Let's Talk About Rape

This past weekend I found out a family member was recently raped. My emotions are raw. Compounded with the fact that I know the person who raped her, anger doesn't begin to explain how I feel. I mostly hurt for her and the pain she has been dealing with since the rape. It has affected her life in countless ways, and she mostly kept quiet for a time and suffered in silence.

I'm addicted to porn. I stopped having my needs met with vanilla porn years ago. I still view it of course, but always coupled with more extreme forms. Rape is one of those forms that has mysteriously drawn me in and fascinated me. It's a category on most sites, and if it isn't finding it with a few select keywords is not difficult. I've fantasized about it, gotten turned on by it, and of course masturbated to it. Who could argue that there's a strong link between sex and violence. I understand it. I can't deny the erection I often get when I see women tortured or murdered in Hollywood movies. However, as is the case with all forms of pornography, I fear I've been insulated from reality.

Here's the point. How can I continue to watch, support and celebrate something that causes the suffering, mental anguish, and abuse of others? A few months ago, I came across a video of an ex-porn actress discussing why she left porn. After watching the video, my addictive mind took control, and I decided to search for her videos. The first one I came across was of her with multiple partners, and it was very rough. However, for the first time in my life, although I had searched this out to feed my lust, I realized I wasn't turned on. I wasn't even watching the sex acts. The entire time I was watching her face. I never saw her smile. I saw many grimaces, and I saw pain in her expression. I couldn't finish it. How many times are we watching women get raped for our amusement?

I wish this would stop me forever, but I know the chances of that are slim. I'm only 13 days into a 90 day reboot challenge, so I'm just at the start of my journey. Here's what I do hope. Right now, the thought of viewing rape porn makes me want to throw my computer out the window. I just see my family member's face. Perhaps the next time I wander onto one of my sites, and I'm looking at titles and thumbnails, I will avoid the harsher ones and the rape fantasies, and maybe that will slap me out of my current relapse and motivate me to close the browser. It isn't the only thing that will stop me, but it is a weapon. One of many weapons we need to employ against this monster of a force that feeds our addictions. I just wish someone I'm close to didn't have to get raped for me to earn it.

 

Wow, that is a tough realization for you. You are right that there is a strong link between sex and violence as you mentioned above. I think that the porn industry (and Hollywood has a hand in it as well) has pushed that link to normalize rape and violence against women. There are many porn actresses that have spoken out after leaving the industry, saying that they did things in those videos because they were pressured to do extreme things. I watched a porn documentary (before I knew about my SO's addiction) and the young women were talking between scenes about how they actually were not comfortable with what they were doing. Many are told that they will be discarded if they do not perform things they are expected to do. They worked through some scenes and then could possibly not be paid. They spoke about how pressured they felt to do it because they would loose their job, and wouldn't be given work by anyone else. It is a horrible industry for women.

Maybe you could try to think about how all of those women really don't want to participate but feel pressured to do so. In that way, it could be viewed as a form of rape, doing something you really don't feel comfortable doing. Maybe seeing all porn in that way may help you through your reboot.

 

Thank you, and that's my hope. Unfortunately, I also know the power of sex and porn addiction. It's the same power that would drive an alcoholic to have another drink in spite of leaving his/her life in ruins. I've tried using motivations in the past that would force me to think and view the women I'm seeing as people. Think of them as my daughter or my sister. How would I feel if they were subjected to the thinks I'm lusting after, but it was never strong enough to keep me away. It is, however, a single weapon as I stated above. Anybody who is battling porn and addiction has to battle it from many fronts in order to prevail.

I not longer want to objectify women, and I do hope this will help me through my reboot. I've felt for a long time that my conscience is seared, and that I am no longer able to be horrified by what I view. I think a small part of the horror has returned for me, and perhaps that also means my conscience is slowly healing.

 

It is slowly healing. It does get easier and better over time. The more you tell yourself how horrible porn is to women, the more you will likely begin to really believe it and stay away from it. And yes, the addiction is not easy to overcome, but you are going in the right direction.

 

I am slowly recognizing the exploitation. It's so easy to forget. You say you're a disgusting person for viewing women as sex objects, but don't forget that society is force feeding us women as sex objects in every medium. I don't say this as an excuse or as a justification for my own failures, but until we as a society recognize the harm and degradation that is all around us, the objectification will never stop. It's not just in the porn industry. It's in the fashion and modeling industry, advertising, television, movies, plays, malls - the list is practically endless. I was at a Chick-fil-A this past weekend, and as I was walking to the bathroom there was a table of women wearing the shortest shorts. I had to fight to not look. My heart was racing just knowing they were there, but I couldn't leave the area until my daughter was out of the bathroom. I made it through that experience, but that's an example of how my addiction has rammed the objectification of women into me. If my eyes linger, if I allow myself to take in the lust hits, what am I doing but seeing these women as nothing but body parts to fulfill my inner desires.

Is this part of the rape culture? Perhaps. I can't control what other people wear, what television shows are made, or what ads pop up on my computer screen. What I can control are my thoughts and what I choose to feed my brain. If I think about women as only body parts, is it any surprise that I can get turned on by a depiction of rape? After all, it's only body parts slamming into each other. As sex addicts we have to come to terms with the fact that our addiction is so much more than avoiding browser windows and masturbation. It's how we view the world and everyone in it.

 

Although rape porn content is disturbing for some of us, (especially for non addicts) this addiction desensitizes emotions. That is probably the worst side effect of this addiction. It causes people to dehumanize women. It is very sad that it took such a horrific event to change his thinking, But the OP is now starting to empathize, which is a huge step forward and shows that changes are starting to happen. Although you may not be able to sympathize with the OP, maybe having some empathy with the fact that this addiction creates a rift between a person's morals and their addictive behaviours and thoughts. It is a difficult struggle to overcome.

 

There's no need to apologize. I could never expect any sympathy for my sins. I have allowed my lust and addiction to progress unchecked for decades, and I am only now attempting to heal the harm I have done to myself and others. I have plenty of self-hate to last the rest of my life, but I also have faith I am not beyond redemption. My heart aches and is broken for the pain that my family member is experiencing, but I also have so much anger and hate. This is not directed only at her rapist, but at myself for knowing that these kinds of acts have fed my addiction. I wish that someone I love didn't have to be traumatized for me to completely recognize the atrocity of what I view, and my hope is that posting this will help others come to that realization on their own.

 

"@Jodo Kus",
Thank you for your comments. And to be clear, I am not relapsing today. I'm still 14 days strong, and I'm forging ahead with my 90 day reboot. I'd like to address one thing you had said:

I believe I understand what you are saying, but please understand that although the tragedy that was my relative's rape and my porn addiction are different and separate indeed, they are also very connected under what is identified as rape culture. The committing of rape along with the casual consumption and acceptance of rape are what perpetuates rape culture along with other things such as victim blaming and female objectification. It's this very rape culture that I have, through my porn addiction, actively supported. I do not blame myself for what happened to my relative, but I do believe that what has happened to her and my instant horrified realization of how rape affects the innocent - which is every single victim of rape - can be used as a means for me to target and eliminate at least a small subsection of porn from my life. Anything that can be used to overcome an addiction is, in my opinion, a weapon that can be wielded.

Isn't this how recovery tends to work - that only through life altering consequences can an addict understand the full extend of the addiction? I have not hit my rock bottom. My addiction, although sick and rampant, has continued unabated for many years. Through it all, I still managed to court and marry my wife of 10 years. I have two beautiful children I would give my own life for. Would that all change if my wife knew the full extent of what I've consumed and how I've acted out? Perhaps. I tend to believe she would divorce me immediately. Without having hit my rock bottom, I've managed over the past year to come to terms with how deeply entrenched pornography has invaded my mind. It has become the source of many problems with my life: how I react to everyday circumstances, my relationship with my wife and children, and on and on. I am at war with it. The weapon I referenced above, one of many I am attempting to arm myself with, is the knowledge of how rape affects women. Now, if I do relapse, it will be impossible for me not to think of my relative when I'm thinking about what to watch. What scenarios I will allow myself to indulge.

Sex and porn addiction is a multifaceted beast. It is as invasive and destructive to the mind as Nazi Germany was to the world. I am at battle to save my life, to protect my wife and children, and to put myself in a position where I can positively influence my son when he gets to the age where he discovers the internet. Anything I can use that will help me defeat it, I will use it. Not at the expense of others, and I don't believe I'm doing that, but at the expense of my own pleasures which I know I need to sacrifice in order to overcome.

 

It's not just what MsPants said about desensitizing, but also because brains are wired differently.

For men, the visual parts of their brains are strong and tend to trigger their emotions. The amygdala in men is significantly larger in size than it is in women. Using imaging equipment, Emory University in Atlanta found that the amygdala, which controls emotions and motivation, is much more activated in men than in women when they view sexual material. This, scientists believe, is one of the reasons men are much more captivated by pornography than women. Why does this mean anything? Well, science tells us that this brain region is rather dull witted and primitive. It responds to emotion that we see by intensity, not type. The emotional intensity that we perceive in a rape or force scenario is registered as exciting by the primitive regions of the brain. It's the responsibility of the higher brain (ala frontal cortex) to distinguish the types of emotion we are registering and process them as positive or negative allowing either attraction or repulsion.

Complexity comes in when you consider hypofrontality due to porn use. As habitual porn users, we literally shrink and atrophy the frontal cortex, the place in the brain where executive decision making takes place. Add that 88% (it is estimated) of "normal" porn contains violence of one type or another, and desensitization to material (as MsPants states) via repetition also comes into play. It's a perfect storm of various items.

Understand that none of this lets men off the hook, nor am I suggesting it does. You are not a lab rat driven by hormones and random brain impulses. You're a higher form of life capable of making decisions that shape and determine where those hormonal surges and brain impulses take you. But I do feel it's important to understand the science of it all. It's the foundation of the house that porn built. In order to tear that house down within ourselves, we need to grasp it's construction.

 

Very well put. It is absolutely important to understand the scientific aspect of this addiction and how it forms and functions. It is the perfect storm. Thank you for the intellectually stimulating and easy read!

 

http://yourbrainonporn.com/men-and-women-differ-amygdala-response-visual-sexual-stimuli-2004

Thank you, MsPants. I confess I occasionally enjoy getting my nerd on as it were. The link above is off Gary's site to the Emory study. The Emory study is just one of many. I've replaced a porn addiction with a nerdy science addiction.

 

Thank you @pardaemma. My hope is to get to the point where my horror for what I'm viewing is greater than my addiction and my lust. I don't know if I will fully ever get there, which is why these thoughts should be one of many weapons we use with our fight against porn. I agree with you in that there are many things I see online that I would never do, rape would be one of those. I know the human mind has plenty of room to fantasize before crossing a line into reality. At the same time, it's also well known that part of the escalation of viewing porn involves acting out in real life. This doesn't happen to everyone, but it does happen, and it happened to me - not with rape or anything that directly harmed somebody, but I did start to act out in real life the past few years before I was able to reel my addiction to just watching porn. The reality is, when we become desensitized to what we view, it no longer becomes a leap but rather a much smaller step to cross over that line into reality.

As far as what we view in porn productions, I want to emphasize that it's impossible to know what you are seeing and how the performers are feeling unless you know them personally. I remember a conversation I had with another sex addict some time ago. He had asked me directly if I had viewed underage pornography. I immediately objected and dismissed his question - of course I hadn't. I stick to mainstream porn sites and nothing else. He then asked me, how do I know that I hadn't viewed underage porn? I couldn't answer because he's right - I couldn't know for sure. All of the amateur scenes that are posted, the young girls that are rampant throughout all porn sites, there's no way to know or verify if they are 18, 17, or worst case scenario even younger. The fact is I very well could have MOd to illegal porn without even knowing it was illegal. Unfortunately, that conversation didn't stop me from continuing in my addiction, but I'm thinking about it now. It's another weapon I can use.

 

I agree wholeheartedly. We can't rely on self-control when we are already in the middle of relapsing. Once the consumption starts, there's very little to slap us back to our senses unless we orgasm and get it over with. Perhaps I'm hoping the moral centers of my brain will heal enough to stop me before I even start by helping me realize the dehumanization of what I am about to watch under the guise of pleasuring myself. I don't pretend that this will work every time, or that it would even work at all, but I'm on a journey to heal my conscience and to become a man I'm not ashamed of and that my kids can be proud of. I too no longer wish to be the low-life scumbag that I would never let near my daughter when she's of age. I no longer want to think of myself and hate how I've turned into a creep or a perv that women are disgusted with. The only way we can do that as you said, @Dendrite, is to rip porn out of our lives with no half-measures or compromises.