced to disrupt the supply.

The irony cannot be missed: two leaders of Abrahamic faith who demonise and mistrust sexuality warning the rest of us what to be scared of. Religion is a poor doctor when it comes to sex. Talk to veteran sex therapists and marriage counsellors and they will tell you that there is no such thing called porn addiction.

Real addiction involves substances such as heroin and alcohol. Take away the object of dependency, and the addict begins to experience withdrawal symptoms including vomiting and hallucination. Even a habitual porn user, starved off his regular supply, never experiences such a reaction.

The WSJ article, however, leaves out a legitimate complaint about porn - that it portrays an unrealistic version of sexuality, with silicon implanted and surgically enhanced bodies doing things which most normal couples won’t do. This is something similar to an unrealistic Karan Johar movie or a special effects laden Rajinikanth film.

Like well informed movie buffs, if viewers of porn have proper sex education, they can deal with such porn fictions. But for that religious leaders who are professionally committed to being compassionate must show greater tolerance and accommodation.

World over, including in India, the Catholic Church has been at the forefront to stall the introduction of sexuality education in schools. This is strange because in his brief 33 years in this world, Jesus had never talked anything directly on sex.

He was also silent on some of the modern day sex-related controversies such as masturbation, homosexuality and abortion. May be it’s time the church does a rethink.

Also read: Why do Indians think pregnant women only want lemons, not sex?

(Courtesy of Mail Today)