Proclaimer Blog
Let’s be honest about porn
I’ve just finished reading one of the most traumatic books I’ve ever read. Kat Banyard’s Pimp Nation is an assessment of the sexualised culture we live in as seen through the scope of prostitution, pornography and associated issues. Banyard is not a Christian. She works for an aggressive feminist lobby group called Feminista UK. I’m guessing we don’t have a whole heap in common. Nevertheless, this is an excellent book (Note: it’s not for the faint-hearted; I feel I have read it so you don’t have to!)
In it, Banyard lays bare some of the myths of the adult world. She demolishes several arguments about prostitution (showing, along the way, how those who pimp prostitutes often win support craftily by using language of sex ‘trade’ or sex ‘workers’ thereby legitismising it). I think some of what she writes about prostitution would find agreement amongst our evangelical constituency (though I’m guessing many of us would be shocked to know exactly what goes on and how abusive it is; for the record she nails prostitution as a clear form of sexual abuse which would not be tolerated in other parts of society).
However, it is her writing about porn which is especially helpful, demolishing the notion, often bandied around that porn is fantasy. She points out the absurdity of a school education programme which encourages pupils to play ‘real sex/fantasy sex’ putting porn acts into two categories to try to show pupils that some thing that they see on screen are not for real relationships. But, argues Banyard, the very fact that they are on screen, graphically enacted, means that they are real for some.
We have thus anonymised porn and made it ‘a little harmless fun.’ “Pornography isn’t fantasy – it’s a corporeal trade that extracts profits from sexual abuse, fulfilling a demand that sex inequality created.” Porn is sexual abuse. She writes “maintaining that the porn trade is not an industrialised form of sexual abuse relies on the fantastical notion that porn studios have somehow managed to create a kind of economic and sexual nirvana: a place where a woman’s desire to have sex is miraculously in sync with the director’s schedule; where she happens to want and like all the sexual acts required by the director and which just happen to be the same acts which are most profitable for said director.”
I really appreciated this direct analysis. We’re far too easy on porn. We’re wanting to help those caught up in it in our churches, but we tend to do so in terms of what is good for them. Of course, a porn addiction is ungodly and no good for those caught up in it. But there is more. It is participation in this monetised abuse, what Banyard calls “filmed prostitution.”
Perhaps what interests me most about all of this is that Banyard lays the blame for this entire culture at the door of what she calls sex inequality. In part, she blames the church for this. Fair point, the church has been guilty of sexual misogyny in the past. But for me the deep irony is that it is the Bible, God’s word, which makes the best argument for sex equality. 1 Corinthians 7 anybody! It’s radical stuff.
We have something positive to say and we must not be coy about saying it. But even deeper than this, in the church today, we must be honest about porn.