Well, let's be clear: I wasn't thinking pornographic thoughts or images; I was thinking about pornography itself.
A friend of mine called me the other day to tell me about a young girl she is close to (and by "young" I mean probably early 30s) whose marriage was shattered upon discovering her husband's obsession with pornography. The girl found out because she couldn't figure out why her husband had become, after so many years of marriage, abusive with her. One thing led to another and she discovered this whole other life that he was leading that she was completely unaware of, and the first step seemed to be pornography.
This really bothered my friend because it wasn't the first marriage in her circle that had been blown apart by basically the same thing. Indeed, I know of similar situations among people I know. And maybe you do, too.
When I was a kid (sigh! Here we go again) we heard about pictures of nekkid women (you might say 'naked,' but we used to say 'nekkid' - which sounds more graphic, doesn't it?). But it wasn't easy to find then (outside of certain issues of National Geographic, which wasn't quite the same). Maybe a friend's father got Playboy magazine (scandalous at the time), but I only heard about it. I did have a friend who allegedly had these playing cards he'd stumbled across somehow that had the black-and-white pictures of nekkid women on them. I say "allegedly" because I never really saw them. He kept them hidden in his basement, so terrified of someone finding out about his secret treasure that he refused to bring them out to show off. For all I know, they're still hidden above the heating duct, between two floor joists, way back in the dirt crawl space under his house.
Of course now you walk down any mall in America and can't avoid images that, in my childhood, would have been considered, well, pornographic (if we'd even known the word, which I don't think we did).
Walk down the mall? How about just turn on the computer? You can't hardly check email without some kind of picture or offer of someone 'looking' for you (and by that they really mean hoping you'd look at them).
When The Heir was just kind of coming to that age where I figured it was time to start talking about such things, with the noblest of intentions I decided to educate him about the kind of women he would run into as he grew up.
I told him there were women out there that didn't respect themselves, but that I wanted him to respect all women, whether they respected themselves or not. He asked how he would know the ones who respected themselves from the ones who didn't, and I just said that he'd know - it might be the way they dressed, or the way they acted, or their conversation, but he'd know.
It was stupid, I know. Not because it was so totally judgemental on my part (and such a guy attitude), but because from then on, whenever we were out in public, The Little Heir would walk along beside me, scanning every female he saw and then, in a sincere little voice that was just a little too loud, ask me, "Dad - does that woman respect herself? How about that one? Does she respect herself?"
You can't imagine the kind of looks I got (and, I admit, deserved).
I realize now of course that I had it backward. I should have been teaching The Heir - and myself - that the issue of respect was internal: the only respect I should have been concerned with was that The Heir learned to respect himself.
We had a later conversation about horror movies. A bunch of his friends had it in their heads to go see some slasher film, and The Heir was upset that The Trophy Wife and I wouldn't let him go. When he asked why, I told him that he needed to guard his mind, that whatever images he allowed in their would be there forever. The things he was likely to see in that movie (and others like it) would stay with him; once seen, there would be no way to erase them.
(Selfishly, of course, I was concerned about nightmares. I didn't want him going to sleep and waking up screaming, and then coming into my room and getting into bed with The Trophy Wife and I, afraid to go to sleep.)
Much later - to my chagrin - I realized the same truth about horror movies would apply to pornography: once the images or ideas are in your head, you can't get them out.
Complicating the problem is that it doesn't take long before the people in those images are no longer real people. Instead of being somebodies' daughter or sister they become objects of self-gratification, less than human. Nobody cares what the person in the picture thinks or believes or reads or listens to; nobody cares how she spends her holidays or what her dreams are. She becomes an object - a vehicle, if you will, like a car or train or plane whose sole purpose is to 'take you there.'
To think that the actors or models might have real emotions or feelings ruins the image. After all, cars don't have feelings and emotions, only a machine-like purpose.
Some people take care of their cars. Some people abuse them. Some people take care of the people in their lives; some people abuse them.
I know, I know - people have free will. Who am I to tell them it's not "respectful?"
And you're right. It's not my place.
My only responsibility is to respect myself - which includes how I allow myself to see others.
Don't misunderstand. I'm as tempted as the next guy when it comes to attractive women. And yes, I admit I've been inside a strip club in my life. But I was always so self-conscious that it was just uncomfortable.
I remember going with a friend of mine, way back before I was married. It was his bachelor party, and the 'best man' took us all to a strip club. We went inside for awhile, but after a few minutes I slipped outside where, to my surprise, I found the soon-to-be groom. We never said why we were outside. We just sat on the steps of the club and started talking, then laughing, then telling stories (lies, or near-lies), and generally having a great time.
I am probably messing this story up, but I remember reading C. S. Lewis (I think it was) put it this way: imagine going into a fine restuarant, and ordering the most expensive meal on the menu, having the waiter bring it to your table with a cover over it, and after much teasing and drama he pulls the cover off, and this incredible meal sits there on my plate and I look at it, admire it from all angles, joke about how good I bet it is - then pay for it and walk out, never having tasted it.
You'd think I was stupid, wouldn't you? But isn't it the same thing?
At some point, you get frustrated. And frustration leads, too often, to anger, and perhaps violence. While what you wanted, in the beginning, was something good and healthy, now it has become an obsession and you don't care how you get it. And it becomes wrong.
The actor, Paul Newman - considered a really good-looking guy - was once asked about the women that made themselves available to him, and if he wasn't ever tempted. Newman, married to a good Southern girl and a pretty actress named Joanne Woodward, answered this way: "Sure, I'm aware of it. I'm not dead. But why would I settle for hamburger when I have steak at home?"
Now, Woodward happened to be in the next room when he said it, and came storming into the room, unhappy at being referred to as if she were a piece of meat.
It was obvious they respected each other.
And themselves.
Turns out, the Staple Singers had it right: "If you don't respect yourself ain't nobody going to give a good cahoot ..."
Ah, let's just let Mavis tell it:
OK, that was supposed to be a video link of Mavis Staples. Maybe it didn't work. If not, and you want to hear one of the great soul singers of all time, click here
Respect yourself.
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