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What conditions make violence against women more likely?

I first began asking this after an experience as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Northeastern Brazil, when we passed by a home where a woman had just, the night prior, been killed by her husband.

I’ll never forget that day. Neighbors were speaking on the street in hushed tones about how they had heard the screams. Rather than a surprise, this woman’s violent death seemed to have followed years of torment at the hands of her husband—so much so that some who lived close-by admitted they had become used to it.

How was this even possible? How could anything like this take place, I wondered, especially at the hands not of strangers, but of men most responsible to nurture, love and protect?

Women around the world continue to face disheartening levels of violence from husbands, boyfriends, dates, colleagues and sometimes strangers. Perhaps if we understood—truly understood, at a deeper level—why such abuse was taking place, we could do something more about it.

Several years ago, Public Square Magazine generously provided initial funding for me to gather a research team to gather published studies around the world that get at the roots of this question. Our small team reviewed thousands of studies to identify those focused specifically on risk factors for sexual violence. 

Our team paid careful attention to risk factors for both sexual perpetration and victimization. The studies explored span the globe, uniting insights from dedicated research teams doing incredible work in many countries and across a wide variety of settings (campuses, workplaces and homes). We also paid careful attention to general studies of “domestic violence” or “intimate partner violence,” which tend to include some degree of sexual coercion and abuse as well.

Earlier this year, I completed this review of 500 abuse studies (285 adult, 215 youth), publishing a summary version of these results in the Deseret News, and the full-length, 73 page version also posted on my Substack last month. 

In this project, we have hoped to add to the ongoing, international project to “further unravel the complicated … interactions related to victimization,” as European analysts wrote recently—ultimately considering how “specific combinations of characteristics may contribute to an increased likelihood of victimization.”

In 2014, however, other CDC researchers admitted, “Rates of sexual violence remain alarmingly high, and we still know very little about how to prevent it.”

The good news is that if we can capture a clearer picture of what’s really making this kind of tragic violence against women more likely, we can then take more effective steps to eradicate this evil which terrorizes so many women (of all ages and backgrounds) around the world today.

Here, I provide a summary analysis of patterns that make sexual violence against women more likely—with a deeper focus on patterns in relation to faith and religiosity. After reviewing these results, I will touch on practical steps that families and communities can take—each of which follow from these findings. 

10 patterns associated with increased vulnerability

1. Fragile family economic well-being

Women growing up in difficult economic circumstances (insufficient family income, lack of employment, food insecurity) are more vulnerable to being victimized sexually—while men growing up in these same circumstances are more vulnerable to becoming sexually aggressive.

The opposite is also true in homes where economic needs are met (sufficient income, employment and food), consistently showing men and women in these families being protected from being drawn into sexual violence and other kinds of abuse too.

While having paid work outside the home acts as a preventive measure against sexual violence for some women, many studies in developing countries find the opposite—with formal employment sometimes heightening a risk of victimization for women, especially those with isolated jobs or which involve night shifts.

2. Limited educational opportunities

Studies around the world show women to be more vulnerable to sexual violence when they have little to no education. Men are also more likely to be sexually aggressive when they are illiterate, or have a lower level of formal education.

The opposite is again true, with women who have more years of education frequently less likely to be victimized and men with more education are also less likely to perpetrate sexual violence.

There are exceptions to this protective effect from education since some campus environments appear to raise the risk of sexual violence. And there are some parts of the world where a woman with more education than her husband somehow raises her risk of being victimized.

3. Living in an unhealthy, conflicted intimate relationship

Women who are divorced, cohabiting or living alone are all at greater risk for sexual violence, according to different studies. None of this means married women are automatically safer, however, with so much depending on how cooperative and happy a marriage is, along with how much serious conflict is involved.

4. Raising young children without adequate support

According to multiple studies, the presence of children in a home increases a mother’s risk level for abuse victimization generally—likely due to the added stress this places upon marriages and families.

Whether due to marital conflict, economic struggles, mental health challenges or additional children, families enduring heightened levels of stress clearly appear more vulnerable to different kinds of abuse.

Even the addition of a single child raises victimization risk, with studies also showing heightened vulnerability to abuse at the hands of an intimate partner during pregnancy. Sadly, women unable to have children face additional victimization risk. And in some parts of the world, having a daughter instead of a son likewise increases the risk of victimization.

The quality of parenting clearly makes a difference for what a child’s future safety will be as adults. A home life that is chaotic, disrupted, impoverished, with parents who are uneducated, addicted or divorced, raises the risk of eventual victimization for that child as they become an adult.

5. Drug and alcohol abuse

Few factors have received more consistent empirical verification than the impact of alcohol and drugs—not only on men who are significantly more likely to perpetrate sexually under the influence of substances, but also on women who are more likely to be sexually victimized under the influence.

As Italian researchers summarize, “alcohol can impair cognition, distort reality, increase aggression, and ease drug-facilitated sexual assault.”

Drug use can also “render a victim incapable of defending themselves or unable to avoid dangerous situations where victimization may occur” according to U.S. researchers.

This is especially true with heavy, regular substance use, which U.S. researchers in one campus study called “one factor that has been found in most studies to be associated with higher risk for sexual aggression.”

There appears to be even higher vulnerability when both a man and woman are under the influence, with one U.S. research team concluding, “the amount of alcohol consumed by both perpetrators and victims also predicted the amount of aggression and type of sexual assault.”

If you grew up in a home with alcohol or were exposed to alcohol and other substances at an early age, there’s also evidence of increased risk for sexual violence as an adult. Alcohol is also one major reason sexual violence is often higher in college, especially campuses with a cultural acceptance of heavy drinking as a social norm.

6. Early, risky, casual sexual behavior

When women have sexual experiences earlier in life, they are at greater risk of sexual violence—especially when that involves casual “hook-ups” with multiple people. One research team called this “simple probability,” in that “multiplying partners would increase the chances of being involved with a violent partner.”

Repeatedly, studies also confirm that higher numbers of sexual partners increase the likelihood of men perpetrating sexual violence.

Cohabitation and extramarital affairs likewise raise the risk of sexual violence, as does overall impulsivity. For example, gambling is associated with increased risk of both perpetration and victimization.

In the other direction, stronger impulse control and overall self-control unsurprisingly protect against sexual violence.

Relatedly, over 100 studies have linked compulsive pornography use to sexual aggression, coercion and violence against women and children. For instance, one 2015 analysis examining 22 studies from 7 different countries concluded that pornography consumption was “associated with sexual aggression in the United States and internationally, among males and females, and in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies.”

7. Ongoing, significant mental health challenges

It’s expected that victims would experience depression and anxiety in the difficult aftermath of abuse. There’s also evidence that women who experience mental health problems are at greater, additional risk of being victimized sexually—as are those who endure traumatic effects from any previous abuse.

Studies also find that men with different mental health challenges, including depression and bipolar disorder, can sometimes be at greater risk of perpetration. And there are cases in which medical treatments appear to have prompted sexual aggression among male patients that was “wholly alien to their character and antithetical to their prior behavior,” in the words of one psychiatrist.

In terms of victimization, Canadian researchers also note several studies confirming that “psychotropic drug abuse” can sometimes alter women’s judgment and “keep them from recognizing and avoiding dangerous situations and defending themselves against an attack.”

8. Adverse childhood experiences and young adult aggression

The atmosphere of one’s family upbringing can influence risk for sexual victimization and perpetration as an adult. Studies highlight lower levels of earlier “family cohesion” and “emotional expressiveness in the family” as predicting later abuse.

Witnessing significant fighting between a mother and father as a child also raises later victimization risk—especially if that conflict is unresolved and leads to separation and divorce. Any type of family disruption and residential displacement increases the risk of sexual victimization and exploitation. This risk rises to an entirely new level, however, for children who have witnessed parents hurting each other physically, emotionally or sexually.

When those children get hurt emotionally or physically, they experience even more risk for victimization or perpetration when they grow up. This is especially true when children are sexually victimized, with German researchers observing that “sexual abuse in childhood increases the odds of experiencing and engaging in sexual aggression in adolescence and young adulthood.”

This has been known for decades now, with U.S. researchers stating back in 1998, “childhood sexual abuse consistently predicted sexual re-victimization in adulthood.”

That risk rises even more when multiple kinds of early abuse are involved, with Swedish researchers reporting that exposure to different kinds of abuse in childhood was “found to be the most potent risk factor for sexual violence in adulthood among adult women.”

When women experience sexual violence as a young adult—be that from a boyfriend or stranger—they are also more likely to be victimized again (even repeatedly).

9. Limited social support and expanding isolation

One pattern that seems especially clear empirically is that anytime a woman is isolated she is more at risk. This includes women who: (1) communicate less with their own family of origin, (2) live at a residence with no other adults, (3) have only a transient place of residence, (4) live in a rented house (especially by themselves), (5) work a night shift, and (6) experience barriers to healthcare access.

This may also explain why women (and children) living in a “post-conflict” zone or areas that have recently endured natural disasters experience heightened risk for sexual victimization.

In the other direction, those women who report experiencing the support of friends, family and surrounding community are less likely to be victimized sexually. 

But a lot depends on the attitudes of surrounding relationships. It’s clearly no great protection to be surrounded by in-laws or other neighbors who see violence in a marriage as “sometimes justified.” And being around friends who also experience sexual violence or normalize any kind of abuse also measurably raises the risk of victimization for women.

Clearly, not all communities have equal levels of awareness of this problem. That is even more apparent when we look back through different time periods in history when global awareness of this danger was far less.

10. Limited religious community and faith commitment

Religious faith plays an important role in the risk for sexual violence. For instance, one set of studies finds a lack of religious affiliation to be associated with more likelihood of sexual perpetration among men and sexual victimization among women. For instance: 

• “Low religious involvement” in the family raises risk for abuse among immigrant women in Spain (Vives-Cases, et al., 2014). 
• Women “lacking religious commitment” are at greater risk of victimization in Mozambique (Maguele, et al., 2020).  
• “Lack of faith and lower attendance at religious services correlated with higher levels of abuse” according to U.S. researchers—sharing their findings that women abused during pregnancy “professed less religious faith and religious service attendance” (Dunn & Oths, 2004). 
• “Being less involved in religious activities” is among the “risk factors for dating victimization” (Vézina & Hébert, 2007). 
• “Non-Christians were at increased risk for clinically significant intimate partner violence victimization” in a study of U.S. Air Force personnel (Foran, et al., 2011).
• There is higher risk of intimate partner violence among women who “practiced no religion” in a Kenyan study (Memiah, et al., 2021). 
• “Being without religion” is “associated with increased chances of rape” in a Brazilian study (Diehl, et al., 2022). 
• Citing “lack of church attendance” as one of the characteristics that are “common risk factors for abuse,” Lown & Vega, 2001 found additional evidence that “no or infrequent church attendance” among women was among a set of factors associated with more intimate partner violence. “No church attendance or infrequent church attendance significantly increased the odds of intimate partner violence” among women, they stated—adding that “religious involvement has been shown to be protective in previous studies as it was in our sample.”
• After summarizing Fergusson, et al., 1986’s finding that couples attending church most often in New Zealand were also least likely to report violence in their relationship, Ellison & Anderson, 2001 continued to describe the “graded pattern” this earlier research team found: “On the other hand, men and women who never attend religious services are much more likely than their more religious counterparts to engage in domestic violence.” This research team goes on to report their own research that “shows that religious communities can provide a haven and resource for the victims of abuse, particularly through the informal support networks of church women.”

These effects of low faith show up with male partners as well: 

• “Men with no religious affiliation” are among the “significant predictors” of intimate partner violence in another Brazilian study (Zaleski, et al., 2010). 
• Intimate partner violence is is more common among women whose husbands “attend church less frequently” according to Hindin & Adair, 2002. These researchers report in the Philippines that intimate partner violence (IPV) is “less likely with more household assets, and more frequent church attendance by the husband.” They go on to emphasize the value of “finding additional activities, like attending church, where men might be receptive to messages that discourage IPV or that promote the value of communication.” 

The patterns reviewed above make one thing unmistakably clear: sexual violence does not emerge from nowhere. It grows in environments of accumulated strain—economic fragility, relational conflict, addiction, isolation, untreated trauma, and, often, spiritual disengagement. No single factor guarantees harm. But when vulnerabilities stack, risk rises.

Understanding these patterns is not about assigning blame; it is about identifying leverage points for more effective protection. If certain life conditions consistently increase danger, then strengthening their opposites—education, stability, supportive community, emotional health, and genuine, healthy faith—becomes a meaningful path toward prevention.

In Part II, I will move from patterns of vulnerability to practical application—examining what families, congregations, and communities can proactively and specifically do to interrupt these cycles and build stronger layers of safety around women and children.

Special thanks to Laura Whitney, Odessa Taylor, Jacob Orse, and Brigham Powelson for helping to gather and sift through published studies, and to Diana Gourley for helping edit the review. In addition to recent support from Deseret News, the author expresses thanks to Public Square Magazine for initial funding for the project.

The post Getting at the Roots of Sexual Violence Against Women appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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When the internet was widely adopted in the 1990s, a “Great Rewiring of Childhood” took place and created a generational divide between so-called “digital immigrants” (those raised in the analog age) and “digital natives” (those raised in the internet age). Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt describes digital natives as “the test subjects for a radical new way of growing up,” and says the difference in childhood between the two groups is so large “it’s as if [digital natives] became the first generation to grow up on Mars.”

This has implications for older members (digital immigrants) of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who wish to parent, lead, teach, or mentor the rising generation of digital natives. One area where this gap presents serious difficulty is the subject of pornography and masturbation addiction.

We—Dr. Rance Hutchings (a digital immigrant and men’s mental and sexual health expert) and Kimball Call (a digital native and economics student at BYU)—believe it’s crucial to talk about why digital immigrants often struggle to effectively help digital natives who struggle with pornography addiction. Where is the disconnect coming from? How can it be overcome, and how can older parents, leaders, and teachers better help younger Latter-day Saints?

Rance’s Experience

When Rance began mentoring men with pornography addiction in 2010, he could sense the generational divide between himself and the younger men he mentored. Growing up, he never struggled with pornography addiction, nor did he hear about pornography all that much. He can’t even remember pornography being mentioned in a single church lesson. Pornography was only ever discussed as a “one-off” situation that young men might experience at a party when someone brought a magazine or snuck in a video rented from an adult book shop. So when trying to help the rising generation with pornography, Rance felt like a “foreigner”—desperate to help, but unable to escape feeling inauthentic. 

While serving in a bishopric, Rance felt that it was much easier to teach young men only how to prevent pornography addiction rather than how to overcome it. He’s not alone. Many parents and leaders find that “prevention” is the only method they can teach authentically, because it’s all they ever were familiar with themselves.

 Kimball’s Experience

 Now contrast Rance’s experience with Kimball’s, who grew up seeing the other side of Rance’s scenario. As one of the earliest digital natives, Kimball faced a fundamentally altered childhood landscape (or Mars, as Haidt describes it). Like many in his generation, Kimball discovered pornography as early as the 5th grade, and by the 6th grade had already developed a habit and discovered masturbation. Although his thoughtful and proactive parents tried to implement safeguards and filters, Kimball—as a digital native—found ways around each one. 

 By the time he was a deacon, Kimball was past the point where the “prevention” lectures were helpful. Because he already had a problem, these conversations made him feel isolated. He reasoned that he must be the only one viewing pornography if everyone else only talked about it in terms of staying away from it. This view was compounded when older people suggested “simply quitting,” spoke of pornography as simply a bad choice that could be stopped by willpower and agency, or suggested other silver-bullet solutions.

 The Disconnect

 We believe that these young men were neither weak nor spiritually broken when they first encountered pornography. They were simply “digital martians,” trying to survive on a new planet without adequate tools or preparation, being led by adults whose experiences were completely different. For digital immigrants growing up, viewing pornography required accessing – and often purchasing – physical media like VHS tapes and magazines. In homes or communities where this type of media was highly regulated, it was nearly impossible for most young men to access hardcore pornography. And if they did, it required much more effort to conceal. 

 Today, however, digital natives have unhampered access to much more stimulating forms of pornography with much lower barriers to access and total anonymity. Worse still, it actively gets inserted into social media feeds, movies, and video games, and is always just a few taps away on a device. This is why it’s unhelpful for digital immigrants to talk of pornography as a problem that can be dealt with through willpower, agency, internet filters, “remembering who you are,” or other simple prevention methods. These may have been sufficient once, but a new battle calls for new (and improved) tactics.

 At its root, the generational disconnect stems from the difficulty digital immigrants and digital natives have relating to each other. Digital immigrants have carried over from their era a certain set of expectations for what “normal” looks like, and digital natives are caught in the dissonance between those expectations and the reality they experience. For instance, digital immigrants within the Church grew to expect pornography addiction to affect few people, generally those already in dire spiritual straits. This expectation makes it difficult for some to accept that a majority of young men—including the good, upstanding, and faithful ones—now struggle with a porn habit to some degree. 

The first step to overcoming the disconnect will be to appreciate the new reality our youth are experiencing. Now that we’ve had three decades to observe, conduct research, and develop better approaches, it is incumbent on parents, leaders, and teachers to adapt, to learn, and to prepare the next generation for greater success.

 Bridging the Gap

 After 15 years of professional work, Rance has learned that, for most young men, pornography habits will be forming before they enter priesthood service at 11. By that age, it’s often too late for the prevention lecture to be sufficient. But he’s also learned that he has more in common with digital natives than he thought, and that knowledge can help parents and leaders who aren’t sure what to do next.

 Viewing pornography and masturbating are two separate addictive behaviors, but we often lump them together under the umbrella term “pornography addiction.” Generally,  masturbation is the ‘root addiction’ while pornography is an enhancer. Once porn and masturbation are successfully separated, they can be treated without the compounding effect they have on each other, which allows the path to recovery to look a lot more similar to what digital immigrants experienced. This puts digital immigrants and natives on common ground, allowing more sympathy, patience, understanding, and authenticity. 

 New (And Improved) Tactics 

 A new battle calls for new and improved tactics. Once parents, leaders, and mentors have shifted their own paradigm and can better understand the new challenges digital natives face, there are several resources, tools, and strategies they can use. 

 Begin by separating pornography use and masturbation so they can be tackled separately. Pornography use should generally be dealt with first, using a healthy mix of prevention strategies (defense) as well as strategies addressing underlying spiritual, emotional, and physical problems (offense). Prevention will play a key role in the first few months of recovery, while offensive strategies will be crucial for long-term success. Once viewing pornography has been thoroughly addressed, these same tools can be used to slow—and eventually terminate—masturbation addiction.

 Kimball recently approached Brad Wilcox at BYU to ask if the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles is teaching the same principles when they teach about pornography use, and received adamant confirmation that they are. Evidence can be found in the recently published, First Presidency-approved Missionary Resource Guide for Addressing Pornography found on Gospel Library. This resource teaches missionaries, “While your ultimate goal is to be clean from pornography use, understand that you will not get there all at once. It will take sustained and consistent effort. Set small, achievable goals and build on successes rather than focusing on failures.”

 Members of the Church can apply this counsel by ending the practice of tracking “porn-free streaks.” This tactic seems appealing, but it tends to perpetuate addictive behavior in the long run. As the Missionary Resource Guide for Addressing Pornography states, “Setbacks don’t take you back to square one.” Instead, it will be more effective to find ways to decrease the frequency and intensity of slips over time. For example, a digital native just starting the journey to recovery might set a goal to view pornography less than three times in the first week and to not allow a slip to last for longer than five minutes. If successful, their next goal might be to go two weeks with less than three slips, then on to three weeks, a month, and so on. 

 This strategy decreases the chance of binges: the tendency to slip multiple times in a row once an abstinent streak has been broken. Binges can severely hamper long-term progress, so it’s better to allow one or two minor slips within the goal period than to risk a binge. One or two minor slips are not indicators of an unsuccessful recovery; in fact, they are normal—taking a few steps forward, one step back, and so on until the gaps between small slips grow longer and longer. Sustainable and lasting recovery is much more likely with this method. 

 Crucial to recovery is strong accountability, so we recommend a mentorship model: choosing one trustworthy person for the recovering person to regularly communicate with weekly. It usually works best for this mentor to be an adult member of the same sex, but they don’t have to have prior experience with pornography. Mentors provide many benefits, including an outside, unique perspective of the factors that play into pornography use and how to manage them. Check-ins with mentors should be judgment-free and focused on future action, not past mistakes.

 Any underlying emotional, mental, and physical health needs will also need to be addressed. We urge members to seek help from Church-aligned sources. There is a secular trend—which we reject—to excuse and tolerate pornography use as normal and harmless behavior, and seeking help from these kinds of sources frequently doesn’t lead to a full and lasting recovery. Supplemental tools that we do endorse include cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), both of which can be adapted for use to help with pornography and masturbation addiction. 

While both generations should embrace new realities and methods for tackling pornography and masturbation, we shouldn’t seek to change the moral standards of chastity. Lowering expectations is an unhelpful strategy for lifelong happiness. Parents and leaders will need to adjust their approach, be more open-minded, and grow more understanding, without lowering standards of moral cleanliness and virtue, even if our social environment makes it increasingly difficult. Therefore, we advocate for a Christlike approach, built on high expectations and ever-increasing love.

In Rance’s experience, he doesn’t know of anyone who sincerely wanted to be free of pornography addiction who wasn’t eventually successful once they had the right tools and mindset. With an approach designed for his reality, Kimball found relief, and now wants his digitally native peers to know that there’s hope. Full recovery is a reality! And we hope that with a new perspective, digital immigrants and digital natives can be more successful working together to achieve a lifetime of happiness.

The post Bridging the Generational Divide to Help Youth with Porn Addiction appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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In 1871, early feminist icons Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton visited Salt Lake City. They were welcomed by Latter-day Saint women and leaders, including General Relief Society President Eliza R. Snow. As they toured Utah, they praised the progress of Latter-day Saint women—especially in earning the right to vote—but also criticized the Church, its male-led structure, and its traditions. They condemned the priesthood, early marriage, and large families, arguing these practices benefited men at women’s expense. Stanton even urged women to form their own religious creeds, while Anthony said any church governed solely by male revelation could never satisfy her.

While President Snow supported women’s progress, she was alarmed by the attacks on her faith. A month later, she wrote a speech to help Latter-day Saints interpret both praise and criticism. “In the Church and Kingdom of God, the interests of men and women are the same,” she wrote. “Man has no interests separate from that of women … our interests are all united.” In today’s divided cultural moment, Snow’s gospel-centered vision of equality is more needed than ever—not just to defend women, but to offer hope to a generation of quietly struggling young men.

I noticed this crisis long before the experts did—in high school, on my mission, and most clearly while serving as an Elders Quorum president in my YSA ward in Spanish Fork, Utah. Even with that firsthand experience, I don’t believe young men are simple victims, or that any one cause is to blame. But what I’ve seen is this: as jobs, degrees, and romantic prospects feel scarcer, many men retreat into video games, pornography, and distraction. They delay adulthood out of fear and self-doubt. Society, meanwhile, promotes female empowerment while labeling men as toxic or privileged. I see my peers growing bitter, feeling punished for sins they didn’t commit, unsure what to believe, and disconnected from any clear sense of purpose. It’s a spiritual crisis that we need to start taking seriously.

As things worsen, many young men—including myself—are searching for answers. But voicing these concerns often triggers a mental gag reflex, as if sympathy for men means opposing women’s progress. Anyone who raises men’s issues risks being branded “redpilled,” misogynistic, or sexist. This stigma creates an unnecessary barrier to discussing solutions. Our first step must be to reject the premise that helping men and helping women are mutually exclusive agendas. This premise stifles productive dialogue and has, in part, helped create the current crisis in the first place.

There are two main camps who hold to the premise of mutual exclusivity: progressives, who tell us men unfairly hoard all social capital—a concept known as “the patriarchy”; and the growing reactionary movement (known as the “incel” or “ultra-masculinity” movement) who argue several versions of the opposite. Because both sides strongly believe that men and women are locked in a zero-sum game, the public consciousness has widely accepted mutual exclusivity as an unchangeable fact. Unfortunately, this mindset is somewhat prevalent in Latter-day Saints as well.

While it’s true that women have historically been on the losing end of the societal contract, eventually we need to recognize the incredible successes of the feminist movement in recent decades. Consider this: women’s BA degree share rose from 43% in 1979 to 58% in 2020—with men dropping from 57% to 42%—and since 1979, women’s inflation-adjusted median wage increased by 29%, while men’s dropped by 3%, with poorer men hit hardest. This means that in education, men are further behind women today than women were behind men 50 years ago, and in the workplace, men are on a downward trajectory for the first time in history. More anomalies like this continue to surface. When women were behind, society mobilized to help them, and now they have progressed by leaps and bounds. But now, in some very critical ways, young men are falling behind, and they are not receiving the same amount of attention or support to prevent further decline. It is both possible and important to help both men and women, for the fates of one are inevitably tied to the other. Better young men mean better and safer peers, coworkers, and family members, and most importantly, more valuable, supportive, and reliable partners. 

Eliza R. Snow understood that men and women needed each other, and argued that it would be counterproductive for women to tear down men in the pursuit of equality. She pointed out that men only stood to gain from the increased capacity of women as they became educated, organized, and empowered. As she once declared in one Relief Society meeting, “I feel happy to see so many of my brethren present. It strengthens me to have them know what we are teaching their wives and daughters. The outside world [is] continually clashing, but we like the assistance of our husbands in our organized state. We stand as [helpmeets] to our husbands.” To Snow, there were no limited resources. Not only was there enough to go around, there was a way to make more for everyone.

It’s for this reason I believe The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has the moral authority to lead out on these issues. We believe that harmonious and synergistic cooperation between men and women is an essential qualifier for eternal life, and this alone gives us a better foundation to address the divide between the sexes than any other organization on Earth. There is much the Latter-day Saints of Christ’s Church can do to help young men and women in this critical moment. We can champion the enablement of women just as Eliza R. Snow intended, and at the same time, we can offer help and hope to the young men facing the intense tempests of our day alone. 

So what exactly needs to happen? The crisis in young men stems from two core issues: a lack of connection and a lack of identity. I explore these in more depth—and offer specific, culturally grounded solutions—in the first print edition of The Cougar Chronicle, BYU’s independent student paper, published this summer. Here, I’ll briefly share a few suggestions Latter-day Saints can apply, but for the full picture, I encourage reading the complete piece.

First, young men face a deep lack of connection—both with friends and romantic partners. A male loneliness epidemic is clear in studies like one from the Survey Center on American Life, which found that 15% of men report having no close friends, a “staggering” 12% increase since 1990. The dating landscape is equally dismal. Today, research shows how a minority of high-value men are dominating romantic and sexual attention, but the cultural retreat from marriage has removed their incentive to grow up and commit. Meanwhile, most men are left frustrated, fueling their loneliness and turning them towards pornography, drugs, and distractions that stunt growth romantically, spiritually, and economically. Women, though more educated and financially stable, still seek more educated and stable partners—something increasingly hard to find. Many women are understandably disillusioned with the immature, non-committal men at the top of the ladder, and equally put off by the lonely, insecure men at the bottom. Some women don’t even feel safe, with over a third believing most men would take sexual advantage of a woman if given the chance.

As I just alluded to, loneliness is also mutually reinforcing with the widespread pornography epidemic. A 2007 BYU study found that 48% of male students viewed pornography at least weekly, with 3% of women reporting the same. One in five men said they viewed it nearly daily. These numbers match recent national trends, so the rates are likely similar—or even higher—today. That suggests over 10,000 Latter-day Saint young men in Provo alone may be battling pornography habits. This places an overwhelming burden on ward and stake leaders, who often serve as the only institutional line of defense. 

There are uncounted possible solutions to help young men break free from porn, vice, and isolation and foster their connection with peers and romantic partners. In the case of pornography, more leaders (particularly those in older generations who do not understand the prevalence and modus operandi of pornography today) need to follow the example of the Brethren and utilize more modern and scientific approaches to helping young men with pornography addictions. This needs to be discussed more frequently and with more exactness by parents, leaders, and young men themselves. 

We also need to address the imbalance in the friendship and dating economies. Because women continue to value men who have more resources than they do, perhaps more needs to be done to offer men scholarships to graduate programs or advancement opportunities in certain fields, such as nursing or education. More needs to be done about the increasing rate at which men are dropping out of school. There is also more we can do to foster networking and mentorship among young men to build friendships and accelerate careers. We don’t have every answer, but as of right now, no effort to move in the direction of helping young men find connection would be wasted.

The solution, of course, is to start filling the vacuum with something better. Rather than telling men their masculinity is toxic, we should help men understand the truth: that masculinity is a complex basket of natural and neutral characteristics and tendencies which can be used for good or for evil. We then teach them that  ‘healthy’ or ‘mature’ masculinity is the careful channeling of these base elements towards honorable pursuits, such as education, talents, providing for a family, and serving God. Latter-day Saints should seek every opportunity to ensure that young men are being properly taught who they are as men to prevent them from feeling drawn into the vacuum of falsehoods that exists online. The bottom line is that we must be more explicit in our educational opportunities with them. There is no danger in telling men that it is not just good, but amazing, to be a righteous man bearing the priesthood. 

As our young men suffer silently, few Latter-day Saints seem to be aware of how much good they can do at so little a cost. We have been prepared by examples like Eliza R Snow, modern prophets, and the Lord Jesus Christ to be examples to the world that compassion and equity for all is possible, even with difficult issues like today’s gender divide. No other church is built on a better foundation to heal this divide than The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which teaches that an essential qualifier for eternal life itself is harmonious and synergistic cooperation between men and women. As Latter-day Saints become aware of the tempests our young men are facing and employ gospel-based relief efforts, lives will be changed, courses will be rerouted, divisions will be healed, the culture will be strengthened, and our struggling, tempest-tossed young men will finally see the flickering light of hope across the waves.

The post Anchoring Tempest-Tossed Men: Faith’s Response to a Rising Crisis appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Christine Rosen, author of The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World (2024), updates Camus this way: “He fornicated and checked his phone.” But actually, if Rosen is correct, she should have gone one step further in her revision: “(Post)Modern man rarely fornicated, but instead used his phone to look at porn.”

We’re experiencing an epidemic of “excarnation”, says Rosen, which is an estrangement from our real, fleshy bodies and the real, fleshy bodies of other people as we increasingly embrace “mediated” forms of disembodied, technological existence. No more sex with a real human being, which can be clumsy and awkward and require practice, communication, and compromise. Instead, we have a smorgasbord of pixelated pornstars ready to cater to our most idiosyncratic kinks or pliant Chatbot girlfriends who send us AI-generated NSFW pictures directly to the phone in our palms, which leaves one hand free for—well, you know what.

We’ve accepted the premise of technology that everything “frictionless,” “seamless,” and more convenient is better. What we’ve discovered is that the source of much “friction” in social life is other people in their messy, awkward, unpredictable quirkiness. Almost overnight, we came to accept the idea that people should deliver our food to our doorstep, send us a photo of our bagged burritos, and disappear back into their cars before we are assaulted by their presence or inconvenienced by the pleasantries of small talk. And it’s not just DoorDash. A dozen innovations in recent decades, like AirPod headphones or self-checkout in grocery stores, serve the many of us who feel it should be an inalienable right to be insulated from face-to-face interaction with other people.

People are spending enormous amounts of time in virtual spaces. Some people, finding their own (real) lives lacking, pour their energies into creating an ersatz one on platforms like Second Life. But if you find this disconcerting, you’re liable to be shot down as a naive and backward-looking Luddite. Some have even gone so far as to argue that any preference for the real, flesh-and-blood material reality over virtual ones is mere prejudice. In a hilarious co-opting of the language of DEI, some technocrats have even claimed that such prejudice is merely “Reality Privilege.” Only some very privileged realities are rich and varied enough to compete with the abundance of virtual worlds, the argument goes. For most people, reality is dull, beige, and boring. And so, as one technocrat Rosen quotes puts it,  “Who is to say that a virtual life that is better than one’s physical life is a bad thing?” 

This mass “excarnation” of society—this estrangement from our own and others’ real, physical bodies—has serious consequences. We’re losing specific skills that make us human: the skills of reading others’ facial cues, of inferring others’ emotions, of understanding our own emotions, of navigating or orienting ourselves in a physical landscape, of appreciating the slow pleasures of art, of handwriting, of physical play, of daydreaming, of having sex. Almost all of these skills are being outsourced to technology, including those skills that seem most personal and most immune to technological encroachment. Consider, for example, the understanding of one’s own emotions. Certainly, nobody can understand our emotions better than ourselves! But some wearable technology companies promise to interpret your biometric data for you, such that your own messy interior emotional lives become simple and legible. No more difficult self-reflection necessary! 

Before Rosen, Yuval Harari predicted in his 2018 book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow that algorithms will become so powerful and knowledgeable that we will consult them in making all of our decisions. In one of my favorite hypothetical examples, Harari imagines a woman consulting algorithms to help her decide between two suitors. She asks Google, do I marry John or Jerry? Google says something like, “Well, I’ve read all of your e-mails and text messages you’ve sent to John and Jerry and the messages they sent to you. I’ve analyzed their syntax and diction and have determined that you have better communication and romantic connection with John. A cross-reference of your wearable technologies confirms this—your heart rate and perspiration are greater when in John’s company than Jerry’s. Considering the relationships in your past, your family history, and John’s past and family history, I give you an 85% chance of a successful relationship with John. I know this upsets you—because Jerry is more handsome, and you value the social capital his handsomeness provides. But trust me. Your biological evolution puts too high a premium on good looks—but good looks have low correlation to long-term relationship success.” To Harari, this is a good thing. Algorithms will eliminate the biases and prejudices of human beings so that they can cut through the psychic smog and make the decisions that would actually result in the greatest happiness.

To hear Rosen tell it, the encroachment of technology into these most intimate parts of our lives has happened because we’ve uncritically accepted the myth of progress: the idea that human history is defined by a steady, linear improvement in knowledge, technology, morality, and overall quality of life. This myth, which assumes that change is inherently good and that modernity is intrinsically superior to the past, has blinded us to the costs and consequences of our innovations. In Rosen’s account, the myth lulls us into a kind of passivity, leaving us unaware and uncritical as technology encroaches upon our lives.

While this is surely part of the story, I think Rosen misses a deeper, more personal dimension of our uncritical embrace of technological “solutions.” One of the most valuable insights of existentialists like Camus, Kierkegaard, and Dostoyevsky is that most human beings experience freedom as a kind of burden and, in fact, one they are often anxious to give away. The staggering array of choices available to us today and the accompanying realization that we are wholly responsible for those choices produces what Kierkegaard called “angst.” Dostoyevsky observed that people are willing to relinquish their freedom to paternalistic authority figures in exchange for security and simplicity. And he was right; we are not merely passive victims of the myth of progress. Rather, we have actively sought out technological “solutions” to outsource the existential risk of making choices for ourselves, even in matters as profound as love and marriage. Today’s Grand Inquisitor isn’t a religious figure, it’s Mark Zuckerberg.

But even if you are someone who would never consult Google about such questions of the heart, we must concede that, to some extent, we’ve all become accustomed to the “frictionless” experience. But we also have a sneaking suspicion despite all of this convenience we’re losing something valuable. For one, Rosen says, the experience of “serendipity” is on the brink of extinction. Serendipitous experiences like stumbling into a new restaurant, following only the cues of your nose, are increasingly unlikely because algorithms relentlessly nudge us in particular directions. We research Yelp reviews before trying a restaurant, scouring hundreds of photos of dishes and scrutinizing hundreds of customer reviews. In this way, we allow the aggregate mass of people to determine which restaurants we try, with no allowance that our own idiosyncratic tastes might differ from those of the many. When we go to a new city, there’s little chance we “lose ourselves” in the city’s nooks and crannies, alleys, or stores. Our GPS-enabled phones mean that we know exactly where we are at all times, and algorithms will send you personally tailored “push” notifications when you’re nearing your favorite, familiar haunts. The music and movies we enjoy are also algorithmically determined; no longer can we stumble into a record store or Blockbuster and have the coincidental experience of taking home something truly novel, something completely outside our usual patterns of consumption. The “Recommended For You” features on Netflix and Amazon narrow the scope of our possible experiences and make serendipitous surprises less likely.

According to Rosen, we need to be more skeptical about technology. More than a century ago, Thoreau wrote, “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.” We need to think more like Thoreau: when we use technology, how does it use us in turn? 

We need to remember that, despite all of our technological sophistication, we are human beings with human bodies. As Ecclesiastes put it, “You who do not know how the mind is joined to the body know nothing of the works of God.” Or, as Montaigne put it more humorously: “And upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still about our arses.”

We need to take account of the qualitative losses suffered on account of our uncritical adoption of technological “solutions” to human “problems”.  As Rosen writes at the close of her book, 

Accounting for what we have lost is also the beginning of the process of reclaiming it. Despite what Silicon Valley marketing messages insist, history is not always a steady march toward progress, and not every new thing is an improvement on the old. If we are to reclaim human virtues and save our most deeply rooted human experiences from extinction, we must be willing to place limits on the more extreme transformative projects proposed by our techno-enthusiasts, not as a means of stifling innovation but as a commitment to our shared humanity. Only then can we live freely as the embodied, quirky, contradictory, resilient, creative human beings we are.

During the Renaissance, humanists like Pico della Mirandola celebrated the unique place of human beings on the Great Chain of Being. Unlike animals, whose natures were fixed, human beings possessed a malleable nature: they could choose to rise to the divine heights of the angels or degrade themselves to the level of beasts. For Renaissance humanists, this capacity for transformation was a glorious privilege. But today, rather than becoming angels or beasts, as Pico Della Mirandola imagined, human beings are becoming machines. Or, more accurately, we are outsourcing our experiences of being human—thinking, feeling, connecting—to our machines, as if they could live for us. Rosen’s book is a call for a new humanism—one that rejects this abdication and embraces the messy, wondrous glory of embodiment, emotion, and connection.

The post The Epidemic of Excarnation: What We Lose When We Forget Our Flesh appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Overarching Principles

In light of the guiding presumptions about divine human nature in the Christian Virtue approach, the guiding principles for healing from CPU are meant to lead persons to align their life away from misunderstandings of their true nature, false visions of life’s purpose, and the overcoming of vices so as to point them towards and fill their lives with truth and virtue. These simple principles, though presented in a particular order, are not necessarily linear steps. Rather, they represent overall priorities and practices to guide healing.

Principle #1: Reorient One’s Understanding of Agency and Life’s Purpose

Persons work to re-understand (1) who they really are as moral agents, learning to accept responsibility for the many choices and priorities they make that contribute to their compulsions, and (2) accepting that because of their agency and its perfected flourishing made possible in Christ, there is a possibility of thorough and genuine change (i.e., repentance). In other words, persons work to accept that repentance is possible and that they can truly have a change of heart because of Christ ennobling their agentic natures rather than focusing on believing CPU is a permanent disease out of their control. They further work on refocusing their life vision away from self-fulfillment and towards truth and virtue, and they strive to do what is best for others (i.e., being other-focused/motivated by charity and love) rather than focusing primarily on themselves. This includes seeking to understand how CPU fits into their lives and what habits reinforce it so they can know what specifically they need to change.

Principle #2: Develop Virtue(s)

As persons work to “catch the vision” of who they truly are and what a true and virtuous life is all about, they focus on developing specific habits to reinforce that vision. That is, they endeavor to purposively replace the particular compulsive vices, which are often taken for granted in the everydayness of their specific life context, with virtuous habits and priorities to reinforce the true and virtuous vision of life’s purpose. It must be remembered that the practice of virtue is not like a pill that is taken only a few times or a coping skill to use when faced with temptation. Virtue implies a reorienting of one’s very character and, as such, must be practiced throughout one’s life and daily routine, both in the face of temptation and away from it.

Principle #3: Reorder One’s Life Overall Towards the Good & Virtuous

There is an overhaul, in a sense, of a person’s daily living that takes place in which they work to be well-ordered towards goodness. Although much of healing is focused on the first two principles and, in some sense, is summarized in this third principle, people remember that healing is a holistic endeavor involving their heart, character, lifestyle, relationships, goals, priorities, obligations, and more. A good scripture that reflects this principle is where the Lord has asked us to “organize [our]selves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God.” Many of the life skills taught by therapists and self-reliance principles taught by the Church dovetail nicely with this principle.

As my colleagues and I have summarized in a forthcoming article, “to heal from CPU, a person must reconstruct their life by reconstructing their vision of the good life and replacing the vicious habits contributing to their compulsive use with virtuous ones that provide new life, new purpose, and deeper meaning.” As will hopefully make more sense by the end of this article, a well-ordered, virtuous heart and life is the goal of healing, not merely abstinence.

Individual Healing

So, how do these principles specifically play out in the efforts of an individual’s healing? Let us use the hypothetical case scenario of Jack to illustrate and expand on the principles of healing. Like many, Jack has struggled with CPU since around the time of puberty, getting clear of it long enough to serve a mission but then struggling with it again post-mission as he got back into school. He married a wonderful woman, Crystal, about a year after being home. To his credit, he has been honest and vulnerable with Crystal from the beginning about his compulsive use, which has helped immensely with their marriage and her being able to maintain trust and support.

Besides the virtues of honesty and vulnerability, which he has tried to practice from the beginning (many begin developing honesty only after getting caught or later on in the healing process), Jack first begins to practice the virtue of self-awareness. He starts a journal to keep track of his daily habits, routines, emotional patterns, priorities, cares, and concerns, and especially to describe in as much detail as possible his context and intentions during the times temptation is strong or when he gives into it and views pornography. He tries to figure out the specific role CPU plays in his life. Doing so helps him realize the many choices he makes that invite compulsive viewing, realizing his agency in the matter. In particular, he notes that he spends large amounts of time alone on electronic devices, particularly when he is bored or has any free time to kill. He frequently takes his phone to the bathroom as well, which helps him realize the small rituals he goes through to ensure he is alone to view porn, and he seeks to abandon those rituals.

He has noted that he avoids responsibilities and obligations to his wife, work, church, family, and school until the last minute, choosing instead to watch YouTube videos or dwell on social media for large portions of time (i.e., avoidance is a vice). Many of these habits lull him into a place of apathy (a vice) and leave him vulnerable to higher bouts of temptation. Thus, for him, giving into temptation is most often correlated with avoiding responsibility, boredom, as a way to deal with stress, or as a way to cope with tension and pain in his marriage. Over time, he begins to accept responsibility for all of these patterns and, in particular, that he is responsible for his emotional states and responses, especially those related to his marriage. He also begins to confront the many justifications he engages in little by little until he finally gives in to temptation (e.g., “I’m just too tired to fight it,” “People don’t understand how hard this is,” or “I’m just checking sports scores, not going to look at cheerleader pics”).

The overarching virtue he begins to practice is intentionality. He has realized that much of his life has been characterized by the vice of whimsy in that he tends to let his fluctuations in mood and whims of the moment guide his decisions and priorities (see MacIntyre on emotivism). Instead, he practices being purposeful in all of his decisions. This is not to say that he becomes a workaholic or a busybody (two false visions). Rather, it means that he learns how to always have a clear purpose for what he does such that if anyone were to ask what he is doing and why, he has a clear answer. For example, even when choosing to relax and watch a movie, it is an intentional choice rather than it being the result of an “I might as well” mentality. There is a big difference between “I’m tired, I might as well find something to watch” and “I’m tired, I’m going to watch two episodes of my favorite show to rejuvenate my energy.” He eschews mindless scrolling, gaming, and browsing because that is not an intentional use of time or technology. Furthermore, being intentional is taken as the virtue to guide the practice of all other virtues.

 In addition, he begins to practice several other virtues, including the virtue of integrity (e.g., keeping his promises and obligations), friendship (e.g., he establishes more “genuine human connection” by socializing more and even building relationships with others who struggle with CPU), fortitude (e.g., being able to suffer pain, disappointment, heartache, and even boredom without it keeping him from doing what is right), and many more. He works on curbing his unfettered curiosity (a vice). Additionally, he begins to work on keeping a schedule, being active regularly, sleeping better, staying hydrated, and all around creating a life of order and harmony in line with truth and virtue. He strives harder to let “God prevail” in his life by becoming more actively engaged in his ministering, callings, daily prayer, scripture study, and temple attendance.

All of these things are not practiced as isolated virtues or mere coping skills used at the moment of temptation (though he learns a few helpful techniques, such as mindfulness, to help when temptation is overwhelming). He has tried that, and it is not enough to change his heart. Rather, he practices them in all aspects of his life. For example, he seeks to be honest and vulnerable not only when temptation happens but when he is struggling in other areas of life as well. This leads him to be more compassionate with others no matter where he is, especially with his wife.

Taking all of this as his guide, he creates boundaries for himself that help remind him where a virtuous life is to be found and help him shape his life and habits better. He sets time limits on his technology use. He does not allow himself to be alone with electronics in his room. He is not allowed to mindlessly scroll. These boundaries change and update based on how well he is doing, and at the beginning, some of the strictest rules snap into place during moments when he is experiencing the most temptation.

Spousal Support

Although it has, at times, been very difficult and painful, Crystal has been a strong support for Jack throughout this whole process. She supports him in at least three ways. First, she realizes that she is in a covenant relationship with Jack, and as such, she does not push him to the side and ignore his struggles even though they are painful for her. She recognizes the pain that his sin is creating for both of them but also recognizes that Christ is part of the covenant and the true source of healing. So, she works to forgive and lean on Christ more in her life so she can invite Jack to do so as well.

Second, she remembers the idea that Jack has two natures. As she ponders on his (and her) first nature—that they are relationally enmeshed moral agents, children of God with the power to change—she realizes that she can help him be responsible for his actions and that they are both of infinite worth. Healing and repentance are possible for both of them because of their first nature and its ties with being Godly offspring. As she ponders on his (and her) second nature—the many habits and priorities that constitute who they currently are and how they live—she does not overlook what Jack needs to change to fully repent. Rather, she focuses her efforts specifically on helping him recognize those patterns, clearly but kindly sets expectations, and offers suggestions for change. All efforts to help are done in a charity-filled way (she prays constantly for such charity and kindness) to help him change. She works to never let herself confuse the two natures. She knows Jack is first a child of God for whom Christ has suffered, and second, he is a man with specific, albeit very painful, sins.

Third, she joins Jack in trying to reorder their lives together towards truth and virtue. She recognizes that she, too, is caught up in many of the vices that invite addictions into her own life (e.g., she spends many hours on social media and window shopping online instead of spending time with Jack or on other projects) and recognizes that it is easier to practice virtue with someone rather than alone. So, she helps Jack be accountable to the boundaries and virtue-oriented goals he has set for himself, as well as setting boundaries and goals for herself. As appropriate and in counsel with Jack, they find others on whom they can rely for support, especially during some of the painful times when Jack gives into temptation while he works towards making virtue more permanent in his life.

Healing in Christ

What I have provided here is a specific case example by which to illustrate the principles and virtues understood in the Christian Virtue approach to be essential to healing. As such, it is not meant to be a perfect representation of the specifics of every person’s struggle with CPU. The key for readers is to ponder on these principles, work at self-awareness, and seek revelation on how best to apply them in the specifics of their lives. CPU plays a specific role in each person’s life, and each person has specific habits and patterns that reinforce its role and place. In my experience, however, they are often very similar to those false visions and vices presented here. Many of the principles here are also in line with many of the techniques and therapeutic approaches already in place, such as seeking out mentorship, the Addiction Recovery Program, journaling, and learning impulse and emotional control. That being said, readers are invited to take their thoughts and the wisdom found here and elsewhere, to the Lord and ponder on how best to move forward in faith towards healing.

I hope that in these articles, I have made it sufficiently clear that the example of the Savior is what defines a virtuous life and that any approach to healing, especially this one, must have Him at the core. One of the things that has bothered me the most through the years is how many church-related firesides, academic presentations, or lessons on CPU hardly discussed Jesus Christ because they were so focused on fascinating brain studies or hyper-psychological theories about addiction to the point that Christ was a mere afterthought, if mentioned at all. That being said, I would like to finish with this quote from the forthcoming manuscript my colleagues and I have written, which re-emphasizes and clarifies the role of Jesus Christ in the application of the principles of healing mentioned here.

To heal, we must seek after Christ and desire truth and virtue, and “as we show forth a willingness to develop new habits, Christ changes us, our hearts, our desires, and new habits unfold in that process.”

The post How Virtue Can Help You Recover from Porn Addiction appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Recall that the Christian Virtue approach to understanding human behavior asserts that we can understand any behavior by (1) understanding who persons are as purposeful and rational moral agents, capable of choice, and relationally and morally enmeshed with others, and (2) understanding a person’s vision of what a good life is, along with the habits, virtues, vices, and narratives that point them toward that vision.

The focus of this article is to further explore what is meant by CPU being a complex vicious habit in this way. Accordingly, the rest of this article will further develop the idea that CPU is maintained in many ways by (1) a misunderstanding of the nature of selfhood as bequeathed to us by contemporary Western culture, (2) misguided visions as to what daily life ought to be about or aimed towards, and (3) the kinds of daily vices and activities that develop to help reinforce and aim persons towards a lifestyle in which CPU is both common and difficult to overcome.

(Mis)Understanding of The Self

The answer to the crucial question of what it means to be a self has serious implications for how persons and cultures construct their visions of what a good life is. The Christian Virtue approach to CPU asserts that understanding we are children of God is the foundational answer to the question of what it means to be a self and is the essential answer for properly organizing a person’s life and aspirations.

However, this question is one not completely answered by each individual person but is answered and given to persons in large part by the various cultural beliefs and practices persons engage in simply by being a part of a particular culture (via what James K.A. Smith called secular liturgies, or praxis, to use Aristotle’s term). With regards to CPU, this approach asserts that an incorrect answer to that question has been given by our culture at large, promoting a misunderstanding of selfhood that fosters the wrong priorities and visions for how persons ought to live their lives.

So, how has our culture come to (mis)understand selfhood such that it fosters fertile soil for lives in which pornography use is so commonplace and difficult to escape? As I attempt to answer this question by briefly describing three assumptions of personhood given to us by Western culture at large, I would invite readers to consider the ways in which these assumptions have come to inform the way they think about themselves, how much time they spend contemplating on topics related to them, and how in so doing, such assumptions have come to inform much of their daily, thoughts, feelings, habitual goals, activities, social interactions, and priorities.

A self can best be defined as being an isolated, autonomous individual

Many scholars and historians (see e.g., Taylor, Goodman, or MacIntyre) have shown that as a result of many of the Enlightenment philosophies, our contemporary sense of self is grounded in the foundational assumption that to be a person is to be an individual self, separated from other individuals both in the essentials of our identity (e.g., descriptors of who we are and what we are about) and moral obligations. Whereas anciently, identity was tied up with one’s socio-cultural heritage and one’s moral obligations to others in a community, the contemporary sense of self places the site of identity and moral obligations upon the individual over and against the socio-cultural aspects of human life. In other words, the individual is primary, while social ties and obligations are secondary. Thus, individuals are presumed to be isolated (i.e., atomized) from social ties because such ties are not fundamental to who they are and what individuals should focus on in life. Social ties are an optional activity one can choose to participate in, among many other optional activities individuals can choose in life. I get to decide who I am, what I should want, and where I should prioritize my time. My personal desires and welfare take precedence over all else. Morality and the world are my own, and thus, I get to operate autonomously from any other moral obligations that others or the world wish to impose on me. The self is thus presumed to be highly individualized in all aspects of human action.

Our “true” selves are found inside ourselves

Because the self is presumed to be isolated, autonomous, and individualized, it follows that its true nature and characteristics cannot be known by referencing anything outside the individual. That is, the socio-cultural milieu has little to do with who a person really is and what their life ought to be about. Accordingly, our culture tends to assume that we each have an authentic self inside each of us, apart from the socio-cultural aspect of human action, that must be discovered and be freely expressed (see e.g., Wilkens & Sanford or Trueman on expressive individualism). This idea means that our thoughts, emotions, intentions, and all aspects of our identity are embedded in us and are often presumed to be the causal force behind our actions. The self is thus presumed to be primarily psychological in nature.

An example of this understanding of selfhood can be seen in patients who struggle with CPU. They often talk about how their urges to watch porn “build up” and must be released somehow or how they have sexual needs in them which need to be satisfied in some way. Note how, in each case, there is a presumption of an inner world of emotion and desires that are at least partially sexual in nature and which represent what persons really want or need to fully function psychologically. Those emotions and desires are also presumed to be seemingly out of the control of the person.

We belong to ourselves

The first two assumptions lead to the third contemporary assumption about selfhood. I will quote from theologian Alan Noble on this who stated that our contemporary sense of self is “grounded in a particular understanding of what it means to be human: we are each our own, we belong to ourselves. From the early political liberalism of the seventeenth century, with its language of individual liberties and rights, over time westerners began to think of themselves as naturally sovereign.” This may sound to our contemporary ears to be a good thing to assume. It invites personal responsibility and protection of individual dignity and choice. And to an extent, that is true.

However, coupled with the first two assumptions, our culture has seemingly taken these to an extreme, leading to the existential burden of pure self-responsibility for everything.  As Alan Noble also states, “To be your own and belong to yourself means that the most fundamental truth about existence is that you are responsible for your existence and everything it entails.” In short, our culture presumes we are completely and utterly responsible for deciding what life should be about (i.e., its meaning and purpose and our personal identity and place therein), for making the world conform to those personal ideas and values, and for helping and healing ourselves when the difficulties of life arise or when the world does not so easily conform to our personally made meanings and identities.

This understanding of what it means to be a self is an awfully big burden to carry, and, as will now be discussed, unfortunately leads to a cultural vision that reinforces and fosters this sense of self and its existential load.

Misguided Vision of the Good Life

According to our culture, if we are autonomous individuals belonging to ourselves, how ought we to live our lives? What is the contemporary vision of a flourishing and fulfilling lifestyle? I have found that one of the best ways to answer these questions, at least for patients in therapy, is to appeal to broader cultural priorities and beliefs by describing cultural mores that most people quickly recognize as structuring contemporary day-to-day existence. With my patients, we discuss almost a dozen aspects of the contemporary vision of the good life, but here, I will reduce the list to just two that I think capture the heart of the contemporary vision. As with the previous section, I invite readers to consider how these cultural priorities play out in their daily behaviors, thought patterns, feelings, and priorities.

A culture of technology-assisted individual fulfillment and affirmation

Our contemporary cultural vision is one focused on each individual enjoying life to its fullest in the ways each has chosen and prefers. We tend to think of the successful person as the person who has chosen a career they personally like, gets to enjoy their favorite activities, has little economic burden, is happy more often than not, and eventually gets to retire early. Accordingly, our culture tends to prize rest, relaxation, and entertainment above all else as a reward for hard work and a sign that one has done well in the world. As such, many of us have come to believe that we (1) have a right to fulfilling entertainment and (2) must feel good first in order to do good (e.g., be satisfied, calm, anxiety-free, worry-free, etc.) because free access to entertainment and pleasurable feelings are taken as an indicator that we are on the right track in life, so to speak. Work-as-necessity, anxiety, worry, personal emotional pain, and the like are all taken as signs that we must be doing something wrong. If we have done right and worked hard, we ought to be enjoying the finer activities, entertainment, and emotional experiences in life.  

Pornography is one of the most pleasurable forms of entertainment, and for many, it is a way to relax from stress or to deal with life’s many problems, which stress is seen as a problem to be dealt with and solved in order to proceed with a fulfilling life. Want to feel good? Want to feel relaxed? Want to fill your time with very enjoyable entertainment? Need something to help you feel good enough to carry the burdens of life (i.e., the burden of belonging to yourself)? Pornography fits the bill and fulfills the requirements of this vision of life quite well.

A hyper-technological culture

The wonders of modern technology are truly awe-inspiring and have done much good in the world. That being said, many of us have come to believe in the aspect of the contemporary vision that assumes that technology, particularly electronic devices, is a must-have and is the catch-all tool for solving life’s problems to be used to maximize the efficiency of even the smallest tasks and to maximize the amount of enjoyment and entertainment we can get out of life. Technology is there to fill time when sitting still. It is there to satiate any curiosity (see below). It is there to comfort us during difficult times. For so many of my patients, their phones, laptops, tablets, and other devices are so ingrained into their vision of good daily living that they struggle to even make it through one day without using them (aside from the technological necessities of their chosen profession). Commonly, they rely on it so much they cannot even go to the bathroom without taking their phones with them.

Through technology, particularly the internet, every desire, whim, aspect of identity, or bored moment of life can be satiated, affirmed, or filled. And, given the free availability of porn, there is unlimited access to one of the most pleasurable forms of entertainment to calm anxiety, help forget pain, fill time, cope with stress, or anything else. Spend enough time on technology, and you will encounter pornography, whether wanted or not, whether you are trying to escape its grasp or not. In short, technology is seen as the penultimate tool for living our lives how we want to and dealing with the burdens, aims, and responsibilities of self-belonging. Pornography (or other addictive content like social media) is freely there to help, lurking around every corner.

Viscous Individual Habits That Reinforce CPU

To understand how CPU becomes so inviting and difficult to overcome, it is not enough to simply state that persons have, at least in part, come to misunderstand who they are and have adopted parts of a vision of a good life in which CPU would flourish. As stated previously, the Christian Virtue lens asserts that all aims that structure persons’ visions of a good life (i.e., those goals and activities that structure their daily existence) are reinforced by certain character attributes or habits that enable them to accomplish those aims—their vision—and that such habits can become deeply engrained such that they truly are “second nature” to a person (i.e., they become taken-for-granted ways of living in the world because of their seemingly ordinary everydayness). As a morally diminishing aim, this approach presumes CPU would be reinforced by vicious habits.

At this point, I have already invited readers to consider their daily personal habits (i.e., priorities and vices) that might be associated with the (mis)understanding of personhood and misguided vision of contemporary Western culture. To foster further self-awareness, I would like to add two more common, everyday living kinds of vices that I have seen that enable persons to engage in CPU almost without thinking, which subsequently are often not considered by them when trying to understand how to overcome their struggle.

Curiosity

As a result of the hyper-technological culture, many of us have developed a habit of unfettered curiosity that is dangerous. “Curiosity killed the cat” is how the old saying goes. However, we no longer think about a desire for knowledge in that way. We tend to habitually seek answers to every question whenever it pops into our heads. Regardless of the source or whether the question actually matters in any real way, we need the question answered. Think about how often you pull out your phone simply to make sure you know the name of an actor in the movie you are watching (a common practice of therapy patients). Pornography both stimulates and offers ways of satiating curiosity in a never-ending cycle. If you can think it and wonder if it exists, there is likely some kind of pornography about it. Or even more innocently, if you want to know what sex looks like or are curious about the anatomy of the opposite sex (another commonality in therapy stories), pornography offers an answer. Or again, if you simply need to fill time, an aspect of unbridled curiosity, technology and pornography are there.

Isolation

This habit is easier to explain than that of curiosity. In order to reduce shame, most who struggle with pornography develop many small habits that make it easy for them to be alone with their viewing. However, such habits of isolation are not only out of the shame persons feel from viewing pornography. Our culture encourages us to take time to ourselves, to be alone, and to isolate ourselves from others as a solution to all kinds of problems in life. Exacerbating the problem is that technology allows us to do many things alone, and often bedrooms are filled with personal electronic devices, which bedrooms tend to be where persons go to be alone and shut out from the world. “Treat yourself” and “You need time to yourself” also encourage isolation and are both common mantras of a culture that sees the individual, isolated self as the best self and the source of healing and relief.

Given the (mis)understanding of selfhood asserted by our culture, the misguided vision of what life is about that such an understanding engenders, and the common vices of daily contemporary life, it comes as no surprise that CPU fits right in and is so difficult to escape. As I like to put it with patients, it can be compellingly vicious simply because of the way we live our contemporary lives.

That being said, given the fact that so many of us do not think twice about cultural practices that get us caught up in the contemporary understanding of the self, with its accompanying vision of a fulfilling life and many subtle vices, it stands to reason that many of the ways we live our day to day lives that invite compulsive (or to use the more common term, addictive) habits such as CPU are overlooked because they are simply taken-for-granted. That is, they are overlooked because they are presumed to be necessities for how we should structure our daily lives. As such, pornography may even be replaced by a different addiction (e.g., social media, YouTube videos, online gaming, online shopping, etc.), though for whatever reason, we tend to ignore such addictions even if they can be just as destructive to home and family (e.g., the spouse who spends hours online shopping or posting memes to the ignoring of children and other responsibilities).

In sum, this article in the series has focused on expanding the claim that CPU is a complex, vicious habit rooted in an understanding of selfhood and a particular vision of the good life to support the idea that CPU simply fits right into and is supported by the everydayness of our contemporary daily lives. However, this article was focused on those general aspects of selfhood and cultural practice that give shape and context to those who struggle with CPU with two specified vicious habits being given. The next article will focus on principles for healing. It will subsequently expand the ideas here and provide more specific examples of individual vicious purposes and habits that structure CPU that need to be addressed for healing to happen.

The post The Misguided Self: How Individualism Fuels Compulsive Pornography Use appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

 Before beginning, there are two things to note. First, this series is not meant to be an extensive and thorough philosophical justification of the Christian Virtue approach to CPU. Several scholars, myself included, have laid the theoretical foundations of this approach and justified its claims by contrasting it to other approaches such as the brain disease or the rational choice approaches to addiction (see e.g., Kent Dunnington’s book Addiction and Virtue). Instead, I wish the series to be a simplified presentation geared towards clear understanding and ease of implementation by readers. Second, the Christian Virtue approach is not meant to replace much of the good work being done by others in the field of addiction recovery. Rather, it is meant to provide a guiding framework enriched by the virtue ethics tradition that helps to organize many of the pre-existing principles and tools for healing from CPU.

 Core Principles of Human Nature

I will begin by briefly outlining the Christian Virtue approach to CPU by asserting what the approach takes as 5 core characteristics of human nature that define who we are as persons, showing how they align well with the gospel understanding of personhood.

 Persons Act Purposively Towards Uniquely Human Goals

This is the most fundamental and important principle of the Christian Virtue lens. In line with scripture attesting to the fact that persons are the kinds of beings that act and are not acted upon (2 Ne. 2:14; D&C 93:30-31), this approach assumes all human action is purposeful, and as such, much of human action is qualitatively distinct from the reflexive, instinctual actions of other organisms and the non-agentic, inaction of objects. This is not to say that all human action is intentional and deliberate, but that all human action is guided by or aimed towards bringing to pass some purpose and can be changed to be aimed at other purposes. Additionally, it is presumed that persons have a higher purpose and state of being (i.e., an excellent way of living, a way they “ought” to live) which they can either choose to pursue or reject, and they are tempted and enticed in both directions (2 Ne. 2:16, 27; Mosiah 3:19). Accordingly, persons can have their hearts set on certain purposes such that, over time, they come to love out of habit that which they pursue, whether it be good or evil (D&C 121:35; D&C 50:24; 2 Ne. 26:22). However, because of the possibility of intentional action inherent to their agency, their hearts are capable of being changed and purified through faith, repentance, and the grace of Christ (Alma 36; Mosiah 5:2; Mosiah 28).

Persons Are Reasoning Beings

Persons are endowed with the powers of reason, deliberation, imagination, and many similar powers that allow them to consider on what goals to pursue and how best to pursue them. Put most simply, people do things for particular reasons, such as their choices “make sense” to them and often can be communicated to others. Not all reasons for human action are considered worthy of a flourishing or thriving life. That is to say, some reasons for acting, even if those actions are morally good in themselves, are not good reasons for acting, and one of the challenges of living a virtuous life is learning to act out of good reasons in addition to choosing the right actions.

Persons Are Moral Beings

The previous principles attest to the fact that human nature is inescapably caught up in questions of how persons ought to live, or, in other words, what kind of life is considered a morally worthwhile life to live. So, coupled with the powers of reason, persons are assumed to be morally sensitive to such questions, considering how they ought to live their lives. Moreover, their actions and choices are inescapably morally saturated and salient in an ever-present moral context (2 Ne. 2:11-30). Thus, human agency is properly known as moral agency.

Persons Are Fundamentally Social

Aristotle famously stated that “Man is by nature a social being.” The doctrines of the Restored Gospel attest to this fact by reminding us that we are part of an eternal social reality, an eternal family for whom we have responsibility and with whom we can forge eternal covenants. That is, the Christian Virtue approach assumes that persons are relationally enmeshed with others and God, and we are, in fact, created to be bound with others in eternal bonds of love. Accordingly, it is within the bonds of our eternal sociality where our true identity, purpose, and moral obligations are found. Our eternal sociality creates the context for moral agency, and human social life is where moral agency can flourish.

Persons Seek to Live Out Their Vision of a “Good Life” 

In light of the characteristics of human nature as being purposive, rational, moral, and social, the Christian virtue approach further assumes that, ultimately, all persons exercise such powers to pursue what they see as their vision of the “good life.” In other words, all persons live out what they consider, whether rightly or wrongly, to be a worthwhile life as they seek to answer the question of how they ought to live.

 Virtue, Vice, and Making Sense of Human Behavior

To help us understand this approach even more, we can proceed to explore how the Christian Virtue lens makes sense of any human behavior in light of its assumptions about human nature. First, as stated before, we can start with the understanding that persons, eternally enmeshed in social relationships and endowed as they are with agency, reason, and moral sensitivity, pursue what they see as a vision of a good life. These characteristics can be considered the first, fundamental and true nature of all persons because all are inescapably gifted with them in some fashion and are all called to higher form of living.

 Second, each person’s vision of a good life manifests in their actions, such that their actions tell us the kinds of goals and life they see as worthwhile. Third, to pursue their goals, persons develop certain intellectual and moral character traits that help them to achieve those goals. Over time, those character traits become second nature, or habits, that are just a part of who they are. Habits or character traits that are reflective of human excellence (i.e., aimed towards higher moral purposes) are known as virtues. They represent the best actions that persons can take in pursuit of their goals and can be thought of, in a sense, as traits that reflect a mastery of the powers of agency, reason, social engagement, and moral sensitivity with which persons are endowed. Examples of virtues include courage, temperance, faith, charity, and intentionality. Virtues stand in contrast to vices, which represent morally unworthy habits or actions for persons to pursue. Examples of vices include cowardice, brashness, sensuality, and slothfulness. Such character attributes, and much of human behavior, are considered complex habits that help persons to focus themselves, their actions, and even their very lives on what they see as the best kind of life. They are learned through guidance, feedback, and repeated action and emotional investment. Because they are complex habits, they are difficult to change.

 The important takeaway, in sum, is to make sense of any human behavior from a Christian Virtue lens, we would talk about it in terms of persons’ (1) first nature as relationally enmeshed, purposive, rational, moral agents and (2) their second nature consisting of their goals (i.e., visions of the good life), habits, virtues, vices, and life narrative. A great example of all of this is that of a teacher. Notice that when we call someone an excellent teacher, we immediately know that they find education of others to be a key part of their vision of a good life. Furthermore, the word “excellent” tells us that such a person has developed certain character traits endemic to quality teaching, such as patience, being articulate of speech, or other virtues. In short, much of such a person’s life can be understood in terms of their vision, actions, and habits.

 A distinctly Christian Virtue lens, however, would not be complete without being centered on Jesus Christ. Because of Christ, we already have a clear vision of what a good life really is, the kinds of goals we can pursue that God approves, and what kinds of persons we are and really ought to be. Because of Christ, we know that we do not have to change alone; we can rely on Christ and His grace to help us to repent and grow. Because of Christ, we do not need to spend our lives merely trying to use our own understanding about what choices to make; we can listen to the guidance of prophets, read scripture, and seek personal revelation to guide us and inform us in our mortal journey. Ultimately, because of Christ, we do not have to change on our own. As we are willing to repent—to change our vision of what our lives ought to be about and our character in pursuit of a new vision—Christ changes our hearts and our habits such that we become born again in Him.

 Making Sense of Compulsive Pornography Use

With the core assumptions about human nature and human behavior in place, according to the Christian Virtue approach, I can conclude by applying it to making sense of compulsive pornography use, which will then pave the way for a better understanding of how to approach healing and overcoming it to be addressed in proceeding articles. Remember that in this lens we can make sense of any human behavior by talking about it in terms of persons’ two natures, particularly their second nature of goals, habits, and narrative. What this approach suggests, then, is that compulsive pornography use represents a complex habit guiding persons towards a vision of a life in which CPU belongs. That is, a person who struggles with CPU does so because of (1) a slight misunderstanding of who they truly are, including possible incoherence in one’s life narrative, (2) at least a partially misguided vision of what constitutes a good life, or (3) many subtle, complex vices (i.e., habits) that make it so that viewing pornography just belongs in someone’s life, or, as I have observed in therapy, some combination of all three. This approach gives credence to the nomenclature applied to CPU of being a “vicious cycle” because it is caught up in the daily vices and misguided goals that are hard to simply escape because they are so intimately tied in with a person’s daily living.

 Subsequently, and as I will be outlining in the next article, this approach to CPU does presume that there are many subtle ways that we currently understand ourselves and what a fulfilling life is about in our contemporary culture that lead to a way of living in which pornography use fits right into our daily living, reinforced by many taken-for-granted daily habits and activities. In fact, as one author argued and as will be explored in the next article, it is precisely because addictive practices are so subtly ingrained into the everydayness and norms of daily living that it is so pernicious and difficult to overcome.

The post A Christian Virtue Approach to Compulsive Pornography Use appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Some people have taken these statements to mean that members of the Church should basically stop talking about “culture war” issues, particularly on issues related to marriage, family, and sexuality. Conversations on these topics can become heated quickly, and the differing sides often cannot find much common ground. So, perhaps it is better to stay silent. But I think this is a misreading of what President Oaks was asking for. In the same talk in which he called for a cease-fire, he also said this: 

“In view of current experience and culture, how should religious persons and their organizations whose positions are dictated or affected by religious beliefs lobby or otherwise enter the debate on public issues? They should not be required to forego or deny their religious or other beliefs or motivations, but they should be counseled to be prudent. They will usually be most persuasive in political discourse by framing arguments and explaining the value of their positions in terms understandable to and subject to debate with those who do not share their beliefs. All sides should seek to contribute to the reasoned discussion and compromise that are essential in a pluralistic society.”

In essence, President Oaks is asking for a certain kind of engagement. He is urging us to give reasons for our positions—reasons that are intelligible to people who do not share our faith and which are subject to evaluation and debate—and then be willing to try to find a way to live together in a pluralistic society. 

Now, some readers might say that President Oaks is asking for the impossible, for (they believe) there simply are no non-religious reasons for the Church’s positions on sex and family. At best, such views are based in tradition, and at worst, they are based in prejudice and bigotry—or so the standard line goes.

Which false views am I referring to? Take, for starters, the way that depersonalized sex is normalized and celebrated in our society. Young people grow up in an environment in which pornography is often their first (and continuing) sex educator, presenting them with endless images of impersonal, detached, and often violent sexual acts. In such images and videos, persons are reduced to objects, mere things that can be exploited and discarded. Their personal identity—that is, their being as a unique and irreplaceable individual, one with a name and face and history unlike any other—is liquidated in a parade of interchangeable acts and body parts. The viewer, of course, has no relationship with any of the participants in pornographic images or videos, cementing an expectation that sexual arousal and fulfillment need not require any real interpersonal connection or self-disclosure. In the words of Roger Scruton, “The people displayed in the pornographic film are not in relation to the viewer, nor are they displayed as being in any other relation to each other than that of each using the other’s body . . . Nor is [the viewer of pornography] really aroused except in the purely physiological sense, since there is no mutual arousal of which he is a party. Everything is cold, bleak, objective, and also cost-free and without any personal risk.” 

Interactions between live human beings are often not much better. Dating apps such as Tinder and Grindr (among several others) facilitate casual, superficial, and sometimes even anonymous sexual encounters. Again, the underlying philosophy of sex at work here is that one need not know very much about the person one has sex with, need not care about their personality or well-being (beyond securing consent), need not disclose much or express love or have any expectation of a continuing relationship. There is no better word to describe such sex than “depersonalized”—sex in which one is not really looking to connect with another person but merely uses his or her body as a site of sexual gratification. 

We could say that such a sexual milieu is “unhealthy,” and that would be true. However, at a deeper level, such an approach to sex is dis-integrating, in the sense of separating things that ought to be kept together. Depersonalized sex is disconnected sex—disconnected from friendship, disconnected from love, disconnected from responsibility for future children, disconnected from marriage, disconnected from any real concern for one’s partner beyond gaining consent, disconnected from any broader social or interpersonal responsibilities, and in a real sense, disconnected from moral integrity, at least as long as moral integrity requires us to treat other human beings as fully human persons, rather than objects that can be used and discarded. 

Of course, not all sexual encounters these days have these features. But the depersonalized approach to sex represents a default and taken-for-granted assumption in our culture, something that is accepted (and promoted) as true without much reflection or difficulty. This approach is assumed to be true in much of our entertainment and media, in higher education, and in other centers of cultural power. It’s what children and youth are taught, implicitly and explicitly, in a thousand ways. 

There are other ways that our society depersonalizes (or objectifies) sex—by claiming that our bodies are not essential parts of who we are as human persons; by denying the personhood of unborn children; by treating embryos as products to be manipulated rather than persons in development, and so on. And we probably shouldn’t be surprised that such a sexual milieu frequently draws children and minors into its orbit—a sexual morality based merely in consent is flimsy protection in a culture that sees sexual self-gratification as a personal imperative.

Still, some Latter-day Saints might feel uneasy. If we use our beliefs to influence policy or culture, aren’t we “imposing our values” on others? On this point, I note in passing that the other side of this conflict doesn’t seem to have gotten President Oaks’ memo about a cease-fire in the culture wars. The triumphalist, “right side of history” Progressive narrative continues apace, with little sign of stopping or of being magnanimous towards those who haven’t caught the vision.

But how can we articulate our views in a way that honors both those with whom we disagree and the truth? Writing here in Public Square, Robert P. George gives a number of resources that can be useful as we try to articulate our views in terms that can be accessible to those who do not already agree with us. Dan Ellsworth and Jeff Bennion have compiled an even broader set of resources geared specifically for an LDS audience. If I could recommend only one resource to understand the place of family, identity, and sexual morality in our time, it would be Carl R. Trueman’s book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Trueman also has a more condensed version of the argument: Strange New World). Trueman argues that the sexual revolution “cannot be properly understood until it is set within the context of a much broader transformation in how society understands the nature of human selfhood.” Surveying a variety of important thinkers and intellectual trends, Trueman usefully articulates the background assumptions that inform commonly accepted assumptions about sex and gender and points toward what would need to be done to justify an alternative approach to these issues.

Of course, simply giving reasons is not enough. We must actually care about the welfare of people with whom we disagree. We should see them as collaborators in the project of seeking the truth living together peacefully. If we do not actually love others, our reasons can become simply more tools for contention carried on by other means.

“Powerful forces tell us that our defeat in the causes of marriage and human life is inevitable. They warn us that we are on the ‘wrong side of history’ . . .  But history does not have sides. It is an impersonal and contingent sequence of events, events that are determined in decisive ways by human deliberation, judgment, choice, and action. The future of marriage and of countless human lives can and will be determined by our judgments and choices—our willingness or unwillingness to bear faithful witness, our acts of courage or cowardice. Nor is history, or future generations, a judge invested with god-like powers to decide, much less dictate, who was right and who was wrong. The idea of a ‘judgment of history’ is secularism’s vain, meaningless, hopeless, and pathetic attempt to devise a substitute for the final judgment of Almighty God. History is not God. God is God. History is not our judge. God is our judge.”

The post Love, Truth, and the Culture Wars appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

My response was informed by the very frustrating several hours I had just spent at the mall with my tween daughter in the name of back-to-school shopping. I went willing to buy her a few things for the new school year. We both came home frazzled—she because she got almost nothing and I because there was almost nothing I was willing to buy for her. 

“Buddy, it’s because what is offered to girls and what is offered to boys is very different,” I told him. I pointed out his outfit—a t-shirt and basketball shorts to his knees, standard issue for a teen boy. But walk into a store or visit a site for girls, and it’s an entirely different story. Our daughters are offered tube tops, thong bikinis, booty shorts, and bralettes—by the time they are 10. Popular cheap shopping sites like Shein and Temu provide provocative images of how to wear their skimpy garb.  

Parents like me don’t discuss clothing choices with our daughters more often than our sons because we don’t want people to see our daughters’ belly buttons or bare shoulders. We do because the message to our kids feels obvious: for girls, to be beautiful is to be sexual, and for boys, sexualized girls are beautiful. That’s a message we are trying to intercept before it takes root.  

However, clothing is a small but visible thread in a much more pervasive problem: the incessant sexualizing of our children from seemingly all quarters. As the mother of three teens, I have seen my children bombarded at every turn with sexual images, themes, and content. Social media, reels, ads, video games, and straight-up pornography are sitting in their hands, accessible at a click, even with (the sorry excuse for) parental controls locked and loaded. The questions for concerned parents are straightforward: How did we get here, and what do we do now?

The Pervasive Problem

Anymore, sexual imagery is found wherever kids are found. It comes in the form of Snapchat filters that instantly make kids look like porn stars and Snap Chat’s Discover feature, which is stocked with sexual clickbait. Anime is replete with sexualized imagery, particularly of girls, and includes an entire subgenre of animated pornography. The gaming world offers a wide range of sexualized animation and skins, which are often busty, scantily clad women but include plenty of ripped, shirtless men as well. A popular YouTube gamer has a male avatar whose skin is simply a sheath across his chest and women’s panties on his bottom. Popular kids’ gaming site Roblox has ongoing problems with sexual content as well as predators. And if something is benign in its own right, there are no guarantees the ads will be. Ads for adult content pop up all over children’s apps and videos, and algorithms make sure they keep coming back.

By the time kids are in their teens, almost 85 percent of boys and almost 60 percent of girls have viewed pornography, most often accessed through mobile devices. Sixteen-year-old Isabel Hogben wrote a sobering essay for The Free Press, explaining just how ubiquitous pornography use is amongst her peers. She gives an adolescent voice to what studies are documenting: children and teens not only see pornography, but they believe pornography. 

“[T]he preadolescent and adolescent brain doesn’t know it’s all fake. It believes wholeheartedly what it sees. I certainly did,” she admits. “[M]ost of my friends think this stuff is normal.”

Kids are becoming inured to sexual behavior in general while learning the most aberrant forms of it, believing this to be how typical sexual relationships function. 

Youth are also creating their own pornography, as sexting is commonplace for adolescents, who believe sharing nudes in a relationship or even just flirting is normal and expected. Too often, sexting has devastating consequences as teens are extorted or bullied with images of their own making or even with deep fake images created with AI. 

If this wasn’t enough, childhood sexuality is being canonized in spaces traditionally considered safe for children. School curricula, children’s literature, children’s programming, and even state legislatures and judiciaries are elevating the messaging that sexuality is somehow key to a healthy childhood. 

Nature vs. Nurture 

How we arrived at this point is a complex story. In part, our current circumstances are the natural evolution of the sexual revolution that began as far back as the turn of the 20th Century with Sigmund Freud and the Jazz Age, accelerated through the 1960s and 70s, and went off the rails with the advent of the World Wide Web. In more sinister ways, children’s involvement was never a byproduct of sexual liberation but rather the ultimate intent. 

In the natural course of things, the dangerous potential of the Internet was suspected at the outset, and anti-pornography organizations pushed Congress in the 1990s to pass the Communications Decency Act of 1996. However, it was immediately challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and in 1997, the Supreme Court unanimously struck it down in the name of free speech and overreach.

Since then, unfettered by legalities, tech companies have had the freedom to drive engagement without the complications of providing protections. Twenty-five years later, apps used by kids every day are perennially among the Dirty Dozen, an annual list compiled by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) calling out companies that put children at risk of exposure to sexual content or predators. The 2023 dozen included Roblox, Snapchat, Instagram, Discord, and Spotify.

Instagram whistleblower Aurtoro Bejar testified before Congress in November 2023 that parent company Meta willfully fails to protect teens from sexual harassment and unwanted advancements. “All of this time, there has been extensive harm happening to teenagers, and the leadership has been aware of it, but they have chosen not to investigate or address the problems,” Bejar said. “Looked at over time, it is likely the largest-scale sexual harassment of teens to have ever happened.”

As for the “more effective and less restrictive” solution of software filtering, any parent who has tried to set up controls on their children’s devices or apps can attest that if such controls exist at all, they are not designed to be easy to set up or even successful. Companies that create filtering tools are constantly chasing changes made by Apple or Andriod and, therefore, are usually a step (or several) behind their capabilities. Too many parents are overwhelmed by the sheer effort it takes to manage their children’s digital consumption and trust that sites like YouTube Kids have child protection under control. (They don’t.)

Children of the Future

The nurture side of the current problem has a more sinister undercurrent. Freud first posited that child development should be understood in psychosexual stages, including his Oedipal Complex theory. Freud’s star student, Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, coined the term “sexual revolution” with his 1936 treatise of the same title. American researcher Alfred Kinsey earned the title “father of the sexual revolution” through highly controversial studies in the mid-twentieth century that ran the gamut of sexual experiences, including involving children. Others like Norman O. Brown took up the banner, playing a key role in igniting the free love of the 1960s and ‘70s with his own tome on sexuality. 

Each of these philosophers shared a common and concerning theme, summarized by Brown: “Our repressed desires are the desires we had, unrepressed, in childhood; and they are sexual desires.” Their common and concerning goal: liberate them. Kinsey believed “sexual contact would be a normal part of growing up for children in a less inhibited society,” and Reich detailed how this liberation should take place in a book to which he gave the chilling title, Children of the Future. 

For the most part, societal guardrails have protected children, with sexual behavior involving a child still squarely defined as abhorrent abuse, morally repugnant, and patently illegal. As a society, we still believe, “It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones” (Luke 17:3).

But these 20th-century sexologists’ views are sneaking into 21st-century spaces for children.

In Germany, a professional association on sexuality issued a recommendation that daycares implement “body exploration rooms” for young children, which would include nudity and “sexual games.” In Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK, a version of a television show called Naked Education teaches teens about the body and then has a panel of adults disrobe to full nudity in front of them. A professor in the United States garnered attention when she said children should see adult genitalia regularly in a “casual, normalized way.” And there is an effort to move away from the term “pedophile” and toward the term “minor attracted person” (MAP) so as to destigmatize an adult’s sexual attraction to children. 

Queer Pedagogy

We cannot have an honest or complete conversation about the sexualization of children without including queer theory and pedagogy. Queer theory, as an academic focus, seeks to “disrupt dominant and normalizing binaries,” citing such norms as oppressive. Queer pedagogy is the practical application of queer theory in classrooms. 

This is captured in the 2010 academic article, “Recognizing and Utilizing Queer Pedagogy,” where the authors cite Kinsey as their opening salvo and then explain that the simple fight for acceptance has burgeoned into the “redefinition of sexual identity and sexuality itself.” They explain that “educators are understood to be either upholding the status quo or to be defining/redefining what is classified as ‘normal’ in their classrooms, and thus in the larger society as well.”

Given that these standards are designed for K-12 curriculums, there is an unsettling air of Reich, Kinsey, and Brown in that statement about all people. 

Drag Story Hour is a program for kids offered to schools, libraries, and bookstores in which drag queens read books (usually with queer themes) to groups of children. The program has partnered with PBS, Disney, and Hulu, among others. The program describes itself as “a generative extension of queer pedagogy into the world of early childhood education” and explains that “queer and trans pedagogies seek to actively destabilize the normative function of schooling through transformative education” and “queer imagining in an early childhood context.” (Emphasis added.)

This “queer imagining” is also found in Disney’s “not so secret” gay agenda, the Blue’s Clues pride parade sing-along, Scholastic’s diversity collections, and elementary classroom teachers “reading the rainbow.” An American Library Association’s 2023 recommended reading list for teens includes New Queer Fairy Tales, A Queer Romance Anthology, and A Quick and Easy Guide to Asexuality, just to cite a few titles.

A founder of Drag Story Hour, Lil Miss Hot Mess, summarizes the goal of queer pedagogy: “It artfully invites children into building communities that are more hospitable to queer knowledge and experience.” 

In other words, children are the tools for building the future these adults want to create.

“Nothing can replace you.”

It is enough to make a parent feel overwhelmed and outgunned. But there is hope. 

Andrew Young was an animator for DreamWorks when he noticed something concerning. The movies he was working on had a strangely anti-family subtext. Lunatic villains spouted off pro-family messaging in deranged rants—casting such messaging as crazy. Young confronted the powers that be at DreamWorks and discovered his observations were not only accurate, but the messaging was intentional—a form of social engineering. Young was appalled, and his journey led him to abandon a lucrative job as the only option his personal integrity would allow.  

In sharing his story, Young noted the one hitch in DreamWorks’ plan: “Nothing can replace you. This is the problem [DreamWorks] found. Nothing could replace a stable parent in influence and modeling,” noting that social engineering only takes root in “a void of influence.”

A recent study by Gallup and the Institute for Family Studies supports Young’s observation: “Screen time has no association with an index of mental health problems for teens who demonstrate high levels of self-control and enjoy a strong relationship with parents who supervise them.” (Emphasis added.)

So the hope is us, parents. 

“Influence,” “modeling,” “strong relationships,” and “supervision” are powerful tools for parents. It is our imperative to help our children follow the admonition of Paul and seek that which is pure, virtuous, lovely, or of good report (see Philippians 4:8). It is also our imperative to help our children remain tethered to the real world. Much of this perniciousness seeps in through screens. The more our children engage in the actual, tactile world, the less access these forces have to them. 

While parental controls and filtering apps can be clunky and not always effective, they are better than nothing at all, and parents should still use them. Apple offers parental controls and content restrictions for its devices, apps such as Snap Chat and Instagram have developed family settings, services such as Bark and Quistidio provide filtering and monitoring, and routers such as Gryphon block material before it enters your home network.

In matters of sexuality, parents must be the first, most often, and most important source of information. Children will learn; parents will decide if they learn from them or from the Internet, or from their friends. Mostly like it will be from all the above. But the Internet and friends will not instill family values.

Parents also need to work collectively. I admit to loving viral videos of parents standing up at school board meetings to challenge policies and curricula they find concerning. In 2022, more than 20,000 concerned parents forced the Utah State Board of Education to abandon a draft gender policy that would have permitted children to share locker rooms and sleeping quarters based on a student’s “asserted” gender identity. Twenty thousand parents are hard to dismiss. 

State legislators are now passing laws, such as age-verification laws for pornography purveyors. In an ironic twist, PornHub, the Internet’s largest pornography conglomerate, blocked access to its own site altogether in those states rather than comply. I would call that mission accomplished.

Members of the LGBT+  community are also stepping in. The organization, Gays against Groomers, does not mince its messaging in its chosen title, and with a nod to how difficult it can be to speak out, a recently formed organization calls itself the LGBT Courage Coalition. Both have a blunt message: Stop sexualizing children under the guise of LGBT+. 

The reinforcements are welcomed and needed. But in the end, it comes down to us as parents. As our children navigate this dangerous world, we hope they will be able to say, “[T]he words which I had often heard my father speak … sunk deep into my heart,” and “We do not doubt our mothers knew it” (Enos 1:3 and Alma 56:47).

The post Are our children being sexualized? The Evidence appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Wounds and Pornography

Jay Stringer is the author of a popular book written for individuals seeking help from sexual brokenness entitled Unwanted. Amazon states that it has sold over 100,000 copies. On his website, he writes the following, “What if your porn use could be a roadmap to healing, not a life sentence to sexual shame or addiction? That’s exactly what my research on over 3,800 men and women showed. I learned that there is nothing random about the fantasies we pursue and the porn we use. If we want to outgrow our involvement with pornography, we will need to identify the hidden drivers that bring us to it in the first place.” One of the main ideas of Jay’s work is that the very specifics of our sexual fantasies and addictive patterns can show us how we can heal. 

The website Fight the New Drug features an article written about how porn can misrepresent and fetishize LGBT+ individuals and relationships. In the article, they state that in 2019 the most popular gay porn categories on the website Pornhub were “Straight Guys” and “Daddy.” According to Jay Stringer, could that give us an indication of what gay men are really wanting to heal and what is driving their porn addiction? Could they be wanting to be accepted by the world of straight men, and could some gay men be wanting to heal their underlying father wounds? Like Corianton, could these men also be nourished by their brothers?

I can think of fewer topics less understood and prone to division in our world or in the Church today than the topic of human sexuality. Even our prophet, President Nelson, reminded us in his last conference address that we are living in a “sexualized” world as he taught us that “choosing to live a virtuous life in a sexualized, politicized world builds faith.”  

Adrenaline and Dopamine

In the past few years, our understanding of the hormones related to sexual desire has increased substantially. Among the new discoveries is that adrenaline and dopamine act in parallel and sometimes overlapping manners in our brains.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter of desire, attraction, and addiction and is a key driver in sexual behavior. Adrenaline is a neurotransmitter released in response to trauma and fear. However, high enough levels of adrenaline can bind to and stimulate the same receptors as dopamine, leading to an increase in the effectiveness of dopamine. Research into this has focused on education, not attraction. While these intersecting factors are extraordinarily complicated, for laypersons, this may explain Stringer’s observation that what we are attracted to can help us understand what has wounded us. 

While the idea of inflexible sexuality was popular from the nineties through the early oughts, the current consensus is that sexuality often changes over time. Research from 2022 found that within a 12-year period, 33% of people’s sexual attraction changed.

If excessive adrenaline and dopamine together can create sexual attraction, as these recent studies suggest may be possible, it may go a long way to understanding why this is.

Self-Directed Sexual Fluidity

This sexual fluidity has long been experienced by people who experience same-sex attraction but wish not to because of religious commitments.

Chuck, for example, experienced sexual fluidity away from same-sex attraction. In his experience, he describes, “What I was really seeking was non-sexual affirmation from the world of men. Sexual gratification never filled the underlying void. I felt deep in my core that I was not homosexual; rather, I had sexualized those male qualities that I judged that I never possessed—sports ability, a muscular physique and other masculine physical qualities, strength of character, and more—all things that I deemed different from me.”

Jerry similarly explained his sexual fluidity from homosexuality to heterosexuality, “I’ve come to realize that this attraction is an emotional one for me. When my core emotional needs are met by men in healthy, non-sexual ways, my SSA automatically decreases.”

Whether or not this sexual fluidity can be directed, as these men claim in their experience, remains a controversial subject. Sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) have been disclaimed by the APA. But their February 2021 decision was based not on evidence that SOCE causes harm, but rather a lack of evidence either way as well as an ideological position that the existence of SOCE can result in stigmatization.

Perhaps our new paradigm on sexuality should lead us to see this not so much as sexual orientation change efforts, as described by the APA, but rather self-directed sexual fluidity. 

Nourished by My Brothers

A couple of years ago, I opened up to a few close friends and to my wife that I was struggling internally with unwanted sexual attraction toward men. I had experienced these feelings ever since I was a young boy and hadn’t talked to anyone about them for many years. I felt trapped and felt an intense amount of shame. I was drawn to sexual images of men and viewed them as foreign, unfamiliar objects. Opening up about these feelings was terrifying for me, but how grateful I am for loving priesthood leaders and friends who have shown me Christ-like compassion and have helped me to feel love, and to help me with my fears of emotional male intimacy. My sexual attraction to men has greatly decreased. I don’t fantasize about being close to men because I feel close to them in real life. I have been nourished by my brothers.

I began meeting monthly with my stake president, who read numerous helpful books with me, and we talked about what I was learning. I received several priesthood blessings from him that gave me comfort and guidance. He listened to my greatest fears, my biggest aches, my past mistakes, and sins, and reassured me of our Savior’s healing power and of forgiveness and repentance. 

During this time, I started going on a walk once a week before work with my best friend from high school, who specializes in mental and emotional release work. We talked about what I had experienced in my life in regard to a difficult relationship with my father and other peer wounds and relationships. He lovingly listened to me and helped me process things. He helped me change my internal emotional response and false beliefs related to my past experiences. 

I also began talking to other men and to a therapist who similarly experienced same-sex attraction. I learned about how our stories were similar but also were sometimes different. It has been very helpful for me to find men I can relate to in a way that I can’t with others, who have experienced many of the same feelings that I have, and that has also helped me reduce shame. 

I bought a mountain bike and took a redemptive risk of opening up to and spending time weekly with my brother-in-law and other safe men mountain biking. I learned more about and experienced intimately and personally the world of men that I have often felt apart from. This was very intimidating and scary for me, but with time, I began to feel that I belonged, that I wasn’t different, and that men were safe people I could get close to. I learned that I could talk about my feelings and what I experienced. I learned that I wasn’t that different from them in many ways, and more and more, I began to feel like I belonged with them. My brother-in-law always gives me a big hug and tells me that he loves me after we spend time together. This has meant so much to me and helped me to feel safe and accepted by him, and has been very healing. It has given me the confidence to develop other healing relationships with men.

A Gospel of Compassion. A Gospel of Healing

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is full of hope and healing, repentance and change. Christ always healed with compassion and turned people’s wounds into opportunities for connection, empathy, and belonging. This is the antidote to the highly sexualized world we live in—true Christlike covenant belonging. The Savior showed us by His actions how to help the outcast, to help those who were misunderstood, those who were different, and those who were hurting. He changed fear, trauma, and false beliefs to safety, love, belonging, faith, and peace. He also healed the inner vessel first before the outer.

Is it no wonder President Nelson has pleaded with us lately to be peacemakers? To keep our covenants and to walk the often narrow and uphill covenant path that is so different from the way of the world? To avoid labels that can hinder our progress and growth? To strive to minister in a higher and holier way to our fellow men? To avoid any addictions and to seek spiritual and professional help as needed? And to prepare the world for the second coming of our Savior by learning how to love others better? 

It is my belief that as we minister to and nourish those around us, we can become saviors on Mount Zion by helping save our fellow men who are held captive by the entanglements of addiction, trauma, unwanted attractions, shame, and false beliefs. I have surely felt others doing this for me, helping me fulfill my life mission and reach my full potential. If we do not do that—surely they will continue to turn elsewhere for those needs to be met. 

I know that I will forever be grateful for those who have helped me and how grateful I am to my Heavenly Father that I have been able to, like Corianton, be nourished by my brothers.

The post Sexual Fluidity and the Gospel of Jesus Christ appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Broadening Our Understanding of Pornography

It was not uncommon during my adolescence for a prophet, an apostle, or a general authority to give a talk on the pervasiveness of pornography. Usually, it was within the context of addressing men, but not universally so. As evidenced by the earlier Elder Holland statement, pornography discussions were usually within the context of visual stimuli like movies or pictures. Research has noted that men are typically more invested in visual pornography, so it would make sense to discuss such topics within that context. Huge movements like Fight The New Drug particularly emphasize video and online pornography and their effects on relationships. Typically, the arguments against this form of pornography entail points on sexual exploitation, sex trafficking, and other forms of abuse and mischaracterization. While this is a worthwhile movement, it does emphasize visual stimuli instead of the other forms of pornography available.

With this in mind, it is important for us to denote what pornographic content actually includes. More generally,  pornography refers to “sexually explicit media that are primarily intended to sexually arouse the audience,” in which literature and audio forms are included. So, when we discuss the detrimental effects of pornography on an individual, we are referring to an all-encompassing definition of pornography and not just more common conceptualizations. Notably, women are less visually stimulated than men and usually require more “mental mapping,” which is to say that women typically appreciate more storytelling and “set-up” than men do. Forbes noted that 90% of women use this sort of mental framing to get sexually aroused. Thus, erotic books and forms of audio pornography (including but not exclusive to audiobooks) tend to be more appealing to the feminine demographic and are still detrimental to the listener/reader. 

Romance Novels and “Sexual Empowerment”

In current society, romance fiction has been one of the fastest-growing media markets over the last several years. Unsurprisingly, some reports indicate that 82% of romance readers are women. It is interesting that this noted increase corresponds with the normalization of erotic fiction in the public sphere. With the release of Fifty Shades of Grey, pop culture started to shift to the social acceptance of literary erotica. Notably, this book sold over 150 million copies worldwide and created a movie franchise that produced additional millions in revenue. While not all sexually explicit books are as widely known or in the same romance genre, the rise in acceptability of such content is alarming. The promotion and normalization of sexual content also seem to correspond to parts of the feminist movements focused on sexual empowerment and sex positivity.

Some arguments for sexually explicit content in books note that women have learned new things that have brought enjoyment into their sex lives with their partners. Additionally, women (and men) from a secular perspective can learn more about consent, safe sexual practices, and healthy sexuality. Having access to this sort of content has had ‘positive’ effects. In fact, while pornography usually decreases sexual drive in men, reports have indicated that it increases sexual drive in women. Indeed, many Instagram reels and female influencers have joked that their husbands and partners are the ones buying them their books for those very reasons. This “educational” purpose of fictional erotica can be compelling; however, in a study among women reading sexual content, it was noted that the number one reason women wanted to read such material was for the distraction it provided for them. While noting that this is not necessarily generalizable, it does bring forth the notion that, truly, at the core, pornography is a numbing agent similar to other materials that can be addicting. Further, the type of sex life promoted within these stories can pervade our understanding of human sexuality as a whole. Reading sexually explicit material, especially when those perspectives are grounded solely in secular understanding, can distort the meaning of sex. Using these sources as an authority would concede that we view sex as purely transactional for personal pleasure. Therefore, it’s not just sexual education, it is bad sexual education rooted in ideas that are incredibly deteriorative in nature. However important a healthy sexual relationship is with a spouse, it is not the sole purpose. We can lose sight of that when we consume material that promotes a sex life at odds with what we believe. After all, it is a well known fact that what media we consume influences our perceptions and understanding. Even if we know that sex should go beyond simple pleasure and transaction, if we read content that focuses on sex as just that, eventually, it can influence how we understand sex and, consequently, lead us away from the truth. 

What Then? 

Perceived improvements in some areas of sex life do not necessarily mean that the same results and excitement could not happen with other forms of sexual education more in line with the gospel. There is a difference between reading or looking at imagery like diagrams, stick figures, and so forth for educational purposes with one’s spouse rather than using such material to incite pleasure alone. This area is where using righteous discernment is of the utmost importance. The intent in which we engage with sexual materials matters, but pure intent does not absolve wrongdoing. 

I will concede to the fact that there are not great resources (or at least not very well known) that help couples learn about the mechanics of sex within a Christian perspective. While I understand the need to keep sacred things sacred, when you have Christian couples that have not engaged in such activities before marriage, we need to find ways to help them feel more prepared for sexual intimacy in a way that also promotes an accurate gospel perspective on human sexuality. If we do not provide education, it will be searched out elsewhere for worse or better. But here are some available resources that are a starting point to fill this gap: 

Replenish: Creating Sexual Fulfillment in Marriage, A Guide for LDS Couples by Tammy Hill

Sexual Wholeness in Marriage — Busby, Carrol and Leavitt

Between Husband and Wife

You, me, and We by Anthony Hughes

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What I will describe is the influence of pornography’s toxic scripts in isolation, excluding the (potential) mitigating and countervailing influence of the user’s resilient innate humanity. Thankfully, pornography does not operate in such a values vacuum, and the dangerous reality of pornographic scripting is not a real-world description of what ensues. A natural pullback from pornography’s toxicity arises for many from the rescuing restraint of our divine nature. Our hardwiring for human connection and compassion is like a relational immune response countering and curtailing the pathogen of pornography. Thankfully, most people have a strong relational immune system and a robust relational immune response that pulls them back and holds them back from the relational and sexual toxicities which pornography scripts and towards which pornography drives. With that reassuring hope of pulling back in mind, we will first examine the inherently toxic nature of pornography and then set forth intervention to strengthen the human empathy that lies at the heart of our relational immune system response. 

Pornography is ubiquitous, and the pervasive viewing of pornography is highlighting its toxicities. Pornography consumption has increased exponentially in recent years for all ages and genders. A nationally representative survey of adults in the United States found that one-third (33.5%) of dating men and one-third (33.1%) of married men report weekly or daily pornography use, as well as 13.4% of dating women and 1% of married women. In another survey, irrespective of relationship status, 46% of men and 16% of women reported viewing online pornography at least weekly. In attitude, over 70% of men and women report some level of approval for pornography use. Another recent national survey showed that three-quarters of teenagers have seen porn by age 17, with the average age of first exposure being 12 years old. This “adult” entertainment industry yields a significant amount of underaged exposure, shaping how youth view sex and how they cultivate future intimate relationships.

Pornography’s psychological and relational deterioration of one’s view of others begins with its eroticism script and continues with a closely related second script of objectification—narratives and depictions for exploiting the physical body solely as a collection of sexual triggers and stimuli. Continuing its non-holistic and non-relational nature, its denigration of the personhood of the other, pornography also scripts promiscuity, an entirely detached, non-committal, serial approach to sexuality, anchoring sexual gratification to novelty and scripting men as sexual marauders and raiders. Pornography never offers any reason to hold back on moving on and on and on. 

Most persons are perceptively aware of the reality of these first three pornography scripts—eroticism, objectification, and promiscuity. Pornography’s first three scripts for sexual arousal and gratification obsessing upon eroticism, objectification, and promiscuity, hardly demand empirical documentation to be known—they are quite obvious. So now we get to the fourth script embedded in pornography, which is misogyny. Perhaps some say, “The first three scripts are plainly evident in pornography, but you’re saying that pornography scripts for misogyny? How so?”

Misogyny, Really?

Misogyny is disrespect, disdain, negativity, contempt, or hostility toward women. No matter the severity of manifestation, misogyny is rightly viewed as corrosive and counter to empathy (toward women)—an essential relationship virtue and wellspring of care and restraint. The psychological and relational deterioration cascading from pornography use to misogyny deserves unpacking. As we consider the psychodynamics of pornography, the connection between pornography and misogyny may become apparent. 

Pornography scripting for misogyny seems far-fetched to some. Perhaps they are unaware of the prevalence of depictions of aggression, abuse, and violence in popular pornography. Content analysis of best-selling pornography videos found high levels of both physical (88.2%) and verbal (48.7%) aggression, with males almost always portrayed as the perpetrators of aggression and females overwhelmingly the targets of aggression. Further desensitization and, unbelievably, even normalization of such misogynistic behavior comes as women are depicted as responding neutrally or with pleasure to such degrading and abusive behavior. Who can doubt that depicting the denigration of women in a framework of reinforcing male sexual gratification and female acceptance foments and confirms misogyny?

One need look no further than stereotypical “frat-boy” and “locker-room” talk or high-profile public figures’ sexual exploitations and contemptuous talk and behavior for anecdotal and observational confirmation of misogynistic creep. Past unwelcome exposure to so-called “locker-room talk” of young adult males offered putrid awareness of how some men view and exploit women as mere sexual “tools” for their own gratification. Further, outright misogyny was evident as they described sexually “using” women (exploitation) and taking satisfaction in emotionally damaging (abusing) the women they were involved with. Does anyone believe that partner consent can qualitatively transform such sexual experiences into a condition of psychological and relational wholeness? Can we see the misogyny in it? Pornography’s scripts fuel such degrading attitudes, marauding sexuality, and misogyny.

Pornography scripts for sexual “taking.” As happens in every sexual interaction where “my gratification,” rather than our “shared satisfaction” and “our relationship” is the focus, removing the other person’s needs, wants, and desires from the relationship and sexual frame of reference turns a couple into two solipsistic individuals taking what they want. The word self-ish doesn’t even really apply because “self” implies an “other,” and the solipsistic are “other-oblivious.” The universe may exist apart from them, but it exists just for them. The other isn’t removed from the equation; they were never entered into the equation. 

This is non-relational sexual taking, each person taking what they want from the other with minimal regard to the other, and there is a real consequence and pain to all involved in it. Making others objects for sexual gratification—even with such mutual consent that the world supposes—can change the contours of the human psyche and our divine nature. While it is increasingly relationally, socially, and legally accepted—“as long as there is consent”—sexual taking is nonetheless relationally reprehensible. Further, the mindset of sexual taking scripted by pornography, if left unchecked, easily degrades to much worse. Yet sexual taking without concern or consequence is exactly what pornography sells.

Some will note, however, that a smaller percentage of persons report viewing explicit pornographic scripting of misogynistic (exploitive, degrading, abusive, violent, non-consensual) depictions. Consequently, setting aside these extremes that so-called “soft-core porn” may put in the background or leave out, some speciously reason that soft-core pornography elevates women (their physical beauty, sexual attractiveness, and inherent appeal) in the eyes of its viewers. We will use attachment principles to show that such is not the case, that pornography is ubiquitously corrosive to male–female relations and inherently misogynistic, no matter the type of pornography.  Understanding attachment dynamics that support sexual wholeness helps us to see that pornography is anti-attachment, inherently scripting male attitudes of disrespect, disdain, negativity, contempt, or hostility toward women through porn’s erotic objectification and exploitative promiscuity. For some, porn can condition sexual arousal to misogynistically tinged depictions. 

The viewing of pornography inculcates scripts of objectification and exploitation of another human being for one’s own sexual gratification. Fantasizing, or worse, enacting such scripts—such as those young adult males in the locker room were boasting of—is inherently offensive to our humanity (until we deaden our senses). Our inborn attachment behavioral system and caregiving behavioral system are simply not wired for such interpersonally corrosive and exploitative transactions. We are naturally wired for sympathetic and empathetic connection and responsiveness. “Though our culture may tell us otherwise, we are not designed for self-actualized, pleasure-seeking autonomy. We are deeply relational beings, designed … for … connection.” Coming to the same conclusion from a spiritual framework, Jeffrey R. Holland similarly affirms that “human intimacy, that sacred, physical union ordained of God for a married couple, … is—or certainly was ordained to be—a symbol of total union: union of their hearts, their hopes, their lives, their love, their family, their future, their everything.”

Consequently, fantasizing or enacting pornography’s exploitative, transactional view of the other and of sex cannot help but lead to psychological dissonance—negative feelings about one’s behavior and oneself for engaging in it. 

The mind has to do something about the dissonance—either change the offending behavior or get rid of the feelings. That is where psychological projection and misogyny enter. The next step in the cascade is the psychological projection of the pain of the spiritual–moral dissonance that threatens one’s self-concept and sense of well-being. By faulty but commonplace psychological projection—a defense mechanism—painful yet properly inward-aimed feelings of moral dissonance, repugnance, and disgust get projected outward. Psychological projection is a process not amenable to rational explanation but nonetheless commonly understood and readily recognized—it’s the stubbing of one’s toe on the door and then slamming the door in anger as though it were at fault. Irrational projection is blaming women for how badly one feels (spiritual–moral dissonance) and how badly one fares in relationships with them in consequence of one’s own pornography use and assimilation of its associated attitudes and scripts. Psychological projection fuels misogyny.

In turn, in time, this becomes an entrapment. For one cannot help but surmise and predict that such attitudes will be corrosive to actual male–female interactions and produce distancing, alienation, and rejection in the relationships of men and women. One’s own spiritual–moral dissonance is now paired with relational rejection, and together they amp up the resort to pornography and amplify misogyny. Sexual intimacy, not sexual taking, is the better representation of human individual and relationship ideals.

A Way Out—Empathy Training 

One might surrender pornography use and then gradually re-trend toward healthy human transactions. Being innate to our being, our humanity and our attachment are durable and resilient in that way. A converse approach, one often deployed with offenders, is to begin with empathy training. The anticipation is that the development of real human empathy will naturally produce a sensitivity that ultimately strengthens resistance to and shunning of pornography, its toxic scripts now being plainly revealed. “Our … [moral] agency endows us with the responsibility and privilege of becoming beings who can experience the deepest forms of [human] connection.” The potential for intense joy or searing pain in our most intimate sharing of ourselves and receiving of the other is tremendous. 

Empathy can be, indeed is designed to be a natural metric of our relationship behavior and a check on our self-, other-, and relationship-destructive passions and exploitations. Empathy can be the beginning of a path of healing and helping. Empathy doesn’t automatically lead to caring behavior; one still must choose to act on empathy. Empathy, and then importantly, disciplining ourselves to be bridled by empathy, is what allows us to safely hold the heart and soul of another human; we become vessels of safe holding—fully and completely trustworthy.

Human empathy is developed and deepened as individuals seek and achieve (a) a deeply held view and felt experience of the humanity of every person, (b) an ability to emotionally and cognitively place oneself within the lived experience of the other, and (c) sensitivity and responsiveness to both of these (their humanity and lived experience).

Nurturing human empathy is likely a significant, if not the foundational component of all manner of behavioral rehabilitation in relationships (including communication, anger management, relational aggression, pornography use, and, in incarceration settings, sex offender treatment). Empathy development can likely be helped by “training,” such as in treatment settings, but empathy must ultimately be understood as a virtue to be pursued holistically through spiritual, emotional, cognitive, and relational work. People can be helped in learning to listen, connect, care, and respond. Fully formed empathy is a cognitive, emotional, relational, and spiritual connection that can support self-restraint and self-constraint, including sparking and sustaining motivation for overcoming pornography use—for the sake of everyone harmed by it, from the supply chain to the end user, spouse, and family. 

I–Thou, Abandoning I–it

In a broader sense, empathy training is about initiating and expanding our capacity to truly and fully see one another, the whole human person, in every transaction. Philosopher Martin Buber referred to this as a fundamental “I–Thou” humanistic orientation, abandoning the core, corrosive “I–it” view of the other rendered in pornographic depictions and narratives. “I–Thou” is relational humanitarianism, living and acting for the welfare of all beings. In contrast, “I–it” is relational solipsism, living and acting as if nothing but the self exists or matters.

While the sexual drive is powerful and easily perverted into exploitative pornographic forms—co-opting the sexual arousal template toward solipsistic use—our innate humanity represented in our attachment and caregiving instincts and behavior pull us back from the solipsistic brink and rescue us for the experience of relational wholeness. Our relational drive for connection is an ever-present pushback against pornography’s scripts for sexual misuse.  From a developmental perspective, sexual drive comes on fast and furious, and we perhaps cannot anticipate complete avoidance of pornography’s toxic socialization, especially in a sexually saturated society. We can, however, persistently and stubbornly promote empathy and affirm our own and others’ humanity through “I–Thou” respect and honor. In all our relationships, we can reach for relational wholeness and celebrate the joy of whole-being relationships.  With wife or husband, we can add to relational wholeness, sexual wholeness.  We can persistently and stubbornly redeem our desires and our relationship through attachment caregiving and Christian virtue.  Empathy can help us “take back sex” for the ultimate and intimate relational experience it is so beautifully and powerfully designed to be.  

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