What Is Pornography?

One of the things that often becomes a topic of discussion within my conversations with clients is a question that I ask them when they struggle to put porn behind them. 

What is pornography?

I think that we believe this to be a fairly straightforward question with a really simple answer and I don’t think that is really the case. 

The late justice of the supreme court, Potter Stewart, in a landmark case regarding obscenity, made it clear that when answering this question, we know what it is.  Is response was essentially, “I know it when I see it.”

So, let me talk you through a more technical definition, a typical LDS definition, and then I’ll share with you my personal definition.   

The definition that I believe I often find used in technical papers and scientific journals of pornography is, I’m paraphrasing, “media depictions of real people, really having sex or masturbating.”  This is how the Oxford dictionary says it. “books, magazines, movies, etc., with no artistic value that describes or show sexual acts or naked people in a way that is intended to be sexually exciting:”

I take that to mean that the people making porn are making it with the real sensation of sexual organs being used to generate the content.  

That is a somewhat narrow definition and not one that I think a lot of people who listen to this podcast will agree with, but it is probably the most widely accepted definition from an academic perspective.

This is where we see the difference between performative media that includes nudity or even sex that is part of the story, which we see more regularly within the various streaming services, and pornography that is being produced simply for the purpose of arousal.  

This isn’t my definition, but it is a distinction that you might find helpful in the process of learning how to decrease the emotion behind your understanding of pornography and how it is impacting your life and your relationships.  

What I would like you to see in this distinction is simply that not all nudity, sex, or sexuality is equal.  When I was in my early 20’s there was a sister who was an artist studying at the University of Chicago Illinois who was telling me about some of the nudes that she was drawing, painting, and sketching.  It made me very uncomfortable because I had this sense that all nudity was pornographic and that good sisters in the church would never engage in that sort of activity. 

That may make you uncomfortable and that may not be valuable for you and your spouse to make the distinctions just yet, but it is important that you take a moment and decide if the ways that you’ve been thinking about nudity, sex, or sexuality are currently helpful to your capacity to create the thriving life you want or have they been holding you back.  

The second definition is probably the one that you are most familiar with, possible the one that you will agree the most with, and maybe the one that you were most likely taught either implicitly or explicitly as a member of the church. 

For this I’ll share with you Darcy’s thoughts on it.  

From Darcy- I know for me when you were struggling with pornography, I viewed pornography as pretty much anything that made me feel the slightest bit uncomfortable. That could be a woman wearing a bikini, a sex scene in a network TV show, or even just a very beautiful woman that I felt threatened by. Now I realize that the three things I mentioned just now are not really what I would consider pornography, but the way my body reacted to those “threats” felt like pornography to me. Looking back, I can see how this idea was not very helpful for either Zach or me. It created a great deal of anxiety for both Zach and me. 

I’ve heard people talk about others as “walking pornography”.  I’ve also heard church leaders, including one last year at girls camp tell our daughters about the time he saw a young woman in a bikini and that made him uncomfortable.

I think we can call this the all things that are sexual and non-sexual that have to do with too much skin, sex scenes, immodesty at any level, or just she’s pretty and he might look at her theory of pornography. 

This was a really difficult way to live. It was difficult to live because when I was around Darcy, I had to make a show of not seeing anything so she could feel safe.  It was also difficult to live when I was all by myself because simply the mere noticing of another woman who isn’t Darcy and finding them attractive at any level made me feel that I was a deeply flawed and unrighteous, unworthy person. 

 

I want you to see how impossible a standard this is, and this is part of the work Darcy and I do in our individual coaching with our clients, especially those who want to really thrive beyond pornography, is we deconstruct this in our minds to make a livable standard. 

The way I see this standard is, if someone is beautiful or attractive at any level, then I’m not allowed to notice them, acknowledge that beauty, or appreciate their attractiveness.  Meanwhile, biology has me seeing beauty in the world around me, acknowledging it, and appreciating it with every pass of my eyeball.  That, by the way, is exactly how I found such an attractive woman to marry.  

In part, this standard can have a component of jealousy, and in part, it can have a component of trying to manage sexuality out of our sight.  

Meanwhile, biology is working directly against these things to bring us together with an attractive partner.  

I think it’s important to acknowledge here that choosing pornography is not something I advocate for, and if your reasoning is, well, I just find it so attractive that I can’t help but seek it.  I think you need to be able to see the difference between seeing something and acknowledging or appreciating it and seeking something for self-gratification, especially at the expense of your values. 

With that said, taking a look at this definition is about realizing that if we set up an impossible standard, keeping that standard becomes a self-defeating process that demoralizes anyone who tries to live it because it is both unrealistic and impossible to live in society without seeing beauty.  

I once had a client tell me that he just wanted it to be that he was only attracted to his wife and no one else.   I told him that if his wife was the only attractive woman out there, every other man on the planet would be at a loss. 

We all want to be able to find others attractive, both men and women want this power, because it is good, and useful when we employ it in the service of living our values.  

Ok, the final definition is my own definition of what pornography is, and this is more a philosophy than a definition, so bear with me. 

When I think about sexual imagery, videos, photos, statues, or even descriptions, as you might find in books called erotica, I bring a test to whether I will choose to engage with them. 

The test is simply this, is this media drawing me into choosing to take my sexuality toward it and away from my wife?

Let me give you an example.  We were watching a movie the other night that was rated PG.  In one of the scenes, the main male character, pre-love interest in the main female character, walks in on the woman in her bra and underwear.  Did I notice she was basically dressed in a bikini? Yes.  Did I see her and acknowledge that she was an attractive woman? Yes.  Was I drawn into trying to take my sexuality toward her and away from my wife?  No.  

In years past, I would have pretended not to see, but seeing, lingered on the image in my mind to effectively draw up sexual feelings in myself toward this image.  Now, I see it, and I don’t let myself get derailed by it.  It went by unremarked on by Darcy.- (Darcy remarked on this as we were writing this, “I didn’t even remember that scene nor did it “trigger” me one bit. In years past that would have ended up as a long conversation about what was going on for him and if that was going to lead to porn. It would have been a little thing that would get blown up into this big deal and would have taken all the focus. Instead of enjoying the movie, I would have been worried about that very innocent scene and missed the cute little story. “

I think we do ourselves a disservice by being overly conscientious of how much of another person’s skin we can see before we are lost in the sea of pornography is everywhere. 

The nakedness of others is not what is at issue here for most of us.  I know it really isn’t for me.  If I were an ER doctor and the most beautiful woman in the world were brought into the OR with a gunshot wound, one of the first things that happens is all the person’s clothes are cut off.  

That person’s nakedness isn’t sexual or meant to draw in the sexuality of anyone.  

What I choose to do with what I see, whether I move toward my values or away from them, determines who I am. 

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