What’cha Looking At, Willis?

From as far back as we can go in history men have been looking at pornographic images.

Check your Bibles if you don’t believe me. Read the story of David as he stood watching Bathsheba bathe, or when the religious dragged the adulteress woman to Jesus. You know they stood around and watched her perform before they decided to pull her out. Go back to the excavations of Pompeii in the 1860’s that revealed tons of “erotic art.” Erotic/pornographic portrayals have been created by nearly every modern and ancient civilization. In Egypt one artifact called Turin Erotic Papyrus was called the “men’s magazine” of its time (1292-1075 BC). Enough with the history lessons. The point is, we like to look at porn. The question is why are we so attracted to it?

Is it boredom? Fantasy? Is it because we are visual? Entertainment? All of the above?

When it comes to sex and sexual images, men are weak. It does not matter if you are straight or gay, rich or poor, educated or dumb as a football-bat?  everyone at some point has been attracted to porn. If not porn, the desire to have sex has been there. I looked at porn for various reasons.

My first exposure to porn was with the man who sexually abused me and others. He would show us pictures of women and tell us about sex (his version). He taught us about masturbation at a young age. From that point on I was hooked because I liked the way it made me feel. God did create those feelings for me, but he wanted me to use them in a totally different way.

I remember in my teen years looking for the movies with nudity. Me and my bros would pick up each movie at the video store, read the story on the back and decide if the movie had the potential for nudity. We would get home put the tape in fast forward until we struck “gold”. After sometime we had our picks down to an exact science. When I got older I used porn as a self-help tool. Why not? After all, this is what was used to teach me about sex when I was younger.

As the years went on I was looking at porn as fantasy. Putting myself in the performer’s shoes. There were times when I would have to put my life savings on the fact that those women were looking at me. In reality most were strung out on drugs doing the scene for the next fix, or their self worth was in the toilet and they were manipulated to believe that’s all they are good for. I wasted hours upon hours of my life following link after link for the next porn fix. That’s my story. So what’s yours?

Take a minute and examine yourself. Why do you look at porn? Write you answer down so you can see what you have written. We are visual creatures and seeing your thoughts in your own writing may help you realize that porn is a huge issue in your life.

Over the next few weeks, myself and a host of other guys just like you will be exploring the issue of porn. We hope that bringing you some insight on how to defeat this issue will be helpful as you grow into true men of integrity.