by Rachel Mascord, Dentist, Sydney, Australia
Today I became re-acquainted with music videos. I also got newly acquainted with the ‘pornification’ of our society.
As a teenager I loved my Saturday morning television fix of greatest hits, or ‘Rage’, ABC TV’s Sunday morning music staple. Many years have passed since I have watched a music video. This morning’s viewing at the gym proved to be educational… and deeply disturbing.
All the clips portrayed women being sexual to a degree that was blatantly pornographic. One video stood out in particular, and not for the loveliness of its music or the artistic quality of its content. No… it grabbed my attention with the fact that it was focussed on the bare behinds of its three featured dancers.
And I mean focussed.
The video was dominated by close-up shots of these women’s behinds as they danced. They were almost ‘wearing’ strips of Lycra that turned into G-strings, so everything that could be exposed was exposed. When the camera was not intently focussed on their rear ends, the three were simulating ‘girl-on-girl’ action.
Now, I am not easily shocked, and I am not a prude. I love sexy clothes, make-up, and I love to dance… but this!! It was straight-up porn, attention-grabbing with what the director would probably call ‘shock value’. I can’t imagine that they could even try to call it art. Here it was blaring out at the local gym at quarter to six in the morning.
I felt shocked, bewildered and embarrassed. I was embarrassed by imagery that I did not (and would never) choose to look at. I was embarrassed because I understood that I was being shown something that said “you’re a woman; this is your purpose and function”.
I was embarrassed by something else too. These sexual images abound everywhere, from the advertisement of perfume and underwear, to the covers of so-called women’s magazines in the supermarket. I have learned to ignore them and pretend they are not there. I have learned to keep my eyes open, but place a veil across my vision, blocking out the things I do not want to see.
I was embarrassed because I recognised that I had been ignoring the pervasive and spreading harm of ‘normalised’ pornography, staying silent and hoping it would go away.
It hasn’t gone away.
In fact, it has become more extreme.
What do these images say about our society, about women and about men?
What does it say about us that on one hand we have people complaining about paedophilia (as they should), but on the other a laissez faire attitude to the imagery that abounds our streets, supermarkets, child-friendly TV shows and public spaces?
Why have we allowed ourselves to become so silent, and afraid to say ENOUGH?
The following troubling ideas came up over the day as the shock faded into an urge to understand and express my feelings on this:
1. Women and men are being perceived and used as objects
Women are used as objects, even in their own videos. The women in music videos are reduced to ‘hot arses’ or ‘great breasts’. They are not humans, not people… just arses, breasts or whatever it is that has become the current focus in terms of sexualised object.
The body parts have strict compliances about size and shape. Breasts must be large, rounded and heaving. Buttocks have gone from boyishly slim, to ‘bootylicious’ large. The belly must be flat, ‘six-pack’ preferred. It used to be that girls were used in this way for male artists’ music videos. That has changed. The song in the ‘hot arse’ clip (don’t even ask me the name of the song, I have no idea, and was listening to my own music) seemed to be sung by a woman.
What does that say? Have women given up to the point that they are saying, “Yes, men, we are just boobs and arses, and pornographic stunt dolls for your pleasure”? Madonna, imagining that she is amazingly ‘liberated’, uses men in the same way. They are her ‘toys’, and a collection of body parts for her, and our, visual stimulation.
Who are the women and men in these clips? What inspires them? What do they long to express? How do they really feel about the way they are being used?
2. Pornography in music videos and in advertising
OK, it’s not X-rated… not yet anyway. Are we willing to wait for it to get to that point before we wake up and act?
Thirty years ago, Robert Palmer created a stir with a video that featured a wall of almost identically beautiful, blank faced, inexpressive women dancing to his song ‘Simply Irresistible’. Presumably, ‘simply interchangeable’ as well. The women were sexy props, adding the only chutzpah to a dull song. They were passive and knew their place.
Duran Duran produced a soft porn music video back in the eighties that was restricted to late night viewing only. Perhaps a few people complained at the time, but the majority just accepted it. Thirty years later, Duran Duran’s ‘shocking’ clip has become tame, and would unnoticeably blend in to the porno-fest that video clip shows have become.
This reliance on pornographic imagery has spread further afield. According to a number of perfume and expensive clothing advertisements, the latest fashion for women includes being raped by a man, perhaps even a group of men. Apparently we don’t enjoy frolicking across a grassy field, smelling lovely anymore. No, it seems we will only purchase these products when we are shown what a sexy victim we will become by owning them.
Pornography has become normal, so normal that we don’t blink when we and our children are exposed to it.
3. Role models for young women and men
As a young woman, I was influenced by what I saw in music videos and magazines. I was super-smart, with a great mind, and great potential to do well in any career I chose. Yet I was also vulnerable to body image issues, which have taken a great deal of self-loving commitment to heal. These images clearly said what was sexy and what was not. I did not match the narrow image that defined sexy, and that was harmful enough. This is true for very many women.
Young women and men are now contending with a multitude of problems.
The restrictive body image stench remains, although apparently we have ‘progressed’, because large buttocks are now acceptable. Fat people are still portrayed as the butt of jokes. ‘Normal’ people apparently don’t exist. So if you fall in the 95 percentile of body shapes, you won’t appear in an ad or a video clip.
On top of that, we have a massive problem with the fact that young people are learning about their bodies, sex, sexuality and how to express as a woman or a man from the pornographic images in advertisements and music clips.
As a woman, you are to look hot and passively accept your role as an object for men’s gratification. You are allowed to be aggressive, but only sexually, and only if you eventually submit. As for your opinions?… Your feelings?… Unimportant. Your expression in the world is limited to being the ‘sexy object’.
Young men have to be buff, aggressive and unfeeling. They are supposed to sit back and judge each woman according to the sexiness of her anatomical parts. To connect to her an equal human being is anathema.
How are young women and men ever going to learn that there is something called love-making, when all they see is sex? This is not even sex between people, it is an act carried out between faceless body parts.
How are they going to learn about the beauty of their bodies that comes from wholeness and self-connection? How will they learn to recognise and appreciate the beauty in the eyes of someone who is deeply self-connected, self-aware, and lives lovingly?
Apparently we live in a progressive society. Where is the progress? All I can see is that we are living in a ‘soup’ of imagery that is offering young people less and less to connect to, and be inspired by.
The caricatures of women and men that are portrayed in video clips and advertisements are an insult to both genders.
Both are reduced to the lowest expression possible: men become brainless thugs, answerable only to their genitals, and women become live action sex-dolls, faces pulled into the same, ridiculous, open-mouthed blankness and bodies contorted into poses called ‘sexy’.
4. Parenting in the era of socially acceptable porn
How on earth do parents cope with this?
Do they have to restrict their children’s access to music video shows? Do they watch these shows with their children, and explain the problems with what is being portrayed? Life is challenging enough, child-proofing satellite TV and Internet access, especially when techno-wiz children run technological rings around their bewildered parents.
Or have parents simply given up? Have they fallen into the trap that I fell into, of becoming willfully blind to that which is glaringly and painfully evident?
5. Free speech versus controlling prude
I love this argument. Apparently, what I am calling for is censorship, and apparently this is the greatest evil on earth. It allegedly makes me prudish and controlling.
On the other hand, there is the great virtue of free speech. This seems to equate to the fact that anyone can say and do whatever they like, hang the consequences, because people are free to look or not.
Hold on… not so free. I had no choice whether I looked or not on Wednesday morning. I guess I could have gone to the weights room, picked up a 5kg dumbbell and lobbed it through the TV screen. Tempting, but it might have had an adverse effect on my gym membership.
I have worked hard at ignoring the billboards on buses and at the sides of roads, but the fact is the images are there, affecting all of us anyway.
At the supermarket, I have magazine covers with half-dressed women in my face. Body comparisons are emblazoned all over them. Who is sexy? Who is not?
How about who is amazingly self-aware?
Or who is living their true expression, inspiring others to do the same??!!!!
The free speech advocates seem to feel that these images have no effect on anything or anyone. Hold on, if that is so, then why go for the porn and the sex? If that argument holds true, then why don’t they portray something else? Clearly they don’t because ‘sex sells’. In other words it does have an effect, and it does have a grip on people.
Free speech advocates want the argument to cut both ways: no, it has no effect, hence I am not responsible for anything; and yes, it does have an effect because people ‘want’ it, and look at the great effect on the bottom-line. Pun intended.
Freedom to say NO does not apply to those who do not want to be bombarded with pornographic images. Apparently the only opinion we are ‘free’ to express is an opinion that agrees with the permissive, given-up zeitgeist.
6. Confused agendas
The creation and possession of child pornography is a criminal act. Great, so it should be. Showing pornography to children is a criminal act. Good, agreed. Letting your kids get up on a weekend morning to watch Rage or other music clip shows is not.
People kick up a big stink when a newly released, once-convicted paedophile moves into their street. They don’t complain with equal vigour and commitment when every tween’s favourite, Miley Cyrus, produces a music video that belongs on the shelf of a seedy ‘adult shop’.
Why the contradictory focus?
Why so much energy placed in some areas, but the big, pink elephant that has us squashed against the walls is blatantly ignored?
There are more and more people writing about the issues I have discussed here. Karla Willows in the UK has made the valid point that these pornographic images are pervasive and harming to children. She asks the question “How do we explain them to children?”.
Just ponder that for a moment. What would you say to a four or five year old child to explain a music video, such as the one I described at the beginning of this piece? The innocence of a child highlights the demeaning qualities of these images. These images are now too freely available and too easy for children to access. What harm is being done to them in the process?
But I would also go further, and say that these images are harming to everyone. How then are we explaining, excusing or rationalising them to ourselves?
The only reason that we do not feel the harm is that we choose to block it out and ignore it. We hide our hurts under the armour of sophisticated ‘open-mindedness’, aggressive sexuality, or adopting the unfeeling male and female caricatures championed in pornography.
To those who would say that young people are not being affected, I would say open your eyes, rub the sleep out of them and LOOK. Young women do not know how to dress in a way that is self-honouring or self-respectful. Skirts are short to the point of obscenity. In winter, they wear barely enough to protect themselves from mild days, forget about the truly cold ones.
Many young women and men are dull-eyed. Some of them have given up, barely speak and are perpetually physically hunched over. These are teenagers, at a time when vitality should be high, and life naturally glorious! According to some people, this state of apathy is just a ‘stage’ and ‘normal’. Apparently it is not normal to look radiant, with clear eyes and an open face. It is also not normal to dress with respect for self and the weather.
Some young men hang out in packs, looking girls up and down like objects, in a way that they have learned from their favourite male music artists. This is intimidating and demoralising, whether the looks are appreciative or dismissive.
Another symptom of our hyper-sexualised culture is that young people are ‘sexting’ each other. For those who are unaware, a ‘sext’ is a sexually explicit message or photograph primarily sent between mobile phones. It can include a photograph of oneself, either naked, or with breasts or genitalia exposed.
The willingness to take and share such images shows a deep-seated lack of self-respect, let alone self-care and self-love. These images, once sent, are completely out of the person’s control. They often end up posted online for all to see, become another source for bullying, and have resulted in young people committing suicide. Reputations and lives are ruined, but how do you say “No” to the pressure to comply, when all around tells you that your value is purely determined by certain parts of your body?
I would also say to people ‘wake up’ and pay attention to the fact that children are also using smart phone technology to download and share pornography at school – primary school.
To those of you who feel these points are irrelevant, and reflect a backward view, I would say, if we allow things to continue along this path, the day will come when a ‘progressive’ video maker will produce a truly X-rated clip. They will dress it up as ‘pushing the artistic boundaries’ and intellectuals, sitting in their ivory tower institutions, will engage in empty debates about the societal impact and the artistic merits of such a step.
Meanwhile, there is a lived reality that includes younger and younger children engaging in rough, painful and degrading sex acts.
Given all of this, is it not time to re-establish a way of being that is founded on the qualities of self-honouring, self-respect, dignity, grace and self-love?
What would our world look like if those were the principles upon which life was truly lived?
These reflections were inspired by all that I have learned as a student of Universal Medicine, Serge Benhayon, and predominantly as a student of myself. Universal Medicine shared the tools to help me remove the veils from my eyes. I made the choice to do so, so that I could see clearly again.
I can truly say “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now my heart can see”.
It is time we all learnt to open our eyes, to see the ugly truth of the pornography-infused life we have created, and say ENOUGH!
Further Reading:
Porn – An Addiction Worth Talking About
Porn Addiction – What Are We Missing Out On?
Pornography, Internet & Sex – An Insight into a Distorted World
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
This is a topic of conversation we must have with each other because we have allowed the pornography industry to take hold of our society so that we are constantly fed pornography wherever we go. It’s in our everyday life and if we don’t want to see it we filter what we want to see and not see but it doesn’t mean the problem goes away.
For example when you take your young child into the petrol station to pay for petrol how do you explain to them the naked women or partly dressed women on the covers of certain magazines, or papers? Surely we should be able to take children into public spaces without seeing the objectification of women because this is what it is and this has an effect on everyone as boys think it’s normal at a young age to watch porn because they see their peers watching it. Is it then possible that they have an expectation that girls will behave in the same way to what they have watched. This then place a pressure on girls to behave in a certain way if they want to get the attention of the boy/s because society places a huge pressure on them to conform to what the majority wants or needs. Our society is completely out of kilter and it is blog sites such as this that support society to come back to examine and discuss what is truly going on.
Pornography is about flesh and keeping interaction at the level of flesh on flesh, there’s not an ounce of depth of being in pornography. And ultimately as what all of us only ever want is to be met on the level of being then even though we might think that we’re being ‘satisfied’ we’re actually not, not at all.
Alexis it seems to me that it’s gone beyond the interaction of flesh on flesh, we are becoming more animalistic in our behaviour, What standards society did have have dropped dramatically over the last 20 years almost as though there has been a backlash to the change in energy that the world has been experiencing. If this is true then it proves that we are feeling energy all the time and can never stop feeling it and we are all in reaction to the opportunity to be more loving towards ourselves and other people.
There is a consciousness that pervades across the fitness industry too. As there are videos that you can down load for a monthly fee that will assist you to get fit. A friend of mine decided to download one and showed me some of the exercises I wasn’t shown the video. Interestingly after a week they started to have negative feelings about their body that they were not good enough just as they were that they needed to buy certain things to make themselves appear to the outside world that they were fine and in control. And thankfully they started to question where these thoughts were coming from. It was suggested they stop using the fitness app and get fit by just following a routine that was worked out for them. The thoughts that had been coursing through their mind stopped and they then realised that these seemingly innocent videos do have a subliminal affect on our minds that we are not aware of. So how much of what we see do we accept without thinking that then effects how we feel about ourselves and others. Certain music can affect you too
I had a friend who started dressing in clothes that were considered edgy and they became quite obnoxious and aggressive for a while, again it was pointed out to them that maybe the music they were listening to was affecting their behaviour far more than they realised. When they stopped listening to that type of music they became more of themselves. It seems we do not discern the energy that is coming from these ‘entertainment’ industries and so get taken in by them at a great cost to our bodies.
This was written six years ago and music videos are still the same 1D versions of people. They remind me of movies whereby the scripts are repeated over and over again and extremely predictable. There are however some people making a difference, look at Robbie Boyd’s “Hey girl” as an example. There’s no sexualization of women in sight.
Thank you Rachel, agreed when we set our foundation as a Livingness from our soul-full-essences, then we are deepening our understanding of a different way of living and this then reflects an open and transparent way that is Truly sexy without the need for any type of naked-ness.
I really hate that when it comes to saying what we feel is harmful and honouring our say, we are often having to rely on regulations and our feeling is not seen enough as evidence to qualify our discernment.
The gym is also my place where I get to see what the current music videos are like, having also grown up in the era of ‘Rage’ when soft porn was not the norm. I too am concerned about the role models these videos are setting for our young people. The message I get ids that you have to be skimpily dressed and overtly sexual to be cool, popular, have a boyfriend etc. I am glad I didn’t grow up with this pressure but that doesn’t help this generation!
I agree the role models these videos are setting for young people are deeply concerning.
Before we can change something we have to acknowledge that it is there. At present it seems people are not willing to do so and the longer they choose not to, the bigger the mess that needs ‘clearing up’.
Why has it become OK for music videos to be this graphic and extreme – essentially delivering soft porn. How are we OK to just let it happen and allow it. Gone are the days where the number of ‘trending songs’ could be counted on both hands, and where the artists’ video clips were of them singing. Now – there are so many songs, so many artists and such graphic video clips all to be noticed.
“OK, it’s not X-rated… not yet anyway. Are we willing to wait for it to get to that point before we wake up and act?” I don’t think we will publicly allow it to become X-rated but it has so cunningly snuck its way in and we are not so ‘awake’ to it. It is important as you have raised here Rachel we need to bring this up when appropriate and more often than enough. I’m just glad we are redefining what true sexy is — beauty from the inside out the esoteric way because it is super-sexy and this can be seen and felt. We need to live and present true sexiness — “How are they going to learn about the beauty of their bodies that comes from wholeness and self-connection? How will they learn to recognise and appreciate the beauty in the eyes of someone who is deeply self-connected, self-aware, and lives lovingly?” and “How about who is amazingly self-aware?”
I would also answer that question you ask Rachel – What is it about sex that appeals to me? and What is it that is sexy in me? …
The standards of what has become acceptable in society with porn has lowered and dropped to the floor as women become objectified for their bodies and lose respect from the opposite sex for the exposure of their bodies. It shows the lack of intimacy in relationships as the number of people looking at images has increased to the extreme that it has.
I was listening to a conversation recently where it was expressed that the explosion in pornography shows that humanity is crying out for true intimacy. When there is a call from humanity it will be answered. That to me is amazing because it feels to me that yes there is a controlling energy that seems to be having its own way at the moment, but we are not alone and are being supported in so many ways that will bring humanity back to the truth of who we are.
I remember seeing pornography for the first time and was with a group of girlfriends and was confused as to what I was seeing as i hadn’t heard or seen anything like it before. I didn’t like it as I you could feel it was totally exploiting of the women and degrading in every way. I only saw it for about 15 mins and the image and feeling of it stayed with me for years. What I can see now is that even later on in my life when I had a one night stand and there were only a couple, they were still feeding the same energy. The moment I started respecting and loving myself was the moment I truly said no to that energy.
I’ve been in the same club as you, in that hoping by ignoring things like pornography they will somehow go away, but of course when we ignore things they actually get worse. I think it’s a question of standards and always rising our standards so our every movement, word and thought says that pornography and treating women (and men) this way is completely not acceptable.
Life requires us making constant decisions regarding what do we allow ourselves to see and, hence, what do we choose to ignore. Anyone may choose to ignore what many others choose to see (hence demand). Yet, those that demand what they demand may choose ignore what they do not want to see of what they demand (or, at most, simply justify their choice). When they get what they demand, because it confirms them in their vibrational choice, things are very difficult to be changed around and life gets reduced to an insignificant point that becomes the everything for the many, one by one.
Indeed Rachel enough is enough especially as now it is so common and mainstream it is almost acceptable for men to make degrading comments towards women and somehow it can be laughed off. If it’s not love it’s not acceptable and should not be tolerated.
Pornography today has become so insidious because whereas what used to be considered vile and vulgar portrayals of over-sexualised people, is now everywhere in our media images, considered as normal – and what’s worse, is how our young girls are growing up with the pressure to conform to this.
There are so many images these days that are imposingly sexual.
I have noticed that small children emulate this style of music video dancing too, which look so foreign to their little bodies. I love watching children dance when they are themselves, they are beautifully awkward without a care in the world, not dancing to prove anything to anyone, but simply for the enjoyment of moving their body. Watch a child try and copy these moves from these videos, in all honesty is quite sickening.
I totally agree with you Jennifer, I saw posted on face book a young family member copying a dance routine she had been exposed to and it was sickening to watch. But if the parents don’t see this behaviour as harmful then there is not a lot one can say. I’m a prude it seems but too me young girls in particular are becoming sexualized at an age when they are not mentally or physically able to deal with such intensity.
It is time we all learnt to open our eyes, to see the ugly truth of the pornography-infused life we have created, and say ENOUGH!” 100% agree Rachel that we enable the pornography industry by staying silent.
We sure do Elizabeth and it starts with all the subtle remarks that we do not say no to, that we allow to run wild, that escalate into more extreme words and actions which fuel the industries we hate and despise.
‘The only reason that we do not feel the harm is that we choose to block it out and ignore it. We hide our hurts under the armour of sophisticated ‘open-mindedness’, aggressive sexuality, or adopting the unfeeling male and female caricatures championed in pornography.’ This is so true. We are all responsible for the rise in pornography and the deterioration of the fabric of our society. We have to be willing to take a stop and consider the undermining that is going on, the manipulation and control and the denigration of our bodies. We need to consider what’s happening and claim back self respect and value ourselves as more than sex machines. We don’t have to use each other or even ourselves for gratification. Having seen the harm it is not that we have to march in the streets but if we want things to change we must be willing to respect and take care of our bodies until we discover the awesome beauty that lies within that is so much more wonderful than any sexual titillation or pornographic image.
Enough is enough – what we see everywhere in adverts, movies etc.. is completely distorting any true sense of reality and love and making it all about physicality when we are far more than flesh. When we make it about the love we are then you only have to look deeply into a womens eyes to see how truly magnificent she is, the same goes for a man – it has nothing to do with looks. The more we live this the more we too fall in love with ourselves.
In reading your description of the music video with the three women, I wonder what it was like for them in making that video and how they felt about themselves afterwards. And if for them, it was really worth it.
There is a huge desensitization that has occurred in our society and this has happened little by little so that initially the changes seem small, but over time you can see what has crept in and is hugely impacting on everyone despite its subtle ways! Sexualisation of women, the levels of violence on screens and video games etc etc. In some video games (which incidentally are available to children) they have characters that can run over someone with a car and kill them and also go up and rape a woman. This is totally inappropriate for any age regardless of being an adult or a child, but this certainly instills from a young age the normalisation of criminal behaviour and the deep disrespect and domination of others including women.
A very pertinent blog for our times indeed! Thank you Rachel! And it appears that we have a sliding scale of indecency and disrespect and objectification of women that is rampant. You only need look in women’s magazines to see advertisements in there that are symbolic of gang raping of women – and this is being advertised for women (not men) and promoting a product for women! How bizarre and extreme is this? It is instilling in young women that they are to be used and abused and that their bodies are simply objects for sexual abuse. What are we allowing by turning a blind eye to this in our societies – how far will this all go before we call a stop to it?
We become so desensitised to these sexualised images that the line of what is normal, decent and honouring just keeps being moved.
These images tell us that many of us women are happy to portray ourselves as sex objects, as housewives, mothers, CEO or whatever role we wish to grab onto. They show the disconnection we (I) live in, and are hurtful because we ought to admit the fact.
The funny thing is we tend to focus on the fact that it’s the women who are being portrayed as ‘sex objects’ but overlook the fact that so are the men. There’s a stereotypical idea that men are happy to simply just have sex (as opposed to making love) and aren’t as fussy as the women who they have it with but I wonder if men are largely ‘set up’ to be this way because the stereotype exists. There’s also a lot of pressure on men to be this way, to come across as sexually confident and rather lad-like in their promiscuity. A lot of men and women would not agree with me when I say that deep down we would all love to be in a deeply loving, monogamous relationship but none the less it is what I believe to be true.
That’s a very valid point, I can only imagine how many men actually crave tenderness & care with their partners but are afraid of being called a wuss, or any of the other colourful names we have concocked to encourage men to be hard, harsh, aggressive & violent.
Absolutely Viktoria and I can’t help but wonder how many men feel pressurised to perform in the bedroom? To be athletic adventurous lovers impulsed by imagery and peer pressure as opposed to simply following the bodies lead to true intimacy.
Imagine not being able to express your natural tenderness with your partner because you feel their demand on you to be the strong, tough guys/woman? Imagine living a life where you have to constantly walk around with an armour (like the ones we see in movies from the medieval times) just to prove that you’re tough enough… How sad is that, but we don’t have to imagine it because all it takes is a quick look around the street, our workplaces and family homes to see it all happening right under our nose.
We cannot lie and pretend that pornography in any way, shape or form doesn’t hurt and every single one of us at that. When we can truly sense its impact in our homes, society and in the world we are supported to call it out through our willingness to stand for love and what we know is true.
Life is so very simple – at the end of the day all you need to say is: is something of true love or is it not? We all know what is truly loving because we know what is not loving. If something is not of and from love then we need to say no to it or better still say yes to love and that takes care of everything.
This is a fabulous blog Rachel. Gone are the days when porn was restricted to X rated movies and magazines that were shuffled out of the shop quietly in a brown paper bag. Music videos are quite shocking with the way men and women are portrayed and treat each other. These are our role models? As you say, how can our kids learn that there is a magnificent thing called love making rather than the denigrating sex they see portrayed?
The question that comes to me is how did we get here. It feels like our freedom to say no has been pushed aside and our moral standard has consistently been edging downwards while we dis-own our responsibility to simply stand by and express our truth.
The sexualisation of women is everywhere these days. In my day (the 1970’s) The Top of the Pops and Pans People dancing in babydoll lingerie was considered risque. Now there’s bumping, grinding, tweaking and all manner of sexualised dancing, which seems to have escalated in the lack of decency department with the introduction of music videos. The videos have become more important than the song or the artist combined.
“Madonna, imagining that she is amazingly ‘liberated’, uses men in the same way. They are her ‘toys’, and a collection of body parts for her, and our, visual stimulation” – agree Rachel and from what i see ‘using men’ the same objectified way as women are used – i suspect is a cover for “empowerment” between the sexes… i.e. the domination now of not a woman, but instead a man. All in all, it’s just plain abuse. Abuse that comes from the disrespect of a human body to be able to degrade another human being.
I recall a recent trip to Byron Bay (a sea-side town, renown for its surfing and beaches and parties) for work purposes, and I had not been there in a few years despite living not that far away. I drove in early in the morning and was looking for parking. As I was driving through the town, I had to do a double take as I saw a young woman walking down the street carrying a surf board wearing a wet suit – not your normal wet suit to cover you and keep you warm, but a G-string wet suit! I thought this was a joke! But as I turned the corner I saw more of the same! My heart simply sank in realising how much the young women in our society have given up on themselves and their self respect in favour of sleezy sexualised attention. Now, some might say this is normal, that G-string wetsuits are the norm, but they were certainly not the norm when I was growing up, no different to Rachel’s blog and her sharing of how much music videos have changed! Our world is fast morphing, and to me it makes me realise once again how important it is to make sure that those of us who do know the true values of a women, live them in full for all to see and be reminded of at all times.
Awesome blog Rachel, and so true that we turn blind eyes to what happens around us, and in the process we allow things to fester unchecked and grow into a far greater problem than it ever needed to become. It is important to call it out for what it is, as you have done here, and give a chance for the population to gradually become aware of the erosion. But as women who are aware, it is equally important that we are here to reflect back to all what it is to be a true woman rather than an object with breasts and arse used purely for another’s pleasure. For it is only with the reminder of a true reflection that another who has forgotten will remember again.
The level of sex and sensationlism is so out of control, so much so that we could even merge the two and say we have a sexsationlism plague happening with humanity. It is destroying our relationships, our youth and as it has become a normal thing to be sexually erotic with the basic things in life it can only bring abuse, devastation and loneliness and a humanity that is totally destroyed with no respect for each other and our genuine and natural divine beings that we are.
“I was embarrassed because I recognised that I had been ignoring the pervasive and spreading harm of ‘normalised’ pornography, staying silent and hoping it would go away.” Yes, this is exactly it Rachel, and it is then we realise that the only way that anything we dont like will change, is by taking responsibility for our own part in allowing it to continue. And thats the bit we dont want to admit to.
This blog is a great reminder for us all to wake up to the fact that the progressive erosion of our values of what is considered decent and respectful in society is proportionally resulting in a lowering of what is considered normal and acceptable in our behaviours that are actually just plain abusive or derogatory.
The world needs to continually keep ‘super-sizing’ what it offers the masses, in order to keep titilating people’s senses. Our senses get used to what stimulates them very quickly and so food companies, media companies, the porn industry etc need to continually keep increasing the intensity of what they offer, otherwise people won’t feel the stimulation that they so desperately want to feel. And the reason why we’re all so desperate to feel ‘something’ is to fill the gap that has been left by us not being able to connect to ourselves.
Recently while researching for a presentation on our teenagers and technology, I very innocently stumbled upon pictures of full-blown porn while looking for images of children playing on their phones. I had only gone to the second page of the internet on images, and there it was. So if I can find it that easy, we know children and teenagers can.
Spot on Julie, porn is rife and it is also so easily accessible on all levels and for all ages, be it on TV as disguised porn or on the internet with no holes barred…Quite disturbing really as these images come with a strong energy of disrespect, disregard, objectifying women and putting women down – if this is what one grows up with as an example of sex education, no wonder domestic violence is on the increase and relationship issues are hitting the roof. We need more true examples to get out there into the world to let people young and old know that this is not the only option, that there is a true and beautiful way to relate to each other.
When we do not express what we know to be deeply true we still express as this cannot be avoided, though the expression then is much lower in quality to our natural expression…lowering the standard in society for all.
We normalize only what we have said yes to. The now so silent expansion of porn all over the world exposes the complex package of images many around the world have said yes to.
“I have learned to keep my eyes open, but place a veil across my vision, blocking out the things I do not want to see.” – This really made me stop and consider how much we do this throughout our day, how much we block things out that we don’t want to see or deal with for some reason…
We all have a responsibility to speak out and expose the lasting harm that is caused to society by ever more explicit pornographic images being peddled as ‘art’.
We cannot escape the reality of how we live, though we may choose to ignore it or deny it.
We get sad and outraged when we see obscene gestures, movements and gyrations. It comes as a shock and suprise to us when we come across this. But is this extreme isolated or does pornography have much deeper roots? The more I sit with what you present Rachel, the more I feel pornography is fuelled by anything we do to stimulate ourselves. Whether it’s shopping, social media or arguing we are constantly using things to escape from ourselves. Our pornography issue feels like a symbol for this.
Something that has been popping up for me lately is the word ‘food porn’ which is watching cooking shows or adds. It’s the same evil in a different bag, feed images to tantalize the spirit.
The sexualisation of women in music videos is a responsibility for recording artists to consider deeply. The legacy they are leaving the world in an effort to sell music will surely become something they regret.
Brilliant Rachel and deeply uncomfortable and rightly so. We’ve chosen to close our eyes, I know I have and we cannot have it both ways, saying it doesn’t affect us and yet these images are used because they do affect sales. We’ve become lost in an image obsessed morass, and we’re forgetting that we’re more than our body parts, we’re living, breathing, loving beings, time to come back to that and say enough to the gross abuse we’ve been allowing with porn and the sexualisation of both men and women. We are so much more than this, let’s live it.
I love what is shared here about Who’s is amazingly aware? How many of our current magazines would then hold the news stand?
It is outrageous and deeply shocking the way we hold and view each other, the way we have let pornography colour how we feel within. But where does it start and truly begin? It seems to me, the more I live and consider it, that pornography doesn’t live in a web site or magazine but is a stimulation we seek when we feel sad and empty inside. So possibly this is the true elephant in the room – why are we so miserable that we seek this abuse and say it is good? Thank you Rachel for what you shared in bringing this much needed Topic to air.
We normalise porn in society, no doubt, why is it that we do not even raise an eyebrow…well most of us, when women are laying on cars with hardly any clothes in or leaning on double glazing like it’s their biggest crush…who questions it….I have a son and daughter and even at their young ages the stories and pictures are coming home about what makes a woman and man, it is shocking how insidious this stuff is, and I for one will not be ignoring it or normalising it. I have in the past, but I see now the shadow I have been under and I am commited to calling out this rot in our relationships, both men and women suffer through porn soft or not in society. We are made for much grander and meaningful interactions.
Our moral compass appears to have stopped working for what is now normal! There was a time when we as a collective agreed what was acceptable; today is now the Wild West where anything goes. How have we lost who we are, in such a short time?
Your point about censorship is so true. Anyone who speaks up against abuse, pornography or discrimination is apparently trying to ‘censor’ freedom and many people address this with utter disgust, particularly on the Internet. What is the point of free speech, free access to anything and everything and pornography if we have a society where physical, verbal, cyber and emotional abuse is rife and a large percentage of the population are suffering from illnesses, mental health conditions or unhappiness?
‘I have worked hard at ignoring the billboards on buses and at the sides of roads, but the fact is the images are there, affecting all of us anyway.’ Rachel, I can say the same. I have managed to put on a filter to all of this as it is everywhere I have not wanted to look. I have believed there is not much I can do about it, so turned away. Yet, I expect there are many many people who feel the same and just like me haven’t spoken up. It’s great that you have written this blog and called it out.
The thing is, that no matter what is happening on the TV screen it is important not to react or to make it personal. I know this can be difficult sometimes, especially when you care so much about people and it can be frustrating to see the state of the world today with so much insidious darkness and chaos, with children growing in to adults in a place where there is little true love being expressed. But we cannot take any of this personally, because as soon as we do then we are lost as well. The key here is in understanding the hurts that are driving these behaviours forward, to look and see the person behind the image and to love yourself no matter what because from there all people are loved too and then it is not a world with little true love anymore because there will be one more person expressing from their inner-heart, and this is what really makes the change – when true divine love is being expressed.
It is horrible to think that the teenagers of today are being influenced to believe this is what a relationship looks like, and therefore is it any wonder our young men are confused when all they see is pornographic images in movies and music videos, and then think this is how you treat a women.
Teenagers are being brought up in a world where the standard of relating has plummeted to an all time low. Everywhere they turn they not only see the abuse and corruption that exists in the music, porn, and film industries, they are watching the adults who are personally in their life turn a blind eye or consider this to be normal, therefore effectively confirming it all as okay.
I was shocked the other day when I realised how young children were who were watching pornography on their mobile phones, and how many teenagers think that that is how women should be treated, we have to say enough is enough and start doing something about it.
I agree it is time to live life by these principles, ‘time to re-establish a way of being that is founded on the qualities of self-honouring, self-respect, dignity, grace and self-love’. Long overdue time to live life from being love who we truly are.
A very powerful blog, with a great wake up message to not be complacent or blind to what is being passed off as acceptable when we know how deeply disturbing it is to allow any form of pornography to pollute the innocence of young children.
Pornography is loveless but it’s not something that I was aware of when I watched it from my own lovelessness. It is only since returning to feeling love in my body that I am able to feel the things that are devoid of love.
Couldn’t agree with you more Rachel, there are so much rot that is circulating around the globe and only getting worse. It is abhorrent what is going on out there in the world, yet we choose to turn a blind eye to a lot of it, if it isn’t happening in our back yard, then we don’t want to know. Yet the proliferation of pornography and imagery now available, it is very hard not to see it.
What you raise here Rachel needs to be brought up for discussion, and to remind people that we should not have to tolerate this in society today, it is not wise or acceptable.
When I was in year 7 (32 years ago), I was part of the Student United Nations and I submitted a notion to censor pornography – I was embarrassed to see the porn magazines in the newsagents and felt it was time to put a stop to this. It did not get picked as a topic of discussion so no more came up from this. However, it was something I always felt strongly about. Over time, in conversations, be it with women or men, they always said to me I had better get used to seeing porn around, as this is the way it is. My battles to stop or ignore porn seemed to be to no avail, and strangely, I decided to explore it to see what the attraction was. This very short dabble in porn revealed to me that I was scared to let myself truly feel and live being a woman, and from that fear it was easier to choose something that numbed me out (hence I seemed to not feel the fear) rather than allowed me to see and be aware of the coldness and objectification of the porn and the damage it was doing to me and every woman in the world. But more so, the numbness that came for the shock of what I saw, stopped me from feeling how miserable I was in life. This is big and helps me understand that porn is a symptom of how miserable and disconnected we are living in life. Might be another blog in what I have shared here…
There are many things in our society that have been escalating over a period of time, and pornography is only one of them. It is interesting to see how this escalation happens, and I can really appreciate how Rachel has shared this in her blog. These days it has come to a point that what was once considered pornography and somewhat restricted to magazines (in a time when the internet was not so easily available to people), it is now found all around us and deemed ‘normal’ and not really classified as pornography. The shock factor has worn off the initial tame attempts and so today it has to always exceed what is already out there if it is to grab any attention as such. The demand is the key culprit as is the silence of those who do not speak up to put a stop to this.
Pornography is a deeply deviant deviance from love… and its current prevalence is an indictment to the state of our relationships and disconnect from love.
Sexually explicit imagery is rampant with technology and I agree it shouldn’t be normalised. How do we feel when young children show signs of inappropriate sexual behaviour? Do we ignore this and hope it goes away?
I have had discussions on this topic with young people. Many laugh it off and think I’m just old and easily shocked. They don’t connect the dots and see how this leads to behaviours in society where women are treated as objects. We are seeing the consequences of this objectification in the widespread abuse of women in things like verbal abuse, rape and domestic violence.
It is true Debra, it is important that we all start to connect the dots of how and why we undermine our very values that uphold the basic decency and respect of our society and begin to correct anything that destabilises this integrity and equilibrium
It is so easy for all of us to see only what we want to see, rather than the stark reality of the integrity of humanity sliding down into depths of degradation that are now considered totally normal in every day.
It is quite shocking to see how young teens are copying their pop idols clothing (or rather lack of it) in order to feel they belong and fit into what is acceptable in society. This blog is a strong call for us all to wake up and stand up for what is truly happening here.
It really is no wonder the level of abuse that is increasing year on year is where it is at if pornography is so readily available. What is being asked of young girls today from the boys has never been so disturbing yet for them this is all they know. We have start looking in our own back yard and make changes before we start to see any changes that are so desperately needed.
If girls and boys grew up in families where the mother and the father honoured each other then their children would go out into the world and naturally honour others as well as only be in relationships where they too were being honoured. Our dishonouring of each other starts at home.
Indeed Rachel, enough is enough and we all have to come to this point before this ill way of exploiting men and women in the imagery world we live in.We have to open our eyes and feel what is presented here and forget what we see, as the imageries are luring us into a way of being we actually are far off, actually the opposite, and when we fall for these imageries we need more and become numb for and unaware of the harm that it is causing, not only to us a a individual, but to ur children, families and societies as a whole.
People become outraged when a child is harmed by an adult through physical or sexual abuse, and quite rightly so. But what if they were harmed simply by being in a house where pornography (of any type, including these music videos) was being used by an adult, whether they see it or not? If everything is energy, then the energy behind pornography is present whether they see it with their eyes or not.
Me too, Rachel – I also learnt to ignore a very uncomfortable message being shouted at me as a teenager, as if I was embarrassed about my own reaction of being embarrassed about what I was being presented with, like I should have been able to stay unaffected while allowing that trash to be around, as if my honesty was synonymous with naïveté.
What are we thinking when we allow in our homes these types of video clips and magazines that promote sexual objectifying of women and men. We have a big push on at the moment to eliminate domestic violence from our lives and homes and yet we allow these promotional videos that objectify women and see them as saying all we truly are is sex objects. Double standards and mixed messages for all . Sex is one part of a relationship not the whole, so who or what is promoting this untruth? Why do Parents allow these magazines and shows to be read and watched in their homes. We need to stand up and be accountable for our part in parenting our children and not allow complacency to take over! Who is promoting true Love? ITS UP TO US !
Absolutely and totally agree. What is happening here is very ugly and the increase in babies and very young children being bought and sold as sex objects for sexual gratification is horrific.
Without love as a benchmark our behaviours are able to spiral out of control. Things are becoming more and more twisted and extreme and will continue to do so until such time that love reigns it all back in again, which it will do, it’s simply a matter of time.
“Double standards and mixed messages for all.” Indeed Roslyn, and so we flounder around not quite knowing where the appropriate boundaries are and hence the disrespect and abuse is allowed to run rife.
There are very beautiful ways to express our selves, our sexiness and beauty and still retain our dignity, an essential lesson for every young girl to learn. We are not objects put here to please others we are sacred Beings full of grace. When we absolutely claim this for our selves, then gradually the fodder for such titillation will simply dry up.
‘Pornography has become normal, so normal that we don’t blink when we and our children are exposed to it.’
Pornography is not only laced in the images of film clips, but the lyrics too. It is saddening to see the innocence of an 8 year old sing lyrics that infer giving guys blow jobs without them even realising.
And those lyrics as you say, Abby come laced with an energy, which in our lack of awareness we can embrace and take on board and then become more blinded to what is happening.
I share your embarrassment Rachel on each of the levels you describe. And more so at hypocrisy I too have indulged in. I just wrote a comment elsewhere about the normalisation of abuse, including self-abuse. Accepting what we have accepted is simply another form of that.
Yes it is seriously alarming the normalising of pornography and sexual violence in mainstream media, and available at the touch of a button… how destructive is this for young girls growing into women attempting to make sense of it all, and how damaging for young boys to have this as their norm and guidance of what it is to be a man. If we don’t all speak up now, the consequences for our future communities will be devastating. One could say that this is already the case now. Just ask a 13 year old girl.
Having attended more training on preventing child sexual exploitation it became clear that those working in that field everyday felt that the everyday acceptance of porn, or use of bodies for use, has a huge impact especially on the most vulnerable in our society.The devaluing of ourselves creates a spiral of abuse on top of abuse. Schools are losing the battle on sexting and keep safe work is taught but not listened to. Increasingly I cannot ignore the relationship I have with myself and how I relate with others, as a point of reflection, is super important.
Like alcohol, a cigarette, a punch – porn is not appealing on its first encounter so then what draws us back? It must be something which offers a hook, a form of relief or time away – we have so many forms of living in a convoluted reality, like those who are addicted to gaming, those where addicted to reading books, those who are full of sexualised images of porn and see the world now tainted by that way…. it’s as if there is a nook and cranny for every way away from our essence and knowing the full and whole truth of who we are.
It wasn’t until many years after stopping watching porn that I realised how deeply disconnected I was from women who I was close with, and how although sometimes we don’t mention all of these things in our day to day interactions it is noticed, nothing goes unnoticed. The clutches were so strong at one point that as soon as I got the slightest hint of reality, of feeling the Tension of how things were playing out then immediately I would seek a distraction and Porn was quite often the one. When I think about how calculated and protective it made me become, in not wanting to be caught and always hiding something as well as it being able to look myself in the eyes or simply enjoy being myself then the true damage has been assessed.
There is absolutely nothing normal about pornography and to consider it normal says a lot about what is going within us and in the world. It is telling us that there is something that we are missing in our relationship with ourselves and with other people. We are afraid to open up and be vulnerable so instead we turn others and ourselves into objects. We are not objects, we are divine human beings who can feel everything that is going on, often don’t like what we feel and get hurt by it and then avoid true intimacy.
Like all drugs/addictions, pornography doesn’t just give us relief in the moment it affects us for days on end. A fowl “stench” if you like hangs around clouding our thoughts and inching us towards taking another hit of relief, and it is in this where the underlying issues are being avoided and from that pouring anything that offers to take away the pain will do – even if it is gross and damaging like drugs, alcohol, pornogrnaphy, violence etc.
A blog with a fact hitting punch of truth. I remember the stage growing up with video clips got the name kiddy porn. It’s makes me think of the saying, give them an inch and they will take a mile. We let a little evil in and before we know it’s expanded to be full blown in your face. Keep our eyes open and call it when it starts to crept in, not when it’s creating illness on a mass scale.
I get to see these clips at my gym as well – rows and rows of disembodied humans who consist of a collage of officially decreed sexy body parts, humans with a vacant look and no idea of the rot they are contributing to.
It is a gift to truly see, the beauty, the ugly, everything. When we can see and we express the truth of what we see, we realise there is a lot of work to do in restoring the truth that we ourselves have blindly walked away from.
Brilliant blog Rachel. The blindness you talk about here is quite confronting. You have helped me see that I too have blocked out much of what I see with a sense of hopelessness about it all. The world is only where it is at because we have all accepted it. The question “how do we explain these images to our children?” is a very good one. The truth is we have all accepted a huge amount of abuse and it will only end when enough people say enough.
The normalisation of pornography is rampant to the extent it is not even called what it is. We call it a music video, when what we should call it is pornography packaged to sell music.
I so agree Rachel, we are just constantly bombarded with imagery that has become increasingly more and more pornographic in nature. Whether it is on the tv, in magazines, what we see when we are out at shopping centres, on billboards, just everywhere. Yet we wonder why kids are the way they are, or crime is the way it is, or divorce is rife. The breakdown in society around relationships, what is deemed normal or not is largely to do with what is projected onto us, and we accept it. SO much has become normalised, that just isn’t normal. Unnatural imagery of women’s bodies, how we should look, how we should live. This isn’t normal and never will be.
I completely agree with what you are saying here Rachel. Firstly it is really imposing having these sort of videos played in spaces like gyms. Well there is so much to say hear (and you have done a great job in starting the discussion and conversation). It easy to react but what we need to do is to respond to this, the fact images and objectification is getting more extreme is because we (as humanity) have ignored it for so long, we have let it go under the radar and not truly addressed this as have gone about our busy lives. However now it is as such a point that we can no longer ignore it. I work in sexual health with young people and it seems there is currently very little support for them in helping them to deal with what they are coming up against, abusive, loveless relationships with little self worth or self esteem seeing what is going on around them as the ‘norm’. We need to have these conversations … everywhere. And definitely need to start reflecting to our younger generation there is a different way to be and live and to call out the abuse in adverts etc for exactly what it is.
This is an excellent and very exposing article Rachel. Your point about parenting really stood out for me, because as a young person I know that there is no way to avoid or turn a blind eye to the pornography and sexualisation you’ve spoken about (nor should we, as it’s so important to speak up about it), but if I were to have kids I would want them to know that the images they were going to see of women and men as portrayed by the media were false BEFORE they became overwhelmed by ideals and beliefs from all of these mediums. Thus, it’s so important to have a relationship with our children that is open and trusting, so that a) we can share what’s going on behind the scenes of the media and WHY this is happening, so that they don’t feel pressured to be that way and b) they can see how we live and use that as a role model over what the media presents.
This is absolutely amazing wisdom Susie. The importance is so clear for developing trusting and transparent relationships with our children so that these ideals and beliefs don’t become part of their way – which has become so normalised but is totally unnatural and unnormal.
There really is a lot that we have begun to accept as ‘normal’ in our society when it clearly is just not ok. This is what we accept on our television, our billboards, music videos, magazines and the like. We accept these images, complain about them yes, but usually feel helpless to what is before us. Instead of standing up and saying NO to these images, saying no to emaciated women on catwalks, and abusive imagery in advertising. All of these things and not standing up to say no, normalises them.
Thank you, Rachel, what a blog, so much is being said and so much is revealed.. as you said the veil is removed from my eyes, I had chosen to do so. This blog is exactly that and showing us a way to wake up and inspire us to open up, truly open our eyes and see what is going on that is so wrong and should never be accepted. Hence a great moment of stop this blog offers for the reader to take stock at their awareness of what is going on and if we are choosing to say no or yes to this abuse. As we know this current pornographic way might seem overall normal, but we all know it is simply not. We all know that this allowance of pornography in our current society: media, magazines, videoclips, internet, papers, tv etc., all has to do with us not living in our power and divinity. That is absolute love – no pornography.
I have to wonder about the quality of the music when musicians need and want to sell their music with sex. A song used to sell itself and music videos were the band playing the music together. I also have to wonder about the state of our society when we not only accept the sexualisation of women and men in mainstream music videos, but also want more of it. What these videos reflect to our young people who are forming ideas about how to relate and be in relationships is incredibly damaging, with no hope of respect, equality or self-worth. I agree its time to say enough.
The you are being a “prude” argument is quite a manipulative tactic, it is used by those who wish to control and demean genuine complaints about the overly sexualised nature of society. Mary Whitehouse in the UK in the 70s had quite strong views about society becoming looser in its approach to sex, however possibly her stance and her movement had a negative long term effect as no-one wishes to be seen as that controlling prude. But what we have now is not about prudishness, it is about violent sexual imagery that demean us as men and women. Music videos could be about creativity, instead they are sledgehammers telling us this is how it is, and that must conform to this view of what it is, in particular to be a women. Not OK.
The normalisation of pop-porn and the fact that the sexualisation of women is accepted is deeply disturbing of where we are at as a society – for both women and men as we equally have a part to play.
It is so true when we objectify people we lose sight of who they are really and we make them objects for us to use for our pleasure. There is no true relationship in that for we are not relating with them as the equal beings that they are.
If developing brains are drip fed over sexualised, photo shopped images of men and women they begins to form impression literally on their brain and neural pathways – Later in life when they want to be in partnerships these images can have an impact on people’s ability to form connections. Imagine being an 18 year old and wanting to be in a relationship with soemone but you can’t get the pornaographic images out of the way to form a connection. Porn is so much more harmful than we realise.
This is a great point Nicole. These images of the ideal, photoshopped partner get in the way of our being able to discern the person who is right for us, rather than the one that ticks the image boxes. This extends beyond what they look like, as we acquire images of how they (and we) should behave in an intimate relationship.
When we are bombarded with imagery that encourages the objectification of women and men in a way that is in gross disregard to the human body, it makes it easier for the people absorbing these images to make the same kinds of disregarding choices with their own bodies. Especially with our children, when they see this over-sexualization and obscene media, it’s as if it is giving them permission to indulge in the same harming behavior.
“How are young women and men ever going to learn that there is something called love-making, when all they see is sex?” – and not just ‘plain’ sex but pornography that at times is extreme, and men and women suffer equally as a result of this.
The level to which pornography has become normal and accepted in our society is deeply disturbing. Here is a great article on the topic: http://www.womeninlivingness.com/single-post/2017/01/14/The-objectification-of-women-by-women-Do-we-dare-to-look-at-it
Reading this brought back the shock and shut that happens in me every time I see a film clip (which has been some time now). I remember we used to call them kiddy porn, which I would call a truth, I would also go as far to say straight out porn. The effects of this constant imagery is evident every where as you have shared Rachel. With many young people acting out their perceived ideas and pictures of what a man or women should be. We have a great responsibility to offer a truth of what men and women are, by living in a way that reflects the amazingness that is in all.
I don’t have a television, my husband and I prefer to listen to the radio so when I do see these kind of music videos I can feel them really offensive and harmful I am sure if I was subject to this kind of material more often I too would become desensitised and override the horrific harm they are actually causing. This concerns me as there are many children out there growing up becoming desensitised to what is essentially abusive behaviour.
The pornification of society really highlights the lack of social responsibility and personal decency. Everywhere I see sexualised images I feel it shows where people have completely sold out for what they get from it (profit, notoriety etc), instead of what they can truly offer to support people and communities.
I have no doubt that many if not most in society have done what you have done with regards to learning to keep their eyes open and see what it all around them but place some kind of veil/filter across their vision to block out the things that they do not want to see… the things in society that are abusive in some form but somewhat normalized to be acceptable. It is time for people to truly stop and recognize that this is not okay and speak up like you have… rather than resign to perpetuating it through the apathy that abounds.
A brilliantly written article Rachel and as you so rightly say it is Time to say ENOUGH! Time we all stopped thinking that things will fix themselves or simply go away if we ignore them.
Yes pornography is definitely increasing and is often introduced in conversations as the norm with any other TV viewing. What is alarming here is the rate of undisclosed behaviour that we champion in movies, share in joke telling and often giggle off as a behaviour that others do. What is powerful about this blog is speaking up about a topic that still gets down played yet is effecting younger audiences daily and setting an image of normalising behaviours that clearly objectify men and women in various sexual roles.
You have called out so many things here Rachel, really amazing blog. Yes we are all responsible and have a responsibility for what is playing out in the world. So we are all responsible for making the change that is needed in the world.
Outstanding article that goes there with the questions that society as a whole need ask and never cease to ask whilst we live in a world that allows such lovelessness and degradation of women.
Images communicate so much even without words and are constantly giving a role model for kids and adults to align with. It is disturbing just what kind of images and messages we have allowed to become commonplace and agree it’s time to really use our discernment and voices to bring some true love to our media and arts.
Thank you for verbalising something we all feel Rachel. I have seen a steady decline in music videos being about music and a worrying rise in the sexualisation of music videos to the point it is clearly porn.
There is so much uncomfortable truth in your blog Rachel, we are turning a blind eye and not speaking up more about what is going on here, especially for our younger generation and what they are now being exposed to that we are saying without saying anything, that this is okay.
It’s been three years since you wrote this totally powerful and inspiring article, Rachel, and reading it right now I am feeling rather uncomfortable as this still stands very relative and presents much needed insights, and I know the way I am feeling is only exposing the choices I have been making not to be aware.
Powerful unpacked and exposed – what we, as a society, have tragically allowed. The degree to which we have abandoned basic common sense when it comes to respect and care of self and others is such that children younger and younger these days are quite simply going off the rails. Aggression is king, the gateway to recognition, as is hard, fast sex in a a tech-hype society that congratulates itself on its impressive technological advances while the people within it, continue to retard and lose themselves in acceptable lifestyles that have them as fodder and objects towards one another.
So much work to be done to awaken humanity out of its deep, dull sleep.
Wow what a blog Rachel. This is leaving no justifiable place to turn but to look out and see that society is really in a bad way with regard to how we are with ourselves and these sexualised images that are only getting more and more extreme by the day. It only takes an open heart to listen to the cry of humanity.
Thank you Rachel for opening our eyes to the reality of an increasingly sexualised society. It is shocking how easily we become complacent and accept something as normal that clearly is not. If we give up and not look at what needs to be addressed we become complicit in a game where we are puppets, who’s strings are pulled by a force outside of us that dictates what is normal and what is not. It is time we empower ourselves and step out of this ugly play and claim back a truly honouring and love-filled way of life.
I agree we do ignore what is right in front of us “…I had been ignoring the pervasive and spreading harm of ‘normalised’ pornography, staying silent and hoping it would go away.” Often when things don’t feel good, we check out or smooth over it, to attempt to avoid the disharmony that is evidently there…it is there for a reason, somethings just don’t feel good, they degrade who we are…porn is big business, on many levels in society, great to be aware of it around us and challenge it.
Well said Rachel – it is time we say no to objectification of both women and men. All the adverts etc. set us up to do is fail and beat ourselves for not looking a certain way. We are all magnificent pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and so we are all needed in our unique ways. If we were all the same the picture would actually look blurred/1 colour/ 1 dimension whereas if we are all ourselves we get to see the whole.
Very well said Rachel, I stepped out of the tram after reading your blog and was eye in eye or I should say eye in cleavage of a woman with very big breast on an advert printed all over the tram going the other way. It is everywhere and like you I feel I had closed my eyes to it, seeing it as normal, just the way it is, but it is not and should not be normal. Because it is not the true fullness of who we are as men and women. We deserve to live much more than in a society like this.
“I have learned to keep my eyes open, but place a veil across my vision, blocking out the things I do not want to see.” – How many of us can say that we have done or still do this? I know I can, but can also say am now waking up to the things that I’ve brushed off or dismissed in the past or just plain blanked out as didn’t think I could have any affect on them, as I can see now that our voice does make a difference, each and every one of us.
This is a brilliant article Rachel,
Thanks for caring enough about the state the world is in to write it.
“As a woman, you are to look hot and passively accept your role as an object for men’s gratification.” That about sums it up really and I too Rachel share your concerns about what we are presenting to the world. I feel the ramifications of this in times to come will be quite hideous unless we collectively start calling this out.
Today I saw a fashion magazine in my family doctors waiting room that was full of models looking sad, depressed, given up, angry and messy with vacant eyed stares. There were undertones of violence and physical violation and I was stunned and horrified by what I was seeing. It was a thick glossy mag and it had only 5 smiling colourful photos in the entire edition. I share your shock and outrage Rachel and join you in saying enough of this darkness.
Brilliant blog expressed here Rachel and yes the world is full of sexualised images from the tv, ads, magazines etc. But what is also interesting to consider is what type of energy is being fed to us from these pornographic images? If everything is energy then these highly sexualised pictures, videos and ads are being played and accessible by everyone everyday and that is something worth saying no to because it affects us all.
You raise so many great and pertinent points in your blog here Rachel, that there is so much pornography that has made it into mainstream life, that when there is something graphic and totally abusive and exposing, that people are becoming less reactive to what is really being seen. Why are we allowing this to happen? We have very much become this lazy society that just keeps allowing more and more abuse into our homes and lives. When will this stop?
“What does it say about us that on one hand we have people complaining about paedophilia (as they should), but on the other a laissez faire attitude to the imagery that abounds our streets, supermarkets, child-friendly TV shows and public spaces?”
I absolutely agree Rachel, it is this inconsistency in what is acceptable that makes the messages so messed up – we have caved into advertising, glamour and in the end greed, and at what cost?
We have a generation of children growing up with ever greater unease within themselves, statistically in the UK “Around three children (aged 5 – 16yrs) in every class suffer from a diagnosable mental health disorder”
Is this the compounding effect of our laissez faire attitude?
The impact that normalised porn culture is having on young people is huge, We only need to look at the increasing levels of anxiety that young people are experiencing or look at a young persons instagram account to see the influence this is having on how they view themselves. Yes, more role models are needed of women and men who hold themselves with love and can reflect this to others.
“Apparently we live in a progressive society. Where is the progress?” – great question. As a women who grew up in in the 70s & 80s not only has there been no progress in terms of how women are portrayed, it is now worse. 30 & 40 years ago, it was still objectification of women with things like the Sun’s page 3 and Benny Hill shows as mainstream, but now that looks tame compared with what’s on the internet and on TV. So I don’t see any progress. Progress would look like an evolution. To look at how women were portrayed in the 70s and 80s and be able to say no to that kind of objectification.
The ‘pornification’ of society is part of a bigger trend: life is increasingly filled up with images; overflowed with images. Increasingly, spaces are set in a way where images take over (gyms are a clear case) so you cannot avoid them. It is like there has to be no image-void spots. No space to just be with yourself. And, this is offered as a service; as a good thing. And, at some level, it is if life is pretty empty. Images, no different from food, can fill you up with them.
Images can offer you (can make you ‘part’ of) a world that is different from your daily experience. Images grab you. And while we think we reman in control because we choose what images to bring into our lives, the truth is that we are totally owned by the need to bring images into our lives to fill us up. The overstimulation is not a free lunch.
We can ignore what is going on with children, but digging our heads in the sand only buries this issue even further. We are seeing younger and younger children being involved in sexual assaults and in hearing some of the stories that young people have on what their internet and social media life is like, we need to be available for them. This was certainly not my experience in growing up. So the question I have is if things like this are getting worse. What are we doing and what are we allowing for children accessing pornography becoming the norm?
Rachel you have exposed so many of the area’s in our lives where the creeping mentality of pornography is lurking openly. The subtle and not so subtle impact of this is already playing out in our relationship as we move around in the world living our lives and choosing to turn a blind eye to the truth and factual examples you have shared. It does feel overwhelming as I reflect on how we pull this back and support our children to re-connect to who they truly are and to not identify with the objectification of our bodies that is so prolific today. Thank you for raising the issue for discussion and bringing awareness to the subtle ways being used today. We can say ‘enough’ and not look away but challenge what is really being offered and encouraged by advertising, video’s, patterns of behaviour we observe.
Going back quite a few years products were sold and bought on their quality not on gimmicky videos where products become known for their shock value, because all that happens is the line gets pushed further and further and we as a society are accepting it rather than say ‘No, Enough is enough’ because all it does is misrepresent both men and women leaving children with a belief that that is what men and women are ultimately here to both look like and behave.
In the past, those who wanted to consume porn would have to move towards it. In the present, it comes our way and that incites people to move towards it even further. The normalisation of it coming our way only help to trap more people in a movement that is deeply damaging them, others, and every relationship that we can imagine they have.
It is important we call this out for what it is. Billboards, magazines, newpapers etc.. with barely clad women or men are not appropriate and sexualise products rather than actually enhancing them. They play on our desires and wants rather than offering us reflections of truth. The only way to stop this denegration of both sexes is to say no to it and call it out for what it is.
“Why have we allowed ourselves to become so silent, and afraid to say ENOUGH?” Perhaps an underlying and disturbing reason for the obsession with the sexual image is in the deliberate misinterpretation of sex equating to love. All are searching for love and those who are choosing to make money from this desire are constantly pushing the boundaries to keep the momentum rolling and taking people further away from the love they seek so that the addiction becomes more ingrained – the consequence is pornography in its many guises. Time to say ENOUGH to pornography and the sexual image and to return to the love that we all already are.
Yesterday I read an article by a lady who has come out of the porn industry after many years, What she exposed was horrific she explained how you could get huge amounts of money for allowing an abuse or torture scene, many many porn ‘stars’ are now mentally ill and with many with addictions. When I hear about this I realise how low as a society we have gone to allow this to happen and to basically have turned a blind eye.
“I was embarrassed because I recognised that I had been ignoring the pervasive and spreading harm of ‘normalised’ pornography, staying silent and hoping it would go away.” My sense is that you are not alone Rachel in feeling this way, I can certainly relate to it. Thinking, feeling that others will deal with it, but actually we all have to take responsibility, because pornography isn’t going anywhere soon by the looks of it.
Pornography is not natural for us. Yes it is very common and for some everyday, but if we all sat and considered what we want in our relationships it would not be this. It is the intimacy we crave – and I do not mean sex. It is how we are with each other in all we do. I saw a presentation yesterday by a world class model, who was talking about the abuse in the modelling industry. She was in particular talking about women. There is a push for women to be as man like as possible, having hard stern postures and bodies and the treatment of models is nothing less than abusive. There is heavy drug and alcohol abuse in the industry and the more a model is self-abusive the more work they get. Any model who begins to speak out, ends up with less work. Meanwhile we continue to support this by purchasing magazines that contain these images. It makes sense then that the modelling, magazine and fashion industries would easily go down the line of selling product through basically pornographic images. As the saying goes “sex sells” – this may very well be true. But what are we actually buying, more than the image or the product that’s for sure.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a young person growing up in today’s society surrounded by pictures of naked bodies on the internet, on the TV, on billboards, and on their phones. It must seem so normal and acceptable, and yet it is entirely debasing of who they are, and what a lovingly intimate relationship really is.
The impact of porn literally destroy a people’s ability to be intimate and loving – it is an absolute crime it has been normalised.
I had this exact experience with my then 2 year old when stopped st traffic lights and the billboard in front of us was a wonder bra advert with a women pressing her breasts together and saying ‘hello boys’ I looked behind and my daughter was looking at the billboard and I thought what sense will she make of that image? Then I was faced with what felt like an explosion of sexual objectification of women that was literally every where – I had been asleep to what had happened to our world, numb, shut down, blind. But all of this was chosen by me to not have to deal with it. And here I was realising the world I had allowed and now its impact. It’s time we wake up.
I agree whole heartedly with all you have expressed Rachel. The call for self honoring, self respect, dignity, grace and self love is very much called for
There is a real ugly emptiness to the type of music videos you describe Rachel. The videos are there to hide the vacuousness of the songs with their offensive lyrics. And it is such an easy defence to call someone prudish, but that is a deflector from the harm it causes our societies to have these exposing videos seep into the conscious thoughts and actions of us all. The more we see women objectified and reduced to mere playthings for music stars the more it becomes accepted and acceptable. The cat calling many women suffer just by walking down the street is a testament to the lack of respect and understanding many men have for women, and these videos are part of the wider systemic problem. The problem is only removed by redefining sexy, creating a different way of determining what sexy is, because for now sex sells but how about we challenge that and make it that confident, assured and respected women sell items with their clothes on, that sounds much more sexy, and offering real role models for more young girls to aspire to do the same.
As a teenager I used to watch MTV as much as I could, I now realise how absolutely devastating these music video are. They are encouraging promiscuity, degrading of women and are instilling a false idea into the public of what it means to be sexy. Like you Rachel I am definitely no prude but do have a problem with this kind of harmful media being so mainstream.
Pornography is more damaging in our society than we could ever know or understand, because it isn’t until young and impressionable kids who see this, grow up and into (a lot of the time) dysfunctional relationships often having unrealistic expectations of women and men about how they should act and be when having sex. There is a lot to shift and change on this front.
Indeed Rachel enough is enough, the slogan ‘sex sells’ comes to mind. In no way should we exploit anybody because of their body. To do this degrades us hugely and makes life all about flesh and blood and completely ignores the being inside the body. It says this is what we are and then tries to glorify it. When the truth is we are so much more than our looks.
We grew up watching Top of The Pops which was a music show dedicated to trendy pop music and the latest artist, which at the time seemed a bit outrageous when musicians used to come on with painted faces and long hair, but it is a far cry from the music videos that are put out today which in my view are unnecessarily sexual – is it any wonder our teenagers are confused and lost when it comes to relationships.
What you have presented is so bluntly how it is in today’s world of 2016. As a parent of older teenage girls I do feel the losing battle to what is normal in today’s world. Pornography normalization is one of many areas in our society’s warped sense of normality.
What’s utterly dreadful is that we hold sexual energy up as something to be sought after. We see those who are extremely sexual as being desirable and it’s especially our youth who see extreme sexuality as a gift. But there are so many beautiful deep qualities in both men and women to be cherished and prized and there is not an ounce of sexuality in any of them.
‘Is it not time to re-establish a way of being that is founded on the qualities of self-honouring, self-respect, dignity, grace and self-love?’ Very true Rachel, time has come for us as a society to address the harm of pornography in whatever form. We can no longer bury our head in the sand and pretend this will just go away as there are too many adults and well as our innocent children being affected and harmed by these images.
Well said Rachel, enough is enough. Pornography does no true good society and simply fills a void where we can go to to escape whatever is going on for us. It is becoming more extreme as we seek more extreme ways to escape from the reality of our lives rather than choosing to make more loving choices and take responsibility for our lives.
I was watching a movie recently, and observed how the camera was deliberately angled so the screen was half taken up by a woman’s figure from behind, wearing very tight trousers and it occurred to me that there was no real point to this shot other than to sexualise her body. What’s more, is that this movie is very popular with children. So, what are we promoting with these movies? And is this a subtly accepted form of pornographic imagery? If so, then surely it should be treated just the same as the hard core pornography also available today.
People try to justify pornography by saying it is not real, but the actors are real men and women with real bodies who are participating so in order to watch any of the graphic scenes a real body had to be subjected to this experience so that is really happening.
If showing children pornography is a crime, how do so many get away with their pornographic music videos?
Who defines what is porn and not? And does calling it soft porn make it okay? As if soft porn is safer, you cannot take the porn out of soft porn so it is still porn after all.
What is being discussed here in this article and in the cement is what the entire world ought to be discussing. That porn has become normalised in our society, with what was regarded as porn just a few years ago now being accepted as tame and mainstream being a real tell-tale sign of how deeply disconnected as a society we are. And as you say Rachel, amidst all of this, ‘the restrictive body image stench’ remains. Everything around us telling us we are not enough, a failure for not meeting up to an ideal that has been deliberately set up for us to be in constant striving, perceived failure and thus disconnection.
Porn is a drug and like sugar, alcohol and other poisonous substances we as a society have gradually become more and more numb to their effects. These images you talk about Rachel are deeply harming. Thank you for exposing the absurd craziness of an industry that is causing much devastation to us as a humanity.
What’s really disturbing about the whole entertainment industry is the message and intention behind it. We see – as you say – more and more video clips showing less and less clothing – but this only sends the message that this is accepted, sought after, valued, and that this whole industry is based on creating a picture that is essentially porn. It is as of the industry is laughing in the face of true worth, and we are enjoying watching harmless TV. It is a very easy way to play a game of keeping us thinking we are only as valuable as we look – rather than appreciating who we truly are first.
It’s not only the women who are being completely demoralised but also the men, they are reducing themselves from their naturally caring, tender and totally sensitive ways to something that uses, abuses and judges women on what they see. We are all so sensitive and are feeling all the time, do we bring in more force, images and idealisation to overcome the incessant rape energy that floods our screens, radios, cinemas and magazines? Are we all in denial of the fact that porn proves how far we have stepped away from our truly loving ways?
”Pornography has become normal, so normal that we don’t blink when we and our children are exposed to it.”
This is alarming Rachel, the fact that we have accepted normal as being abusive to each other and living false lives. Pornography is everywhere, like you say, and it will become more and more expressive if we don’t stand up and expose what is really going on. A world void of true intimacy looking for connection in al the wrong places!
It is the small drop that can eventually wear away a rock. As you point out Rachel, we have allowed the drip of pornography and sexualisation of women to wear away at the bedrock of what we see is normal.
“It’s not X-rated…not yet anyway”. This is the pertinent point here. As you have precisely described the landscape has changed dramatically since Duran Duran released that video in the eighties. But I feel that the degradation is increasing at an exponential pace over the last few years. I’d like to see a graph that mapped the “number of close-ups of breast or behinds – per minute – on daytime TV, Internet and Social Media” over the last 10 years. I’m quite sure that the speed of increase is rapidly increasing. So. Where will we be in a few years time? Where on earth is this heading? And, as you say, who is actually responsible for this? Is it possible that it is us? The everyman/woman on the street – who has let this all go on without raising even an eyebrow let alone a hand or voice? Yes we can blame the media in all it’s forms. But strip it back to basics and the media is no different from any other industry – that operates on a supply and demand system. We are demanding – they are supplying. It is our responsibility.
The amount of pornography now readily viewable within everyday life is astounding. The bar has certainly been lowered over the years. I was quickly visually browsing the magazine rack in an airport recently and couldn’t help but feel assaulted by the impact of the covers of the magazines on display. The impact would have been worse had I picked one up and flicked through the pages. These magazines were in plain sight for anyone of any age, which really backs up what you have written Rachel regarding falling standards over time. This standard will keep dropping if we remain dulled down, saying nothing. We all share this responsibility to highlight what is happening here so thank you Rachel for raising this topic so that readers can consider how they may be colluding with what is going on – consciously or unconsciously.
“It is time we all learnt to open our eyes, to see the ugly truth of the pornography-infused life we have created, and say ENOUGH!” Thank you Rachel, I could not agree more!!
Powerful, say it like it is article Rachel. Exposes how we have as a society accepted the unacceptable – and when we accept something we become it. So when we turn a blind eye to the abuse going on around us in all areas of life, we are not only allowing it continue but we are actually condoning the abuse.
Here, here Rachel, it is so easy to sit back in our lounge chairs and comment how horrible the sleazy way women are portrayed in many situations is, but to step up and say it openly as you have done here needs to be applauded. This needs to be posted to many in the music industry, modelling industry and magazine industry, as each holds much focus for teenage children. What they portray affects a whole generation, is there not a responsibility in this?
It is time we all learnt to open our eyes, to see the ugly truth of the pornography-infused life we have created, and say ENOUGH!
You summed up the truth in one sentence. This is our past, and you give us our answer to our future too. It is a matter indeed to say enough and truly self-respect, honor and nurture ourselves. An end to abuse and a start of a new beginning ..
Every thing about your blog Rachel is spot on, it is horrific how this kind of porn is now seen as normal. Thank you for exposing our part in this and how by standing up now and saying it as it is we can start to see change. These kind of images are deeply detrimental to socially and unless we say it so it will continue to be the norm.
An awesome blog that says it as it is. Mild porn, soft porn, hard porn – it’s all porn and it’s now way beyond just existing at the margins of our society. It’s ubiquitous – and to the point that it’s no longer shocking, but mainstream. When we live a life based on copying the constant images we’re drip-fed, then we’re subjugating ourselves to a set of highly manufactured ideals and beliefs that are hollow and deeply unsatisfying.
When a whole society fails to speak out about the truth of this insidious issue and what is decent and true, then we only have ourselves to blame for the collective expectations we hold and permit around beauty, sexiness and femaleness.
Very true miss. Hackett. You summed exactly what it is – the highly manufactured ideals and beliefs we have built and put in a video, that are actually hollow and deeply unsatisfying. This is why we have to stop in how far we go in the ugliness that porn is. It is an avoidance of true intimacy.
“It is the time we all learnt to open our eyes, to see the ugly truth of the pornography-infused life we have created, and say ENOUGH!” I absolutely agree with this sentence. I have up to this point considered it enough to not ever had anything to do with the pornography industry but the fact of the matter is if I stay silent and say nothing about the pornography that is in advertising/music videos etc then I am by my silence allowing it to continue. This is unacceptable.
This is such an awesome blog, thank you Rachel, I love coming back to read it again – you have covered this subject so well. How indeed can we say we live in a progressive society when we have images abounding that present women as mere objects, pieces of flesh, and men as needing to be “buff, aggressive and unfeeling”. True connection with self and others doesn’t even get a look in and this is something we do need to open our eyes to and question.
This is so important to recognise, I see I have not been honest to myself, and others how awful it is to portray men and women as objects. As that is exactly what is happening and is deeply affecting the young and old, as the way we hold this as the norm today, while it is not normal for us to relate to each other in the way that is portrayed in so many forms of media, it is definitely enough, and I feel it starts with me feeling and acknowledging that this is not normal to me and I know something very different.
Deeply shocking Kristy and good that you were there to talk to. For so many children they do not have anyone to turn to when they feel the harm of pornography and therefore feel they have no choice but to numb themselves like they see most of the adults around them doing. We need to take a lead from the kids and question why we are doing this. It makes no sense and is deeply damaging to everyone concerned and that means all of us.
Thank you Rachel for staring this conversation with your deeply felt article and recognition that we are all contributing to the truly scary state of affairs in society today where the boundaries of what is acceptable are constantly being pushed with regards to pornography. Choosing not to see what is happening right in front of my eyes because I have felt powerless is clearly not the answer and it is time to take a stand and say Enough is Enough. In the past I have joined campaigns like No More Page 3 but have not allowed myself to feel the pain of what is happening and become active about calling it out. The increasingly sexualised behaviour of primary school children is deeply shocking and the responsibility for being the change we want to see lies with all of us and we can make a difference.
It is not just the visuals that are so harmful it is the words too. When you hear 4 year olds repeating the words of songs that they do not even understand the meaning of to ‘fit in’ or ‘be cool’ it is disturbing, yet we are the ones that have allowed it, listened to it, even bought it. It was only when I came to the work of Universal Medicine and I began to develop more respect for myself that I was able to start lifting that veil and see the truth of what I have been a part of.
Yes Marika and the more we deeply care for ourselves as women the more our natural ‘sexiness’ shines. This sexy is not degrading or objectifying it is deeply honouring of the beautiful women that we naturally are. It feels amazing to walk with the feeling of true sexy, a knowing that we are enough and we are all equally sexy when we choose to connect to our essence. Pornography, soft or otherwise, comes nowhere even close to the amazingly power that true sexy holds.
This is an incredibly thorough and honest article making clear the lack of distinction between what we say no to as illegal and what we allow under ‘artistic merit’. I have not viewed any music videos for some time, I have heard them being discussed but I choose not to watch them as I can feel how harmful they are. What you have written here though Rachel raises great questions as are we also pulling down a veil to not see any of the objectification of women and to be complicit in allowing it to continue. If we do not want to see women as sex objects on billboards for example why don’t we stop buying the products those billboards are advertising or the glossy magazines that contain so many of these advertisements. It is only when we start to take make different choices that things will change. This can be as simple as starting with saying NO and truly seeing the harm that we have said yes to for so long.
As a parent it is with limited success that I explain to a teenage son that the words he is listening to are saying to women “we have the right to turn you into a sex object, you do not matter as a person, we do not respect you and we can hurt you.” Because really there is very little else on offer. It doesn’t stop the conversation but it doesn’t feel like it goes very far.
Pornography used to be the taboo word, left for the few men who would buy magazines for the privacy of their own homes, it wasn’t discussed openly at BBQ’s and seen on every newsstand and tv station. But today, it isn’t just for the few, it is a multi-billion dollar industry, which is a sad indictment in itself, also splashed on every billboard (mostly), music video, magazine cover and the like. How graphic photos and videos have become is quite astounding. Yet it has become more and more mainstream, with people, us, saying what is or isn’t ok. This has got to stop before we socialise even younger children to overt sexual imagery. Not OK.
This article and your comment Raegan bring home just how normal graphic sexual images have become. Our young children are exposed to them (if they live in a city) from almost the moment they are born. You cannot miss the huge advertisements on the sides of buses and billboards. Even the magazines for children have completely unrealistic images of women which is accepted as normal and sends a powerful message to young girls that they are not enough even before they are out of pre-school. Films have ratings because of graphic imagery but if you produce a music video the content is ok because it it produced under the name of art and free expression.
When we speak out against what has become the norm, we are castigated. Many of the horrors in our society are hidden because ‘normal’ people cannot bear the truth of where humanity has arrived at in terms of our ‘evolution’. We are all responsible for helping ourselves, of working together to clean up our act – we cannot blame anybody for what is going on.
‘Pornification’ I had not heard of this term until I read this blog and what you have called out here is so very true. It is like society has become numb to what is wrong about selling out women and young girls. It’s like we have all taken a desensitised pill and no matter how shocking the image or story, everyone reacts that just gets on with life again. I read a story that was published in the Sydney Morning Herald just this morning of a women who was gang raped by a group of men that when the police came to take her statement, she was so badly beaten, they could not go through with it. They said they would come back and ‘did not’. That is horrific, the apathy of these police to let that go. I know a far cry from women gyrating on a music video, but it is all the same. It is not right and we all are responsible for it to change.
We are all responsible for what is going on here and the reason we have these kind of video’s, is because we have all allowed this to happen. The only way to stop this is to start taking care of ourselves and with that, start to love ourselves. Once we do this, there is know way we can allow pornography any longer.
What a beautiful invitation to people Dr. Rachel Mascord –”What if we start to live in such a way that we fertilise and till that earth with our love, true care, actual kindness that is meant deeply, and real intimacy? Then we can grow some beautiful plants that deter the weeds from taking over”. This question ought to be the actual headlines of global newspapers because to even read the question is affording humanity the opportunity to begin to image that it is in fact possible. The truth is that it is possible and students who have attended presentations by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine and who have embraced the fact that there is another way are showing that it is possible.
It can be offered for people to consider. Prohibition does not and never has worked. More people will go underground and seek their thrills in the dark web, and so nothing will change.
Thus the process is slow, incremental, delicate. It is highly personal and comes from connection to self before all else.
Wow Rachel, a powerful blog and very much needed to expose the harm in seemingly ‘normalised’ pornography. What you present here inspires us to speak up about what we and our children are exposed to and bombarded with daily. It is a huge concern to know what young children are subjected to. There is something we can do about this, to speak up and expose the harm in what has become accepted as normal.
I read an earlier comment by Sarah and in it she spoke about the real problem being the lack of true intimacy in all facets of our world. There is a coldness in human relationships, a sense of indifference and separation that is the seed for porn…after all if no one cares for each other and decency is a long forgotten concept from a bygone era then who cares about porn, which is just a bit of “harmless fun”?
Getting rid of porn is like pulling out weeds from a barren garden…they grow back again in a flash, choking the soil in a never ending chore. What if we start to live in such a way that we fertilise and till that earth with our love, true care, actual kindness that is meant deeply, and real intimacy? Then we can grow some beautiful plants that deter the weeds from taking over.
So true Rachel it is not enough to pull out the weeds of pornography, instead we need to cultivate a loving garden where true intimacy is nurtured and demonstrates that there is an alternative to the emptiness of porn.
This is a subject that definitely needs talking about. The effect of it is everywhere and is influencing everyone. It is insidious. Music videos like the one you saw are now unfortunately the norm, and no-one bats an eyelid. It is right to be shocked. It is total abuse.
This has opened my eyes. I watch little TV, don’t buy newspapers or magazines, so even though I know pornography is out in the public domain, I don’t see it. I won’t go looking for it, but if I hear of it I shall certainly speak out of how damaging it is to children and both sexes into adulthood. Its like an open sore in society.
There are many, many different varieties of porn. They are just different flavours of emptiness.
What a great blog Rachel, thank you first up for taking the time to write about something that is so serious and I can’t tell you how much I mirror your overview, explanation and great points raised here. I too was someone who loved watching music videos growing up, then even into my adulthood, going into my 20’s, I would pop the tv on, on a Saturday and listen to the music. At that time, I started to see the objectification of women, the rap video’s becoming more overt, but it was just me looking and I was ‘of age’ so didn’t react too much. But fast forward to when I was married in my 30’s, I had 3 step children, 1 boy and 2 girls, they were all under 10 and we had them every other weekend, so Saturday morning tv and listening to music was also the norm. However, I began to have to monitor what they were watching due to the nature of the music videos, I just could not justify allowing them to see with their fresh and untainted eyes, this imagery of half naked women writhing around being classed and labelled as ‘tits and arse’, which is pretty much how women are portrayed. Pornography has became mainstream, it isn’t nice, it isn’t pretty and definitely isn’t loving.
Pornography has become so common and we now live in a world where so many are desensitised from images that bombard all aspects of our lives. There is nothing more cringing than to watch this behaviour acted out by our young that promotes thoughts and images of degrading women as the ‘norm’.
Not a word wasted Rachel; this blog belongs on the front page of newspapers and should be published in magazines. Tough if people don’t want to read what’s here I say; the truth of any matter is hard to hear when the majority are ignoring their heartaches for the purposes of getting their kicks.
A hot topic pornography, it continues to cause such a dent in society. The culture of pornography has been around for aeons and does not look like slowing down any time soon as it becomes more and more acceptable and somehow normal. It definitely is time to say enough is enough and begin to start shaping a society that we can all be proud of – thank you for this awesome article Rachel.
I really connected with your ’embarrassment’ at the fact that you realised that you have been seeing these images everywhere and had been ignoring the normalisation of porn. We are the creators of the society in which we live. Thus when that responsibility hits us, it is a real gut-punch. How bad does it have to get? We shout and rant about the horrors of sexting or the ways in which young kids have become so sexualised. But if that isn’t the ultimate in “locking the door after the horse has bolted” then I don’t know what is?! Until we start to stand up and claim what we absolutely know is not right, then our society will, time and time again, inexorably roll towards such extreme forms of behaviour. As you say the images on the screen in your gym were deeply shocking – but the journey of those images to your screen, started a long time ago. Where were we then?
Great questions Otto. How bad? Where were we when this started? Why do we feel that we must remain silent rather than express our concerns?
These questions apply so much more widely than pornography, but ask us to look at why we have allowed society to be shaped the way it is and to shape us back in turn.
That’s the sucker-punch in it all Rachel. What we allow, then shapes us back. That is the level of responsibility that we are not seeing or living to.
Hear hear Otto. We have all conveniently ignored the normalisation of porn. It did not, after all, creep up overnight. The other day I saw that Playboy magazine will no longer publish naked images. This sounds like a step forward, until you realise that the only reason that they have made such a decision is that the porn market has been so saturated via the internet that they could no longer hope to compete. Thus it is actually a symptom of a society gone mad – at least in respect to the sexualisation of our culture.
That’s crazy Adam Warburton. The market leader in porn, now not printing porn, because there is so much of it. But, there is more to it I feel though. Playboy has always printed what they would call ‘softer’ porn (although I certainly don’t adhere to that adjective – porn is porn, as abuse is abuse). Is it the case that we are now consuming much, much ‘harder’ and more extreme porn that titles such as Playboy are just not being bought any more. As we become more and more lost and more and more desperate for intimacy we need the imagery to be ever more extreme to awaken our senses. And this is everywhere. Not just on the top shelf of newsagents.
Crazy. They putting ‘clothes’ back on women to regain their toe hold in the porn market. How about putting some respect back on – for men and women? And some decency while they are at it….
Great points ottobathurst. Reading the comments highlights to me the responsibility we all have here to correct what we have contributed to with our silence. Your questions makes me realise how lost we must have been to zone out, block or accept these sexualised images and music videos. Our lack of responsibility stems way back but it’s never too late once we become aware of where we were at to start clearing the mess we’ve created.
The ‘never too late’ point is so crucial. Humanity conveniently uses this excuse as a reason to absolve itself of its responsibility at the mess it has created. In fact instead of “never too late” could we in fact say “suck eggs, you created this mess and because you’ve delayed clearing it up for so long, it’s now a huge stinking mess, but it’s going to continue to get worse and no matter how long you leave it, you still gotta clear it up, so get going…..BUT, if you do decide to get going and start clearing up, you’ll soon find that there is a whole army of love that will sweep through it with amazing ease, power and grace that you’ll look back at where the mess that was and wonder why on earth you allowed your pride, arrogance and irresponsibility to delay you from clearing up the mess in the first place.” Or something like that?!
How about “it’s never too late to suck on this big fat egg…and then clean up your mess”?? Do you know…I was just reading the amazing comments on this blog and realised that although I hated porn, I just never understood that I had the right to say anything about it until I became a student of Universal Medicine, and got my act together. I really thought you just had to put up with things and stop whinging.
Years ago I had a boyfriend who was heavily into porn and wanted me to watch it with him…all romantic like!!
It made me feel so dirty that no shower/bath with bath salts/long walk in the fresh air could get the feeling off or out of me….and I said nothing. Didn’t think I was allowed too. Crazy!
There is an egg to suck on if ever there was one. How beautiful, glorious and wonderful to say never again.
The sexualised nature of advertising and the prevalence of pornography sells us all way short of true connection and love. We must have conversations in our every day lives about this, as Rachael has done here, about how these images and message are not true, how they do not honour who we are and the quality of relationships that we can have in our lives. Not exposing the distortion, rot, and lovelessness is to enable it..
You are so on the money Rachel,thank you for shaking it up and delivering the truth about this. I must admit to working myself into such a lather over porn in music and advertising over the years, having a rant about it to whomever was in closest earshot and then falling silent and feeling that was the extent of my responsibility until the next music video got me going. Your article is an awesome call to action for all of us to step up and keep exposing the culture of abuse that is being fed and perpetuated here, and is absolutely NOT ACCEPTABLE.
There is something very simple and powerful about the sustained will to call it out. There are so many times (speaking from personal experience) that we get charged about something, then drop it, only to charge again at the next provocation. So reactive and so exhausting.
What if we became implacable about this, immoveable objects so to speak, firmly rooted in the truth of what porn is and the harm it does? What is possible then?
The consistency in speaking out is essential. The aeons of comfort and allowance will take some time to re-address. It can feel unnerving when we first stand up and allow ourselves to be counted. But the firmer we root ourselves to the truth, the easier it actually becomes. As you say Rachel, it is the back and forth that is exhausting.
Rachel, this is a home run in terms of opening our eyes and letting us see not only the awful images we have accepted as normal in our society, but also how we incrementally have allowed this. I’ve two young daughters and when I see the latest video from respected singers which is all about sex and covered with images of scantily clad women it is disgusting. But as you say, this is the tip of the iceberg in terms of that is a precursor for so many to become involved in porn at an early age, that then leads to some awful stories of young people’s first experience of ‘having sex’. The point being that this is all so far away from love… the love we innately are, and the love we can share with another. How did this happen? We allowed it.
Bingo, Simon. We allowed it. A shocking fact that we need to feel to our cores. And then, once we have felt it, we start to correct it. For, if we have allowed it, then, by definition we must also have the power to reject it. So even in the darkest shadows a light still flickers. Fan the flames of that light and soon the shadows are banished.
Beautifully said Otto. That is such an interesting point you make and it is applicable to every aspect of life – The power to say “yes” to something means that we have in at least equal measure the power to say “no” to it too. We always have choices…perhaps what the spread of porn indicates is that we have lost touch with this and have forgotten that we do not have to eat the staple diet of junk we are being offered in abundance. There are other choices we can make, perhaps they require a little more effort – but what they do confirm is our worth. We are worth so much more than this dross. When we stop, even for a moment to consider this, the light within us fanned.
What is so important Simon is that you can see it. So many people are blind to what is happening before their eyes…as I was. However, I still have blind spots, there are things that are going on around me that I simply do not want to see yet.
The next question for me is having seen the awfulness of what can only be described as porn based sex education, and images that tell us all that we are just objects for a sexual purpose…what then do we do with that? What do we make of it?
The first steps I feel must be very personal and very practical – exploring how deeply we have allowed it to influence our lives and our way of thinking, and to delicately untangle the threads we have allowed it to wrap around and within us, with all of the subtle judgements and assumptions it poisons us with. We can take no action until we are released of its influence.
I totally agree simonwilliams8, ‘we allowed it’ and we can also choose to take responsibility for what we have allowed and make changes loving to expose what is not loving.
A powerful and very needed article on the topic, better to say the condition of society, Rachel, thank you for declaring it here so detailed and wise. I agree, “the fact is the images are there, affecting all of us”. Already the decision to ignore what you don’t want to receive and be aware of is such a huge impact on one’s life – entails the same behavior in other areas of life too, because you can’t ignore an abusive behavior and keep staying fully aware of any form of abuse in your life and around you. I agree too, that this choice of ignoring contributes massive to the situation. Maybe there are two ways of ignoring the fact of being hurt by abuse. The one is trying to control it by yourself and contribute, the other is to look away, but both ways of coping with the hurt are magnifying the fact itself. The only way to change the situation is to open up the eyes to see it clearly and open up the heart to feel it in detail and to come back to the own essence to deeply love respect and honor oneself and everyone else too.
Thank you Rachel, what you have written hear should be read by all worldwide. It shows so clearly how we accelerate towards complete disaster with every step ‘of liberations’ we take as a society thinking that it is just a freer way of expressing. We are so very wrong about this and are simply fooling ourselves, and instead letting constant disrespect and abuse have its reign.
Some of us were brought up with the idea that ‘men only want sex’ and accepted it as normal, and many women have indulged in pornography in order to keep or attract their man, but generally it was kept to the home. The fact that sexual images are being portrayed on women’s magazines and that children have access to pronography via their smart phones is an indication that what we now accept as ‘normal’ has gone way beyond where it should be.
I completely agree Rachel, the music industry has a lot to answer for in the way they are desensitising people to the graphic and often abusive forms of ‘soft porn’. In a world where domestic violence is skyrocketing, perhaps we need to start considering why.
I grew up with pop and music videos and never saw them as anything more than light entertainment, still then they were about women attracting men, and empowered women and boybands singing about break ups but it seemed so much more innocent. I have been horrified by a few music videos I have seen recently that glorify violence towards women and women as essentially a piece of meat. I just want to tell them to have some respect for themselves!
The fact that we are all responsible for the way things are with pornography throughout society leads us to some pretty big questions – like about the rise in fundamentalism in religious groups, alcoholism, drug addiction, divorce rates, depression. Because if the core of our society is built upon a basic lack of self respect, then pornography is just the tip of the iceberg, or a symptom of a much larger and insidious global issue.
This blog is so powerful. Thank You so much Rachel. The whole world should read and ponder on it and speak up and say enough!
It is time to say enough, the use of porn and sexual image in every facet of society is a clear indication of how far we have seperated from ourselves. How about we return to appreciating ourselves for who we are instead of our physical features.
If in the 80’s a soft-porn video clip was held to late night viewing only then how have we as a society come to accept full on sex videos, advertisments and product campaigns as ‘good marketing’?!
It feels like the world is starving for true intimacy and the big wig marketing companies can feel into this and play on the old ‘sex sells’ idea as people try to quench their thirst for affection. This is not ok and is giving our children a very damaging and false idea of what Love, intimacy and true affection is. Thank you for writing this Rachel and starting the conversation to bring understanding to and debasing this gross direction we as humanity are walking.
Rachel the way your words run together are like silk strands flowing over the smooth metal edge of a seamstress table. “It feels like the world is starving for true intimacy and the big wig marketing companies can feel into this and play on the old ‘sex sells’ idea as people try to quench their thirst for affection” – this here holds the true starting point for anyone caught in the current sexualised ill zeitgeist to heal.
Rachel, you’ve stated such a valid point about Madonna’s so called ‘liberation’ by the way she uses men in her video clips, just as objects to please. It’s interesting how this movement of women’s liberation has brought about a hardness and aggression in women to use men like they themselves have accepted to be used. A true liberation feels to me like saying NO to all forms of sexualised abuse, like you are doing now Rachel.
Brilliant article documenting what is currently all around us. Thank you Rachel. I read an article yesterday by a Policeman in the UK who wrote about the devastation that is going in with young people as a result of hard-core pornography and the wide spread use of violent video games. He spoke of organised rapes by young men of young women and of a young boy being raped whilst other young boys – and a young girl – watched on. When you wrote – “you’re a woman; this is your purpose and function” (which has you also pointed out happens to men as well) this scares me greatly because as this and the article I read points out people who are watching this pornography and video games are losing reality and becoming desensitised to the fact that these are actually humans – that they are brothers and sisters. We are living in such a throw away society where we don’t place value on ourselves and each other and with such prolific use of video games where we can do a myriad of violent acts against each other and appear to have no effects, it is a devastating combination that is having far reaching effects.
Thank you Rachel from the bottom of my heart for your research. I am deeply fearful of the effect these images will have on the lives of not only my grandchildren but all young people who are exposed to them. That we have normalised these images and show too much on National TV saddens horrifies me, to think that young people are being exposed to these images earlier in school and elsewhere and don’t have the maturity to understand just what is involved and the repercussions of posting on Social Media ,photos that stigmatise and wreak havoc with their young reputations before they have had a chance to understand how to deal with the embarrassment and shame it will surely cause to all.. I have not seen much of the music industries exposure of video clips for many years and did not like what I saw then, so unless one makes a point of checking It out and taking our heads out of the sand, we don’t know the pressure and disrespect shown to male and females and the sexualising of bodies for purely voyeuristic pleasure of some! Where is the Love of Humanity!
As you correctly demonstrate so well in this article, Rachel, the horror of the present state of porn in society today is the fact that it is increasingly being normalised. This is another reflection of the harm of being passive and not ‘standing up’ to say something is not acceptable. Staying silent and not expressing the truth is one of the most insidious evils there is.
Beautifully expressed Martin, what Rachel has shared here is pure gold for everyone to read, and I am with you ” I’ll mascot for Mascord any day” too.
I totally agree Rachel; it has been time, for a long time, to say: ENOUGH! Pornography is now so ‘normal’, because we have just accepted it, ignored it, not taken a stand; surely somebody else will do it; will put an end to it? No, nobody is. Many will need to really stand up, before there is any chance of change.
I agree Doug, we need to be honest about the real implications pornography is having on relationships nowadays especially the way it is shaping young men and women when it comes to real intimacy, respect and lovemaking. Each of us has to power to stand up and say no to the many ways this energy is imposed on us today.
I am not sure if term “wowser” is a universal one. It means a killjoy, someone with no sense of fun, too serious about life.
Speaking up about pornography attracts this label because it is perceived that anyone who thinks porn is bad has no sense of humour and just takes it all too seriously.
A big part of the problem is that people like to unhook causes from effects. The moment we know that what we do has an effect, and not just on ourselves, it is very sobering. Far from being the killer of joy, it is in fact the killer of irresponsibility and carelessness.
The pollution becomes very clear to our eyes that had learned to accommodate its greasy smear.
Simply speaking up is a great start, because it supports others to see the same.
Thank you for writing this Rachel, there is surely something going wrong in the world, when all those images and videos you talk about are getting more and more pornographic. And I know that it affects boys and girls deeply in their own image they have of themselves, and how they are with each other. It is very important to not close our eyes and truly feel what’s happening, that what is being presented in those images is so far away from the truth, that it is not surprising that it makes so many young people confused.
It is crazy to think people will buy a product to eventually become a victim of rape as the perfume advertisement is implying. How much are we lost to possibly get seduced by the idea!
Very well made point Alexandre. We think it is just a concept and fail to see that the ad for a luxury product is championing sexual violence. We do not like to put one and one together.
Agreed, its vital people see the link between the sexualisation of products and marketing with the increasing sex trade, problems with teenagers mistaking the acts in hard porn with their own first attempts at making love, male impotency with the excessive increase in porn etc.
It is crazy I agree Alexandre, all this seems to stem from our lack of intimacy, lack of true expression and years and years of suppressed love, or shall I say life times of us making loveless choice? Yes, it is all very exposing and shocking but what is the root cause of us saying yes to this level of degradation?
So true when saying Rachel’s blog “needs to be digested in blocks, as each section is pure pure gold and very simply put, shining, glistening truth.” This blog held so much and revealed so much. There was so so many great points that frankly, the whole world needs to hear and should be aware of.
Perfectly said Rachel. I nearly fell off the treadmill watching a music video the other day. . .The whole world has become pornographic and we have no chance to say no to it as it’s in our face whether we like it or not. Yet as women we can say no to the energy it’s putting out… For us to put out as well. I loved all your points in this blog.. How the over sexualised state the world is in is affecting people’s perspective of body image and sexual experiences. People are learning about sex through porn. And it completely miscues the idea of true self value, respect and connection.
Totally, and it’s interesting to consider what we have allowed as women to become normal. I know as a teenager I started dressing in a way that drew attention to my body and got me attention from men, luckily that phase passed, and I began to grow more self respect, as looking back it was not only super dishonouring to myself and also added to the objectification of women.
Well said Emily; for me it’s also at the gym that I have been mainly exposed to this pornography, but come to think of it, like Rachel said, its in our face everywhere these days – even on buses in the street. It is a sad state for our young people to grow up with this imagery; rather than learning what true values are, how we truly value ourselves and each other, men and women, as the tender and loving beings we actually are.
I agree Emily so many images portrayed through the media, online, in adverts etc are quite frankly poisonous and super damaging to people’s perspective of themselves and their relationships.
Something is indeed very wrong when there are adverts that sell so called ‘sexy victims’ – women who look like they have been or are about to be raped or murdered. And people buy into it. How lost or numbed out to our own true nature are we to go for that? You call out what is going on so well Rachel – “We hide our hurts under the armour of sophisticated ‘open-mindedness’, aggressive sexuality, or adopting the unfeeling male and female caricatures championed in pornography.”
Thank you for highlighting that bit Rachel wrote, Fiona. She has put it so well. “Sexy victims” makes me cringe. It’s no wonder rape and violence against women are so prevalent.
Rachel your point about Duran Durans 80’s video clip being relegated to late night viewing shows a level of respect and dignity that is now missing in our society today. What are we tolerating today and considering the norm when in truth it is totally disrespectful to everyone and is not foundational to building a healthy society. Porn is only but one example of the erosion of these foundational values. As you say Rachel is this really progress?
What does a society who only looks at the bottom line all the time say about our society – and what is the future of a society that is based on that?
This is shocking what you have shared Rachel, and I do know of situations like this with the video clip and the pornographic manners of dancers and singers. The whole fitness industry is based on body functioning and posing movements and with sexual behaviours. In the gym people have to watch this imposing videos, even when trying to ignore it, this consciousness is still there and it get’s to everybody so easy.
Well said Rachel, it is so painful to feel what is going on that it is easy to just ‘check out’. I recently chanced upon a few moments of the program you mention and the even without the pornographic body parts that you describe the whole experience was sexual – the female singer was portraying a vacuous inviting sexuality with pouting lips, suggestive movements teasing eyes – all designed to entice and sell. It is certainly selling sexual desirability in a package much more aggressively than in the days of my youth, and that was bad enough.
The level of music video exposure in the wider community is remarkable to see. I walked into the local shopping centre yesterday and images of soft porn were playing in the central couch area on a mounted screen. To witness this and not express shows how we can play games with this approach in misleading the general public and normalising this viewing.
So what action can we take – maybe its as simple as asking the supermarket to change the channel… even that question would highlight to the store manager what they have accepted and provide them with an opportunity to reflect. They may or may not make a change, but its a first step in helping them understand that this is not normal and there are alternatives.
How is it that it has got to the situation that it has, with porn showing on music videos in gyms and other public places, on TV, in movies, in advertising. Is the porn music video a symptom of how far we as human beings are living from our natural and true selves, much like a skin rash is showing us that something we’re doing or eating isn’t working? So, is porn like the skin rash (the symptom) that we react to, don’t like, don’t want, when we need to look much deeper at how and why we’ve allowed it to get to this state?
The problem with this rash Sandra is that either people don’t notice this rash, don’t care that they have it or wear it with perverse pride.
Itching, crusting and weeping, as gross as that may sound, this is a rash that very few are yet to pay heed to, let alone seek its cause.
Sadly this is true Rachel and it goes for many things, not just pornography. It isn’t until something reaches an absolute crisis that we tend to take action. I feel with pornography, many people either don’t know what to do about it, or are just hoping it will resolve itself somehow. We will see the long term results of this porn culture when the children being affected are adults.
Too true Sandra, how indeed have we allowed it to get to this, total abuse of women, men wearing t-shirts with pornographic pictures, whilst taking the wife and young children out shopping….how lost are we?
Everyone is being affecting by pornography and particularly our young people who may be exposed to porn before they’ve had their first sexual experience. So if this is where they are learning about how to relate sexually to the opposite sex, then they are heading for huge dramas and issues in their relationships because porn is not normal. It offers no intimacy or love which is what every human being craves … porn is a poor substitute and just keeps people even further away from being able to have intimate relationships.
So so true Sandra. Young people are lost in a world of porno and pornographic images- being bombarded with how you are ‘supposed’ to be during sexual experience. Leaving nothing of love and connection.
Awesomely expressed, Rachel. I have looked around at the bombardment of sexual images and felt hopeless – pictures and videos are becoming more blatant and more extreme by the year. Your article has inspired me not to feel powerless. I do not have to be on a ‘mission’ to abolish all such images, but rather to express how I feel and continue taking responsibility for how I live with care and love.
That is so true Carmin, we can bring a change to this bombardment of sexual images when we do not give in and do not ignore them, but see them for what they really are. I can feel the consciousness behind pornography is abusive and dark. It wants to get you in this need for porn used as a drug.
What I find so interesting about porn is that it is so blatantly seductive, with its slick version of airbrushed beauty that reduces people to cardboard cut-outs. It draws us in with its eye-tantalisation, until we start to feel the darkness behind it. Then we sense the chasm between the image and truth of what it does to us. There really is no fight, just the recognition of the problem and the willingness to say it as it is. Fights just drive this problem underground – which is no answer at all.
This article captured all the truth about pornography. It is absolute harmfull and not innocent at all, we know that! Exposure to these video-clips (that are seemingly nothing more then just a song with some dancers, uhm, uhm) are being revealed to all eyes – YES all eyes. Meaning that everyone who has acces to a mobile phone are in opportunity to come accros sexual tinted or even fully pornographic material (being hidden in a ‘fun clip). Well guess what, the truth can not be hidden, even though it is trying its best. I am a young woman who had seen pornography basicly everywhere around me. It is true, many young women are walking, talking and clothing themselves like pornographic stars, like this is it, and this is normal. It is NOT NORMAL!. Like you said Rachel Mascord, it is so evil to continue with this and accept it any further, as our generations and new generations will by definition in truth not benefit from this porno. We are getting more lost and far away from the essence of where life is about and where we are about as beautiful women, never to give away our breast, bottom or basicly anything – we are to know and claim how much we are worth, not claim to give away all our worth.
Great comment Christoph. Pornographic music videos cause a feeling of melancholy and world-weariness.
The music videos are a reflection of the disdain we have for ourselves. Without consumers this movie would not be successful and there would be few successors of this music video – this is what is happening in x-rated art movies – angst, weltschmerz and porn don’t sell as a combination. The music in the music video is very loud and intrusive and therefore very numbing. This increases our need for stimuli and sex is a strong one. Hence, as we don’t like what we feel, we choose stronger numbing tools which lead to the need for stronger effects on us, hence pornographic music videos.
This is a brilliant piece of writing Rachel and I couldn’t agree more with everything you express. I have also been repulsed, outraged and very saddened by what is now main stream music videos, advertising and magazine content. Why are we not all speaking out about this? Is it like the story of the Emperor and his suit of new Clothes? Do we think we are the only ones who feel that this is harmful to not only our children, but to humanity as a whole and by speaking out we will look like prudes? The proof is already out there how harmful this horrible visually dissecting of the female and more recently the male body into sexual parts is. So whether I am one of a only a few or one of many, who feel this way, I am willing to speak out against this form of polluting of the mind wherever I can, because by remaining silent I am not honouring myself or others and I am also contributing to this type of sexual abuse.
Very clear, honest and accurate reporting of the presentation of people in advertising in order to objectify, get attention, shock, trigger and hook people in without any consideration to the lies being perpetrated and harm being done. To have this level of imagery everywhere you turn and to the degree in which it is has served to dull people down and to confuse ‘What’s acceptable and normal’. i feel that many have been desensitised (without even knowing it) to the degree that they no longer register what has truly happened and is continuing to happen. The big question is ‘What is going on in society and people’s lives that they are allowing the desecration of the truth of who we truly are?. We are Divine, we are all children of God and absolutely precious. I agree with the statement Rachel – ‘It is time we all learnt to open our eyes, to see the ugly truth of the pornography-infused life we have created, and say ENOUGH!
The effects of violent video games were behind the gun massacre in Tasmania, which led to the tightening of Australian gun laws. We do know that these video games affect the mental health of kids and adults, but like the use of porn in advertising, when money is part of the transaction no one takes a stand. Industry is put before human beings and quality of life.
I’ve recently read in a newspaper that sexual assaults amongst primary aged school children are happening and on the rise. This is children under 12 sexually assaulting one another. How can the freedom of speech argument justify the prolification of pornography and soft-porn when children and adults are very much not free from the effects of it? How selfish has our society become and how indulgent when the acceptance of such things is allowed to such a degree that this level of degradation is occurring with young kids? It is insidious.
Wow, awesome blog Rachel, packing a very deserving punch. I never watch the music channels on TV but found myself at the physio recently with the TV right in front of me proudly showing MTV. It was the most excruciating 40 mins, I was lying on the bed not knowing where to look. I couldn’t believe the ‘soft porn’ that was being shown. I felt seedy myself just looking at what was being presented (I was so shocked that things had changed to such an extent), at the same time wanting to disassociate myself from the women in the clip gyrating themselves over the male models. I couldn’t believe how graphic it was, nothing left to the imagination …… and it was a music channel …. on a Saturday morning …. what IS going on.
At the physiotherapist they were showing MTV Alison? In your treatment session? That is so shocking to me, that a practitioner can be so very switched off to what they are offering their client. That is said with no disrespect to the specific practitioner. It is more a reflection of the general state of us all that we can serve up a dose of pornography in a healing session.
A return to our honouring, respect, dignity and grace that you call for indeed starts with what you have done here – expressed your feelings and truth.. When we say what does not feel ok and why we confirm what we do feel to be true and we can build this authority within ourselves. With the authority you have expressed in here, this should be a front page article on every newspaper, thank you Rachel for exposing the pornography we allow as ‘normal’ and the impact that it has on our lives for it is huge and very serious. When our main reference to sex (and particularly for young people) is determined by a product that is made to sell – not to care and support another – then we are dealing with a distortion. This distortion has a profound effect on our self-esteem, behaviours and relationships. And yes, how ‘free’ are we in fact when we have sexualised images continually bombarding our public and online landscape.
“…to take and share such images shows a deep-seated lack of self-respect, let alone self-care and self-love.” So true Rachel…a teenager I knew years ago sexted an image, and when the parents found out they asked why – after some discussion the response was: “I just feel so empty inside.” The sexualising of everything is all about the outer – it doesn’t matter what’s on the inside as long as the outside conforms to a certain picture – hence the emptiness felt inside as there is no focus on honouring our inner being and quality of what we bring to the world. There are very few role models inspiring us to be full in knowing who we are, however those that do, truly inspire…like Serge Benhayon and Natalie Benhayon.
It is so sad, that almost every movie today has a part of sexual act, violence, rape or murder. It is really time to say – enough is enough. Thanks Rachel for your powerful blog.
Very powerful explanation of the reality that surrounds us everyday. Opening our eyes and naming things for what they are, are the first steps to stop the craziness of this society we are living in.
The empty feeling we have inside when we do not take time to truly reconnect to ourselves is what drives us to visual stimulation and keeps the demand for this industry sky rocketing. When you are fulfilled and content you simply don’t want or need for these things. The biggest problem we have as a society is not pornography, its lack of intimacy with ourselves and others. If you can’t get love and connection there seems to be an attitude among us that the next ‘best thing’ is sex and relief.
Although in my opinion sex and pornographic behaviour is the the polar opposite to true love and intimacy, which also is 10 times more enjoyable and does not leave you feeling dirty.
Yes Sarah. It’s interesting that sex sells, when it is actually true love and intimacy that we all want above anything else! If we stopped settling for sex and accepted nothing less than real love – the entire world would change, and there would not be any room for pornography in our lives, homes or anywhere else.
Beautifully said Kylie.
Brilliantly and comprehensively put Rachel, its time we all as a society said no to pornography and the sexualisation of all our children and adults as well.
We can no longer say, its normal or accept it as the way it is. I find the sexual images we are constantly bombarded with very insulting as a man.
It’s great to hear from your perspective Thomas that porn is insulting to men too – that doesn’t surprise me one bit.
Thank you Rachel for exposing something that so many
consider normal these days. This is like a disease spreading throughout Humanity, unless we put a stop to it , who knows where it will lead. The lack of respect women have for themselves even performing in these videos shocks me. How can we be so accepting of the in your face viewing at prime times on TV. We need to speak up and say NO to these demeaning actions and shows.
I am shaking my head in disbelief Kristy at how people make these games with the intent to get children hooked on them. That is absolute evil in my book, and particularly from people educated in Psychology…unfathomable!
I agree Sandra, who are the people approving these video games and why aren’t they being held accountable by the public? Are we all so switched off and feeling powerless to make the changes so needed by our community? Are we worried about standing out by speaking up?
Such a powerful piece of writing Rachel…every part of it resonated with me as I read it. The line that made me stop was this…”Meanwhile, there is a lived reality that includes younger and younger children engaging in rough, painful and degrading sex acts.” – there is something very, very wrong in our world for this to be the case, and it really is time we say ‘enough’ and as you say, open our eyes to see what is truly going on out there.
Isn’t it amazing, our capacity to ignore what is right before our eyes. It is utterly incredible, and in the most terrible way.
So we have two problems to deal with, the porn itself, and the problem with people’s unwillingness to see it.
And the second one feels worse than the first … as Einstein so wisely said “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything”.
Sad to say that he was perfectly correct…and nothing has changed since the day he said it.
And the more I open my eyes to this 2nd evil, the more I see it everywhere in so many things … complacency and apathy – it’s at epidemic levels within our society.
dentistryinharmony – Dr Rachel, maybe the true evil here is everyone not speaking up about pornography. It would not have taken grip of everyday life the way it has if we had all risen and said “No”.
I agree Sandra. The amount of porn being accessed by young children, starting in primary school, is hideous. I have enormous concern around how it will go on to affect them in their relationships as they mature. What they can access over the internet grows to be more and more extreme. Whether we like it or not, it’s an epidemic.
I agree Rachel, the music tv channel is on constantly where I work and it is on all day, not, like you say in the 80s, where it was restricted to late night viewing.
It is also a fact Natalie that those shows were not pornographic as they are today, so it is not just exposure, it is also about quality.
I agree that pornography is far more pervasive today, offensively so. However, I was recently viewing old record sleeves from the 50’s and 60’s, and softer versions of the same nature were very much in evidence then, also: the super short dresses that pointed to women’s behinds and genitalia, the sexualised pout, the come get me look in the eyes, the projected breasts – it was all there, back then – merely less well publicised because of less developed technology.
This is worth noting as it fully endorses the point that pornography of any ‘level’ is self perpetuating, unless we call it out as unacceptable. The softer gradations of the 50’s and 60’s became the extreme gradations of today’s world.
Also a great lesson to for the future to cut it completely should a ‘more acceptable, softer’ version ever rear its head again.
You are right Coleen. We use a sliding scale to justify the way we live. With the scale we make some things OK, when they are not. And we fail to notice the tiny, incremental slides that take us down into a place we once could not imagine possible.
I would like to hear the explanation offered to a child, of any age, about what these videos actually mean…the permissive attitudes and freedom of speech arguments deflate in the face of that scenario. I have seen children as young as age 5 emulating ‘sexy’ dance moves – where was their freedom to express, I wonder?
The true point is that pornography, hard, soft or in the middle, harms all of us by spreading messages and a sleazy energy that debases each of us, whether we watch the stuff or not.
This is a truly wonderful and serving piece of writing Rachel and I appreciate how thoroughly you have been able to explore the topic and bring it together in this composition. I would buy newspapers if this is what they printed, that’s right, I’ll say it again, I wouldn’t mind spending my money on a newspaper if they were printing articles of this quality. I too was at my local gym and saw the video clips being produced that alerted me to just how far the pornification of society has penetrated. I too from about the age of nine would watch the music clips on T.V. with interest and remember the tame scenes of someone walking along a canal appropriately dressed for the weather carrying an umbrella and singing. If the same music clip was made today the singer would at least be almost naked and wet to the bone from the rain.
I agree Deanne, this is a newspaper worthy real story about what is actually happening in our society and with our young people. We all have a responsibility for calling out the inappropriateness of what is going on. If we look at the state of young people today with mental health issues on the rise, alcohol and drug abuse and sexual abuse they are simply reflecting back to us where we are at and what we have come to accept as normal which in truth is far far far from normal.
I agree, this article is newspaper worthy…brilliantly and eloquently written. I feel sure many people are as concerned about this as we are but they don’t know where to get their voice heard.
Great point Deanne. The clip would be a “wet T shirt” competition, and not the simplicity of a person singing a song.
The song now is clearly secondary to the clip, and it depends on the clip to be sold to the mass audience. This highlights the fact that we need an extraordinary level of stimulation to capture our interest. No wonder the extremes are becoming more extreme.
Yes Deanne, and isn’t it interesting that we are NOT seeing articles of this nature out there… how come? Not even the sources that are ‘supposed’ to be reporting the truth are exposing what is really going on. This is how far we have gone from really seeing the world we are living in. The corruption is thick to prevent us from seeing the truth that most don’t actually want to see. If we really wanted to know the truth, we would allow ourselves to see through the seeming fog and demand for change.
A very powerful revealing of what’s truly happening around us – all of the time. Like you share with us Rachel “pornography has become normal”. Noticing over the years and still is the practise that, all magazine selling stands/shops presented the ‘adult material’ on the top shelf. As a child I knew it was something ‘bad’ and to not go there. Now as you clearly share its everywhere, it confronts us all the time – worryingly so for the younger generations to come into this so called accepted way. It is as Samantha Westall shared ‘poisoning our lives’.
Having seen this clip Kristy I am horrified. I don’t know what is worse, that the clip has been conceived of by a person as entertainment? Or that there are people who believe this is just a bit of harmless fun, and has no impact because it is a game?
We act as though human beings are made of plastic, as though nothing gets in and influences our way thinking and our perception of each other. Yet we have an education system that is based on the fact that we absorb information from the outside world. So I absorb how to spell, how to do maths, but apparently I don’t absorb a computer game where I have sex with a woman and brutally murder her. It truly makes no sense.
Children and adults change when they play these games…becoming more aggressive and hyped up, so we do know there is an influence. We are just putting our blinkers on and pretending it is not so.
Absolutely Rachel, children are very influenced by the media. I used to see the kids who watched the TV program Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles enter the kindergarten and literally explode with violence. They emulated every violent move on the other kids without any regard to the squeals and sobs of pain. It’s very much a part of natural development for children to seek their cues from those around them, role models, pop stars, and even cartoon characters. The rise of sexual assaults between primary aged school children represents the effects of pornography and so called “soft-porn” on little kids, as does sexting and other hyper sexualised behaviours now experienced by teens. The effects are very real and very direct. A while back I read that a primary school aged boy tried to rape another little girl because his father had left the family home and this behaviour is what he perceived as himself now being the man of the house. What message does porn send kids and adults about themselves? A very toxic and harmful one.
Melinda, that is horrific. But more so the fact that this does not get spoken about anywhere near widely enough. It is as though we hope that case you described is just a “one off”, one little boy acting as an exception to the general rule. It gets written off and we slide back into our comfortable coma after a moments shock and horror. Such stories need to be widely described in the media as a strident call to us all to wake up, and wake up for good, not just for a moment.
I love the way that you deliver truth Rachel. No apologies, no shying away, no imposition, just straight from the heart and spoken with such grace that evil (the absence of love) is left completely undressed but unwilling so!
We fear intimacy. We then fear that we fear intimacy and so we manufacture –in-your-face-intimacy’ that fools us into thinking that we don’t fear intimacy at all. Conveniently ignoring or perhaps failing to remember, that we miss the exquisite tenderness of true intimacy and what we have bought into, is the counterfeit copy.
Absolutely! And beautifully said. The normalisation of ‘pornification’ is a slow creeping crime that has stopped many from noticing the effects of it infiltrating and poisoning our lives, unfathomably so. I’m with you – enough is enough – but it seems that until women choose to not participate and perpetuate it, the global blinkers will stay firmly in place.
Loved what you have presented here Rachel. You have packed a lot into this blog. I have been so influenced by the images I see around me of sexualised women. I have recently realised that I have ingrained the belief that a women’s body holds her self-worth and that that’s all I am good for. Many times I have seen myself just as a body instead of an actual person as so much focus has gone into the way I look for others. This is what I have got from all the media around me, and what I guard myself against men from (being used this way).
Your absolutely right about the free speech… We don’t have a say to whether we want to look at these images or not. They are there regardless. I had a similar experience at the gym the other day- I nearly fell of the treadmill! The music video I saw was porn. I don’t even think there is a difference between ‘soft porn’ and ‘porn’. It’s the same.
” … the qualities of self-honouring, self-respect, dignity, grace and self-love” is most definitely what we as a society have lost which is what makes it easier for pornography to dig itself deeper into the fabric of our lives and either make it acceptable or force us to block it out as it bombards us from every angle.
“I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now my heart can see” … I am with you all the way Rachel.
Kristy, it is absolutely horrendous if psychologists are indeed hired to help design these despicable ‘games’ – there is so much research showing the detrimental effect of these things, it is quite clear! … the kid that shared with you regarding the question of how could someone who has studied to care for someone make these sorts of games, is indeed a question to be asked. What exactly has gone wrong here, if a person fully knowing the damaging effects would still go ahead and design something like this? The pornification of games aimed at young children is beyond disturbing and seriously needs calling out, and it is but one facet of a young person’s (or adult’s!) life that is infiltrated with it. Thanks for bringing this subject up Rachel – it needs calling out loud and clear!
Yes I also have put my head in the sand hoping it will go away but the old adage sex sells must be true because sexualised content continues to infiltrate every aspect of our lives.
For the next generation this has a major impact on their way of identification and we are educating them to accept this as the ‘norm’.
Life isn’t a game but we are being played and the results are now evident in the statistics with people into drug and alcohol and any other form of escape so as to cope with this ‘normal life’
This is so well expressed Merrilee. Life is indeed not a game, but it is being treated as such. We can comfortably sit in our armchairs and point out that the culture is far worse in other countries. We can do this as long as we ignore the porn on phones, the increased rates of STD’s in teens, rates of sexual assault….and the degradation of our relationships with each other.
Talk to people who are internet dating and you soon discover the number of people using it as a hook up tool.
It is the reduction of people to mere objects for a moments gratification, with all the detachment of playing life as though it were a game on a screen, disconnected and without consequence.
Rachel I too had a moment not dissimilar to yours when my daughter was 1 years old and we were waiting at traffic lights, to our right was a billboard with the advert ‘hello boys’ with her breasts the main focus, it was selling a pushup bra. It suddenly struck me – how would my daughter make sense of this image right in her face? What possible sense could she make of it. Then I saw the sexualisation and objectification was everywhere. Like you say a veil is lifted and we see what we have accepted and in not saying no have allowed.
So true that our silence lends tacit consent to this stuff, Vanessa. We do need to be honest about the effect it has us all and to express that also.
Indeed Coleen, our silence does lead to consent and also sometimes the impact and shock people are feeling is taken as consent rather than discussing what is impact that we are feeling of such denigration and humiliation.
Totally agree Kristy, saw this video too, it’s horrible and that game is freely available. In almost every video game women have two roles; the heroin, the sacred girlfriend and to be protected woman, and then at some point they turn into the whore who does not hold the honor of the man and is therefore worthless, to be used and killed. In most video games women are pictured as prostitutes and you can kill them brutally. One woman, who has done analyses on lots of video games, has been cyber harassed for doing so – for exposing the violence and degradation of women in them. Some disgruntled and disturbed men then invented a video game where you could punch her till she turned into a blood spot.
That pornography and violence constantly showed in every angle of life does not have an impact is an absolute lie and has to be exposed as such. It seems we are raising a generation of sexualised people (not all) who seem to only know to relate to each other through sexual abuse, and they call it free choice and make it the new normal.
Great sharing Rachel. I noted the effect of a poster as I walked into a shopping centre the other day – two young woman seductively dressed in bras, pouting, on an almost double full sized poster. The interesting thing is I had seen the poster before, but this time I felt the energy of it. I noted how persuasive it was in different ways to both men and woman – woman taking them into comparison, men taking them into a basically sexual way of looking at women. I wondered as I continued walking that this impression, even if not normally acknowledged, still stays with people. I was able to notice that I felt uncomfortable for some time, until I acknowledged how it had affected me and could let it go.
What a cracker of an article. Rachel you should be being published by Magazines and Newspapers. Not the rubbish we see instead.
I love also that you include Men in this and how it effects us. It is not discussed enough how much this effects us in how we are ” supposed” to express intimacy and what we are meant to find attractive.
If we want a world rid of abuse – a world of Fathers and Brothers that are warm and caring and expressive of how much they care for the women around them, we need to nurture that inherent nature in them as they grow – not shut it down and replace it with what we serve them up today under the so easily abused “free speech” slogan.
Thanks for sharing this.
Every single one of us is impacted by pornography, men and women, children who should by right be free of the impacts of this industry. From a sleazy cover on a women or men’s magazine in the supermarket to the most grotesque forms available online, we are swimming through a soup of pornographic imagery and the thinking that drives it.
It is the blindness to it that bothers me more than anything else, and the fact that we have all agreed to put on the blindfold.
“we are swimming through a soup of pornographic imagery….It is the blindness to it that bothers me more than anything else, and the fact that we have all agreed to put on the blindfold.”
Precisely Rachel, that we make the impossible invisible, in overwhelmed apathy…we may ‘turn a blind eye’ thinking ‘who are we to bring change’ ….by not saying no, each of us is saying yes to this downward slide, we are already making a change, contributing to the slippery slope! If we allow film clips like ‘Anaconda’ (overtly pornographic and massively degrading) to be the so called ‘new normal’, what is next and after that? When will we say no, enough?
I want to say that I cannot and will not watch it, but my head has been too far buried for too long. Thank you Marika for bringing the awareness of what is out there influencing young people.
Yeah, I wouldnt recommend watching that clip – utter degradation under the guise of empowerment is a new twist on lack of self respect and objectification. Really shows how low we have sunk that what is considered ‘normal’is sliding ever downward,,, and if we accept ‘this’ what will the next ‘that’ be? Time to say no and live another way.
“What a cracker of an article. Rachel you should be being published by Magazines and Newspapers.” So true Simon!
And what you share about raising our boys is such a key – all that natural tenderness is so pummelled out of our young tender men with barrage after barrage of messages as to what it means to be a man, which is actually so, so far from the natural gorgeousness of true manhood. Halting the slide into an ever more pornified, cheap, undignified and loveless, empty world of hypersexualisation is for men and women all to address.
This is great simplesimon888, the reduction of women to bottoms and breasts and the programming of men to confuse stimulation with connection delivers such a barrier to true intimacy for both genders.
And now men are just “abs”, for which they have to overtrain, and turn themselves into monsters to achieve…as well as wreck their health with intense dehydration to get the right muscle definition. They are apparently just animals that want rough sex too…according to the current paradigm…
The reduction is universal Joel. We are all injured by it.
Very true Rachael, the reductionism diminishes all of us.
Rachel, you should be lecturing in my psychosocial class, you leave no stone un turned and express what needs to be said. As you say how long do we wait? until we find what we saw as X rated in the 90’s now become available on day time television?
It is gold hey Marika – ‘how long do we wait’? in silent apathy and reinforcing the downward slide? Time for a U-turn back to decency and care – stat!!
Agreed Rachel and Luke, how long do we wait before we say ‘enough’. I know I, like many, have become desensitised to decades of advertisements, music videos, movies, etc where very, very slowly, the quality has become more and more degraded … how far will we allow it go?
I understand what you are saying Sandra. And a part of me doesn’t even want to answer your question, ‘how far will we allow it to go?’. As the state at the moment is bad.
It is completely up to everyone to say ‘no’ to this as, if we were to ask the average person off the street, they would agree and say that most mainstream media is out of line and disturbing. However, to speak up and actually be heard and make a difference… well that is a different story altogether.
And the steps are insidious Tim, dressed up as being “cool”, “live and let live”,etc until it is so rotten that no one knows what to do. I spoke to a very lovely young woman recently who used to dance. She let it go because it became so sexualised, from the steps and routines to the costumes. That was before she reached puberty. The parents of many of the girls could not see what was wrong with it. It is a form of craziness as yet unidentified, hence why we must write about it in an ongoing way. Too bad if it upsets people. It is time for decency to be restored.
So well said Rachel, the gradual creep (pun intended) of the pornification of our society has gone way too far. Step by baby step we have become numbed to the objectification of humanity, it is most definitely time to speak out.
Great comment 1timrobinson and I agree that “we have become numbed to the objectification of humanity” – yes it is so obvious that this sort of behaviour is becoming normalised, but this is one very destructive normal that needs to be deconstructed, and very quickly, so that the innocence of our children is honoured and preserved, and they are lovingly supported to grow up in a society based on a foundation of love and respect for self, and for all.
Reading your words today Rachel I was struck by just how hard we must all be working to not feel this and many other areas of life. The blanket of pornographic imagery that is draped over society feels more pronounced to me than ever before. I love how you draw our attention to what is going on and instead of censoring or disparaging, you simply ask why? I feel it’s only through this questioning and re-understanding of ourselves and our bodies that we will see through this abusive way of being. Thank you for speaking up about what is not right.
I so agree Joseph. It is through feeling that we address this problem. I remember as a young girl having a very strong sense of dignity. Perhaps an odd word for such a young person, but nevertheless that was what I felt. I was responsive to sexually explicit material, like album covers, or crude jokes I would overhear my parents and their friends telling (it was the 70’s!). That stuff would upset me, make my skin crawl and I would try to avoid them at all costs. Keep in mind they were not very explicit by today’s ‘standards’. As a teenager I recall working hard to stop those feelings, to fit in and be ‘normal’. It was the start of a shut down that I did not arrest until I met Serge Benhayon. The decency of this man is boundless, and it re-ignited my desire to connect to my own decency…through feeling and awareness.
Rachel – your voice resounds through the halls of time – and I join you in your clarion call of – ENOUGH. The issues you discuss here need to be spelled out in the way you have in such eye- opening – ‘time to get our heads out of the sand’ – detail.
I have raised 4 children, and all you describe is a reality on the ground for our youth and even very young children – pocket porn is a reality. Some statistics calculate that over half of daily internet use globally is directly porn related. What you describe is like this sliding ever-downward phenomena, into some future abyss – that we allow and endorse in our silence – or ignore-ance.
Time for a total paradigm shift. Time to say ‘no’ to all forms of people being objects, and go deeper in our relationships with self. Time to open our eyes, feel the discomfort of having been silent so long, claim the part we play, the difference we make, and speak up.
Thank you Rachel for all that you shine a much-needed light on here. Eyes wide-open and heart-full voice speaking with you 100%.
It feels like time to take this to the next level Kate, from the page and into action.
I just love this blog. It offers so so much to the world! Like you, I simply have chosen to ignore the normalisation of porn. Since it was no part of my life, I did not pay attention to it. I used to see life through the eyes of self, I used to buy into the argument that it did not bother me what other people did with their free time. Now, I do not see life through those eyes anymore. With a heightened sense of awareness on how we tend to live life in total disconnection from ourselves and on the devastating effects of this fact on us and and our interactions, I cannot but join you in saying ENOUGH to porn. The normalisation of porn means to accept as a mere fact of life, too many things that not only are not, but also consecrate that way of being that guarantees never meeting someone in truth and appreciating him/her for what they truly are. The normalisation affects us big time in what we see (and choose not to see), how we see life (and how we choose not to see it) and what we are looking for in others (and of course, ignoring).
It is so easy to do emfeldman…to just ignore what is in front of our eyes, screaming to be seen. I absolutely get that whole idea of “oh well, its their right to do whatever they do”, ignoring the fact that it is like a pummelling every time we see the abuse, the dissect and say nothing.
Way earlier on in a comment, Alison Greig mentioned the film clip “Blurred Lines”. It caused a huge flurry at the time, since forgotten as the next line up of porn rolls out. I recall consciously shutting down at the time, thinking “i don’t want to know, don’t even tell me about that”.
Well that does not work. Normalisation is like a slow death to awareness, sensitivity and our innate responsively. It is the way we get rolled by life. It turns life into a Simpson’s-like (meaning the cartoon) charade of dull characters at the whim of the awfulness, and no will to do anything about it. Minus the laughs.
I absolutely agree with you. Pretending like things do not affect just because we are not involved in them directly is just one big excuse we give ourselves to not deal with everything that is before us. We are all affected by the normalisation of porn. It belittles us, reduces us to sex objects, and tries to tell us that everything is about sex and power. Well, no it is not. I have learned that life is about love, truth, commitment, integrity, harmony, beauty and much more.
The way porn sets us up is that it turns our body into a thing to be used and abused in a way that reduces it to nothing, just a vessel for another’s pleasure. That we do this to ourselves is extraordinary and the damage this renders to the person is immense. How is it that we have so many young women and men who enter the entertainment scene bright eyed, fresh faced….and as the years pass and they gather the accolades and fame, we see them apparently collapse on every human level as they sell themselves out to the sexualised/pornographic norm?
Their lives seem to erode before our eyes, documented step by step by the gossip rags who could not care because the cheap shot of the drunken/drugged out person exposing themselves sells so well when plastered all over the front cover of their magazine…the magazines that our 5 year olds get to look at in the supermarket. No longer are sleaze shots reserved for “that” section of the newsagent, sold in a clear plastic bag. This is all just feeding the cycle of porn, that says “Hey, don’t worry about self respect and decency…just sell yourself to me and I will make you famous/desirable. And we all watch on, mute, perhaps silenced by the assumption that is just the way it is. How many more lives destroyed before we as consumers of fame call time on this phenomenon and stop feeding the market by creating the demand?
Amazing article exposing what we all know, and that is that many of us have measured the worth and value of ourselves by the size and shape of our body parts.
We all know that sex sells, and I feel that the reason it sells is because many of us have had an unhealthy relationship with our bodies.
When we can start to heal the hurts of not accepting ourselves and our bodies in full, there will be no oportunity for sex to sell.
So very true Kosta and such an important point: When we can start to heal the hurts of not accepting ourselves and our bodies in full, there will be no oportunity for sex to sell.
Its always the same argument “it does not impact” or “its your choice”, but as you rightly say sex sells and that is a reality we cannot deny anymore.
Working with teenagers on gender stereotypes in advertising and the media in general, I can only say that they learn EVERYTHING from there and they are so deep in that they don’t even have the capacity to see it as “artistic” or “phantasy”, for them it is real and this is what they aspire to be. They look at the images and the videos and for them it is real, it does not go through their imagination that it is fake. For example the rape fashion/perfume advertisement they say “that the woman on the photo likes it, that she feels good about it to have so many man, etc.” They don’t understand the artistic aspect in it, they get the TRUE message. Thats so amazing with kids and young people they are still not that fooled as we adults are, we give an artistic interpretation of the abuse and excuse it with it, thats what the whole industry does all the time, but kids and teenagers they take it for real. So they assume that the woman pictured in the add likes those situations and thats what creates their playground and how they learn to adapt to abuse. Through the socialization process they start to own those attitudes and then after a couple of years they think it is theirs. They say o yes I like pornography, I love hard sex, etc. but thats what they learned to like not what they truly like. If I am exposed to heavy abuse constantly I start to see a normality in it and mild abusive ways may be my normal/liking then.
We should never forget it feels very REAL but it is not TRUE!
Your point is so clear about learning what is liked (hard sex, pornography) , as opposed to what is true. If degrading sex gets you attention and what might be perceived to be longed for attention then of course you will “like” it. It is better it seems than being alone in the world.
You have opened another point Rachel, and that is one about art and artistic merit. How much do people try to get away with under the label “art”? This is another place that the censorship argument enters, because to call it out for what it is…pornography…it is try to suppress a person’s artistic expression. Well if it portrays a person as an object, it leaves us all less. This is true for those portrayed in the image as well those who are observing it, especially if they just absorb it, like a sponge.
You have clearly put a lot of thought and awareness into writing your blog, Rachel. True, enough is enough, but I wonder when will we speak up and say enough IS enough. I attended a children’s end of year dance concert, 3 and 4 year old girls, dressed and made up in very sexy attire, were on stage dancing and singing to a popular song. The dancing could be described as deliberately sexual poses and actions. I mentioned this observation to the person sitting next to me and she was very defensive of the children’s dance. Are we really that numbed to pornography as this? You have raised a lot of questions about society’s acceptance of pornography and I do agree with your question…..’is it not time to re-establish a way of being that is founded on the qualities of self-honouring, self-respect, dignity, grace and self-love’?
I concur with Rachel’s response above:
“The sexual dance moves and lyrics you saw in those little girls and the fact that others could not see it at all (yet) gives away the pervasiveness of the problem. We need to claim this and ask the questions you did – allow people the stop moment, and the possibility of considering for one moment the greater truth.”
I have had similar experiences to Janne. Just last night I addressed a group of parents planning a dance for young children (starting at age 4) and suggested that not only do the lyrics need to be listened to, but also the videos watched and either approved or not. The response showed just how overwhelmed and desensitised to permissive and given up many amongst us have become, and ‘defensiveness’ you describe Janne, feels like a desperate ‘I do NOT want to see or feel my part in this’. All in the circle were women, yet the responses were, ‘if we have to vet out the unsuitable videos, there will be nothing left’…and I had to say point in case,…does that then make it okay? Then I spoke with some more honesty about how these messages translate through to the teenagers locally…things like my 16 year old son having to remove girls every day from his instagram as full frontal nudity is the norm – and he says if its not suitable for me to show my little sister, its time to un-friend.
This was one of those stop moments you mention that we are needing to be offered to rattle the cage that has us locked up in things like ‘its’ generational’ – or ‘I don’t want to be seen as a prude’, ‘I don’t want to be seen as ‘uncool’, ‘I don’t have anything to do with it so its not my problem what others do’, and more.
Stop moments to consider the greater truth are definitely called for – loud and clear.
Rachel, I agree with every word you have written here. I do not want to live in a world where young women and men are degraded like they are in those videos. There is nothing normal about any of this and as you say we have to actually stand up against it, otherwise people begin to think it is normal and things get even worse.
There was actually no thought at all in the traditional sense. This blog was urgently calling to be written it got me out of bed at 1.30am and was completed in 3 hours. It had been on a slow boil for years and I could say it was that video that called me into action.
The true call to action actually came from the self respect I learned from Serge Benhayon, that developed into self love, that then blossomed into the love that is willing to stand up and say “no” to the depth of harm that is happening society wide.
The sexual dance moves and lyrics you saw in those little girls and the fact that others could not see it at all (yet) gives away the pervasiveness of the problem. We need to claim this and ask the questions you did – allow people the stop moment, and the possibility of considering for one moment the greater truth.
It is already completely normalised. Teenagers watching violent degrading pornography is completely normalised. Apparently the career lifespan for a woman in pornography is around 3 months. They cannot work longer than this due to the levels of injury they sustain in this work. Normalised. porn in music videos – normal. S&M – mainstream movie for suburban women at the local multiplex…with popcorn and a soft drink.
There is so much more to be activated here, for us to unblinker ourselves, see, and call out.
I am happy to be called a “wowser” and prude, and that terribly evil thing….a censor…if that is what it takes to wake us up to the fact that we are all so much more than sexual objects to be abused.
If it is censorship to stop a flow of pure evil that reduces us to nothing then I am happy to be called a censor.
If people truly understood just the physical harm that porn causes to its participants, then that would surely, one think, be enough. I read a study recently where it was revealed 10% of women who perform porn get physically hurt. That does not sound like much, until you consider the fact that the definition of physical harm was limited to that requiring immediate medical attention (e.g. they had a breast implant explode during filming, they were cut by broken glass etc). The survey did not consider much of what we would consider sexual violence in normal society, such as being gagged with a penis, strangulation, kicking, slapping, being restrained whilst being gang raped from behind etc etc etc. When that definition of harm was used, then the figure rose to 90%. Then we have the inordinately high rates of STD in the industry. If this is not enough, then consider the abnormally high rates of drug use. All this points to the fact that porn is not a healthy occupation, and this is the industry that we all contribute to when we participate in its use.
Having said all that, porn will continue as it has through the ages, but what is different in this age is the proliferation and ease of access to porn, and this is DEFINITELY having an effect not the way we view sexual relationships. Porn is not just degrading to women, it robs men and women of the sensual aspect of sex. Porn has been scientifically shown to desensitise men to the point where it actually physically affects their ability to perform, thus why they need increasingly perverse and outlandish forms of porn to recreate the feeling of stimulation they are craving.
Outrage against the violence and overt sexualisation of women is a great and necessary start and as a society we need to express more often our feelings about the fact that in truth porn just does not feel right. However, porn will continue to proliferate until as a society we are able to stop and look with honesty at what we are using porn to recreate for us that is so missing in our personal lives. If we can get to that point, then porn itself will die a natural death, as society embraces the fact that what we all crave deeply is intimacy – and not just intimacy with another, but intimacy with self. See ‘Porn – an addiction worth talking about’ and ‘Porn Addiction – what are we missing out on’ for a deeper insight into what I mean here.
Everything you say is true Adam. Women in porn are experiencing such levels of physical harm that most are completely burnout and must retire after 3 months. Rectal prolapses, requiring surgery are not uncommon as a direct result of the violence of the sex.
Is that what it takes for people to “get off” these days?
Sexually transmitted disease are rampant as condom use is not allowed.
What message does all of this send to young people who are learning about sex from porn?
This is grotesque. Why is it not being paid attention to? Are these women and men, for no doubt they are being equally physically devastated, beneath our contempt and hence undeserving of our care? Do we imagine that we are unaffected because it is only happening to people we don’t know and have not met?
Thank you Rachell, what you say is true, it is time we say enough is enough!
Enough can only be enough when we realise that we are enough as we are. Without this acceptance we hunger and crave for something to fill us up and stop the pain that we create when we make the choice to not live from our true sexy – love.
You have hit that nail square on its head Liane. The enough that can say “enough” comes from knowing who we are. Otherwise the words are an empty appeal that just cannot make a dent on the path of this juggernaut.
Our true sexy, when it says “enough”, has the power to stop people in their tracks…even if it just for a moment. Banning things, covering them up, tucking them away from sight solves nothing. The problem exists, but now in an underground. OK we cannot see it, but it is still exercising control from behind a veil. You have revealed the answer that comes from us looking not at porn and waving a placard at it, but looking within to the beauty that resides there. Once felt, the harm of porn is known through and through. A slow process to be sure, but far more effective than sweeping the mess under a rug that can no longer contain the mess that has already been swept there.
Excellent and valid points here Rachel. Censorship is a Band-Aid that may as well be applied over our eyes for it masks our ability to see the real issue that is: we are love but we are not living it.
I love your comments, they sit so effortlessly yet hit the hammer directly on the nail every time. Thanks Lianne,
Rachel for me all that you have so brilliantly written about is a reflection of how a large part of our society is doing. Not so well. The less we are connected to who we are on the inside the more extreme the outer aspect of us becomes. The two are intrinsically linked. The rise in tattoos and how extreme they are becoming, the rise in plastic surgery and how extreme that is becoming are but just two more examples.
Awesome article Rachel, as you say it is totally out of control, with such a strong drive of individualism and look at me attitude. There is such a normal perception that is ok to flaunt, near naked sexed up body images. This must be a very confusing place to be growing up as a young person looking for love and true connection with themselves and others. Then finding the world of advertising music and media reflecting the macabre or bizarre freak show of sexual gala back. I definitely stand with you and many others and say that it’s not ok, healthy or holistic. But rather sick and leaves people feeling more empty and lost with less self worth in a constant battle of comparison, jealousy, and emotions.
I thought we had evolved past Pompeii or Rome’s Caligula days of debauchery. Was the internet devised by an ex Roman emperor?
That flaunting is the ache to be seen, to be recognised…to be met. It is not about covering-up and controlling teenagers. That has never worked…back beyond the days of Caligula!
We have young people who have never been acknowledged for their natural grace and beauty, and so they are starved of connection. So what does a starving person do? If they have no sense of their own worth they will eat from any table – no matter what the quality of the food they are getting.
The first step in tackling this problem is simply acknowledging it exists. Without that there can be no will to change, hence the reason that we still have the same issues that existed in ancient Rome. From that point of honesty we can start to explore and deal with the root.
Rachel I am with you completely on this. As a mother of a gorgeous 13 year old young woman and 16 year old young man, I say no to explicit sexuslisation of women or men for that matter on our TV’s, in our magazines and papers as well as on the internet. They need the opportunity to grow into the amazing people they are without the huge misrepresentation of women and men we currently have. My eyes are wide open too!
Sharon you shared a great point that the misrepresentation of women and men is the most harming element in all of this.
That’s great Sharon. The problem is though they step out as beautiful points of pure light into a world in which pornography and sexual violence are normal.
This is not about getting on a mission to fix anything. That has never worked. But it is important to acknowledge just how pervasive it is and establish within young people a foundation in their own connection and innate knowing that is so rock-solid they can say no to anything that feels the slightest amount wrong to the purity of their essence.
This is exactly it Rachel. If young people are supported to establish and nurture a connection to themselves and the wisdom that is innately within, then their choices to say no to this and anything less than love is what will create true and lasting change for themselves and eventually society.
Misrepresentation indeed Sharon, and it is everywhere. If children cannot feel and know the amazing people they are, then indulging, or being coerced into associating with, or becoming active, in pornography will certainly not show them! Every single interaction we have with each other is an opportunity to present the opposite of what pornography represents, even when we need to speak up and speak our truth and perhaps be shunned by others. Love is true and true love would never inflict the harm we see here.
Great call Rachel. It is so true that our society is filled with pornographic images and messages that it is impossible to escape from these. And the venom is in the fact we do get used to these images around and have no idea what they actually do to ourselves and society as a whole. We have unconsciously accepted that this way of treating each other in this abusive ways is ‘normal’ and do not take the responsibility to open our eyes to see the evil behind these so called innocent pictures.
The bit about the bare behinds you saw on the music video brings to mind something that I’ve found to be really askew with visual media for many years. It is not allowed to show people ‘making love’ in movies, as in, really tender love-making of two people who are in love with each other. Oh how dreadful! X-rated! But it is allowed to show the terrible, frightening lead-ups to scenes of rape, paedophilia, murder, physical and psychological abuse, violent sex and weird, twisted, combative sexual interactions of people who clearly do not love each other, as well as people being violently beaten, shot, stabbed, burned and tortured, and dead, bloodied, dismembered bodies. And pornographic imagery of every other kind is all over the place in public, in front of kids and young adults, in just about every medium.
So….. our children grow up on this diet of sick, twisted, violent sexuality and hateful human relations. How does that affect their views of what human relationships and sexual interaction between adults is about? Could that steady dripping of aggression, violent weird sexuality and rape taint their perceptions and develop beliefs that these behaviours are acceptable in sexual and other human relationships, while real loving tenderness is something to be hidden and hushed up? Humanity needs to take a big, deep, honest look at this and buck up! While we work to reverse this sickness in our society, as parents, family and friends of children, we can do all we can to raise them with true love so they can know themselves and feel what is not right, and live accordingly.
You are absolutely correct Dianne.
We have rated love-making to non existence, but everything else has free reign. The scary part too is that children now have access to porn. In Denmark they are showing pornography to children as sex education in an attempt to “deconstruct ” it – whatever that means.
It makes me feel very sad that they are resorting to this as a way to combat porn and its harmful effects. Sex education teachers in Australia have refused to do this. They use music videos in their classes as examples of how to handle/deal with porn, because these clips are so pornographic in nature.
This is a massive problem.
How are people ever going to develop true connection, deep honouring, when all they see is this way of treating each other?
Whether Denmark-style or Australia-style, that is shocking to hear, Rachel. No matter what the professed educational intention is, the fact is that the children are seeing the porn, therefore it is being absorbed into their minds and bodies and altering their perception. Evil indeed. When are we as a whole society going to drop the lies and pretence, and truly educate our children about loving, understanding, respect and tenderness in relationship, and what that means and looks like for sexuality in the human being?
Absolutely correct Dianne. They can “deconstruct it” all they like, that child has absorbed and they will be forever affected by it. How will this play out? We are seeing the effects of this as adults in our relationships. and we are seeing it in teenagers with increasing rates of sexually transmitted diseases, and alcohol fuelled rapes in Colleges and sporting groups.
It will be dropped when enough people are willing to see it and say it.
Totally shocking to hear that porn under any disconnected mental guise of ‘deconstructing’ or other wise could be argued to be of any benefit, and not the simple pure harm that it is to show children in schools!!. When do we hit the point where we go – WOAH…ENOUGH, that is too much, the whole scene is not it – and start asking where are we at as a society to have all this going on and be so so so far from respect, decency, care, let alone love for self or others.
This example shows us how lost we as a society are, showing porn to children to show them how deal with it. This is no true education, we should present to them what sex and making love is about and not the porn, because as you say Dianne, the energy of the video will do its work in the children that are susceptible for it and in a way they get the message that porn is there, you have to accept it and you have to find your way to deal with it. Either you blind it from your vision or you say yes to it and make it part of your life. It shows that we do not know what these pornographic video’s actually do to us and have accepted it as something that belongs to our society. Accepting to show porn in order to deconstruct is in my view giving in to the evil porn is for our society.
When we show children porn as a way of helping them to deal with it, I can’t help but question how that works out in reality. Some of us are blessed to know that there is love making, and that making love is not just a sexual act, but a whole way of being that is tender, respectful and all encompassing of every aspect of your relationship and your partner.
But let’s be honest, most of these children will not come from households where lovemaking is the norm. Please do not mistake me that I am calling for children to be exposed to parental intimacy….that is not the point at all. What this means is that if children live in a home where there is little tenderness, respect and care in every aspect of life, and then they go to school and are shown porn and are told it is bad, what else have they got as a solid of reference point in their lives that shows how else to be?
To me it is a bit like someone teaching you to drive by telling you not to go through red lights, not to go through stop signs, not to drive over the speed limit and not to crash into other cars, but giving zero instruction on how to actually drive a car. Can you imagine a driving lesson and you don’t even know how to put he key in the ignition?
It really brings responsibility back to parents, to demonstrate love in how they live, being respectful in the way they speak to their children and each other.
There is nothing worse than being told what to do. The greatest learning comes from what we observe, and what we are surrounded by.
Well said Rachel, Dianne and all. The true living role models are needed. And not just from parents of children, but from all of us… our children are raised by everyone around them.
Also, the need for real role models doesn’t just go for our children – everyone needs to know how truly loving all of our relationships can be. We are a populace starved of true love and connection, and being so devoid of true role models of real loving intimacy with each other, we naturally seek whatever can satiate (even if momentarily..) the void that will just not go away.
Brilliantly well called out and expressed, Rachel. To say that this type of pornography doesn’t affect society and our children (and grown ups!) is a blatant lie. As you’ve expressed, you only need to look around at the state of society, where our young women are at, to know that self worth has been enormously tied up in the ‘objects’ we are viewed as (for both men and women) and very few are standing up for self respect and self honouring.
Extensively and exceedingly well said Rachel. The harm is most definitely done to, and felt by everyone in society. We most definitely need to see all that is going on, and call the proliferation of porn for what it is and say ‘enough’ – just as you have done here. That we may actually look to what is going on beneath it all. Thank-you. We can’t have these discussions enough, and publicly so.
Absolutely agree Victoria, the real harm and breadth of pornography is ignored in our societies. That it is on the rise and intensely so also. What does this say about communities of men and women that want yo bury their heads in the sand and also partake in something so harmful?
I agree too Victoria, Rachel’s amazing blog has brought into the limelight an insidious growing malaise that has been taken on ‘normality’ in our community simply because it is so ubiquitous, being portrayed so commonly and in some respects championed in our media, and culture. Yet how many look at the deep harm and real damage that it inflicts on women’s (and men’s) self worth, at the pressures on children growing up, and in harm to our relationships, especially when it comes to physical intimacy. This most certainly is a conversation that needs to happen soon.
Well said Annie. I see nothing ‘normal’ in what has become so normalised, and appears to be taking increasingly (if it’s possible) macabre directions.
I remember talking to my teenage male peers at age 16 to 17 or so about how ‘not normal’ pornography was, and how it was distorting everyone’s idea of sexuality and true intimacy… Did they change their ways? No. But they got a good talking to with me blocking the TV screen… I laugh a little now, but even then, it was difficult to take the conversation deeper. And it was ugly in the way things began to play out in some relationships..
As for young folk now, it’s a whole new ballpark with highly alarming activity spilling into the schoolyard of mere children, and we can no longer sweep any of this under the carpet whatsoever.
Our perception of this harm is sliding as you have noted Annie. We have developed a tolerance, a sort of immunity if you will, to the awfulness of what pornification is doing. As a wake up I imagine what would happen if I could take your average “women’s” magazine off the newsagent or supermarket rack – covered in women wearing bikinis and insults about their cellulite – and could magically transport myself back to a newsagent in 1930 and put it out on display? Horror, I suspect, would be the response. As well as its prompt removal.
Some will argue that times were worse then because that sort of stuff was concealed…it was all there, bubbling under the surface.
To that there can be no clever argument, just the request to look at what is going on and ask if we are truly better off when 12 year olds are under intense peer pressure to look at porn and are getting bullied when they do not.
Yes I was struck by your comment in this powerful blog about the Duran Duran video clip that was shocking then but ‘tame’ now and if we looked to our future, what will be shocking then. It is time to rub the sleep out of our eyes and get involved with what is going on around us. And start calling it out and to account.
I agree Victoria. And, just how far has the porn industry infiltrated our lives, bedrooms, wardrobes, clothing stores, tvs, phones, computers, magazines, movies, gyms (and I can go on and on) to the point where porn has become normal? Disregarding ourselves and our relationships is not normal, and yet we have accepted it. Abusing ourselves and our bodies is not normal, and yet we have chosen it. It’s time to bring love and responsibility into our living and realise the extent of what is going on because we have allowed it so.
Hear, hear Kylie. And that is the root of the stench here – porn has been normalised, but it is far from ‘normal’, i.e. far from truly loving, far from truly honouring, and far from truly meeting each other with the depth that we all deserve.
And it is we who have allowed its proliferation to be so. Turning a blind eye will not change a thing – we need to live, breathe and be the difference that is needed, and call to account what is so not ok.
I imagine in these scenarios, looking at with the eyes of myself as a four year old…how would I feel?
Or imagine it set it in another context, say a suburban shop in the 1940’s, or a village in the 1700’s.
Stripped of its modern setting and what we think of as our level of advancement and sophistication, this portrayal of women is just plain weird. It literally makes no sense, but more importantly, when you consider the child’s view the degradation of it is highlighted. That sensitivity and awareness is so revealing of what is really going on.
Life does not have to be a G rating all the time but does not have to be as X rated and disrespectfully in your face as it is today either. Victoria, you are so correct in saying we need to start the conversation and discuss openly and publicly these taboo and hidden subjects that are eroding the values and integrity of our society.
You make a hugely important point here Suse. To call out and question the levels of porn we are bombarded with – all of us, at whatever age – is so important, and there is nothing whatsoever ‘prudish’ about it.
It’s evident in Rachel’s blog and the comments here, that we are no ‘prudes’ – though many who do not want this exposed would seek to silence our voices with such a label.
To add to my comment above, it is a powerful thing indeed when intelligent, discerning and considered women and men contribute to a conversation such as this… Anything that would seek to dismiss our unified voices here is immediately rendered ridiculous and exposed for its own investment in the pornification of our culture..
Life does not have to be a G rating all the time but does not have to be as X rated and disrespectfully in your face as it is today either. Victoria, you are so correct in saying we need to start the conversation and discuss openly and publicly these taboo and hidden subjects that are eroding the values and integrity of our society.
Great blog Rachel. It is very shocking the sexualized images we are exposed to everyday. I have two young children and I am aware of what they will be exposed to when they get a bit older. I must admit I haven’t been watching television for a very long time and I have also chosen to block out the images posted around us when I am out shopping. Your blog is a great reminder for me to educate my children, protecting my children by limiting exposure is simply not enough.
The challenge we as a society face today is that this type of pornographic and sexualised imagery is for the younger generation “normal”. It is so normal it is very difficult for them to step out of the mire and see it for what it is – degradation of all of us. The time has come as you say Rachel for those of us who do see the true impact, to speak out and begin the movement of change.
This was an article seriously in need of being written. Extremely well written and covering so much. It takes numbers to get out of comfort and stand up against what is going wrong in todays society. Change does occur if enough people get behind it. Take page 3 in the Sun news paper in England, it has changed from topless to scantily clad women, still a long way to go but at least a start. All this body image stuff has become completely out of control and the pressures on the young to look like people out of these magazines and music videos had come to a point where steroid use in gyms in the UK has gone through the roof. I thought a gym was somewhere health conscious people went to stay in shape? but that has made way for, get that perfect body at all costs including risking your health.
How far will it go before we say enough?
I fully agree that certain parts of men’s and women’s bodies have become highly objectified and sexualised. As stated, we can address this phenomena when people start to assert “self-honouring, self-respect, dignity, grace and self-love”. Thank you Rachel for writing this.
Hi Rachel – this no holds barred expose is exactly the kind of frank and honest discussion we need to be having…The rot doesn’t stop at the pornification of women…the absolute de-feminisation and abuse of women that happens in the fashion industry — whereby a woman is expected to be a sickly rake and to have no breasts, no period and bones that protrude to be hireable is an international human rights disgrace that is happening right in front of our faces and we are all complicit. We are the numbers that buy the magazines and the designer clothes..It is time we all spoke up and made a change.
Spot on Rebecca. The modelling industry, the music industry – you name it, anything that turns people into commodities has a power to act reprehensibly. What we haven’t cottoned on to is the fact that our silence = “yes”. When we shut up, when we think “oh, what can I do”, when we put up with, and when we ignore or pretend something isn’t happening we are in fact condoning that very thing. We are in a complicit form of agreement.
Speaking up can be uncomfortable and it can provoke some reactions in others, but we all reach a point when we must take the thoughts in our heads and the feelings in our bodies and get them out of our mouths and our fingertips into expression…and from there into action.
There is no room for the idea that “that is just the way it is”.
Very true, we see what we want to see and we have accepted so much as normal that is not normal. That is how we can have a movie that makes domestic abuse entertainment. It is really important that we speak up when we see images that objectify both men and women and stop celebrating something that is abusive just because there are some who say we should call it entertainment.
There is so much more to be said and done. It is endemic in computer games, shampoo ads, newspapers, public video sharing sites….you name it.
The more we allow ourselves to see and feel its effect, the more willing we become to overcome our reticence and express exactly what is going on, with no reserve about what others may think.
We have indeed as a society become almost numb to the harm that pornography perpetuates to an extent that if it is not full on we can walk past it as if it is not there. It is present in one form or another in all entertainment and media, and I have been astounded by how much young people even children are affected by it. Articles like this are an invaluable invitation for us all to open our eyes, to see the extent of what is going on and to address it.
It’s good to be reminded that we look away. I certainly went for the illusion “if I don’t look at it or don’t consume it, it doesn’t affect me”. But it does!
So true Felix. I also opted for this. If I choose to ignore it it doesn’t exist, but this is the very attitude that has colluded with the continuation of porn and its deepening effects on all aspects of our society. It is time to face and feel the deep harm that it causes and say no to porn and start to bring awareness and voice to its effect on society.
Wow, what a powerful and insightful blog.
It indeed is shocking how pornography (and consuming alcohol) seem to become more and more acceptable as time goes by.
What is it that this society wants to numb with it?
For me it feels like that most energy on earth is put to inventing new ways or perfecting old ones of numbing ourselves – as if being with yourself and taking on your responsibility would be the most horrible thing in the world.
It is so easy to hide behind artistic freedom as this frees of the responsibility we all have.
Thank you Rachel for standing up and speaking out about it because it is going so very wrong and opening this discussion about it is needed.
Thank you Rachel for opening up a conversation about the pornification of our society. It is getting so extreme and shocking and actually many people just let it happen – me included. The thought of ‘it will go away as long as I ignore it being there’ is so easy to have. But this is not how it works as you have displayed here so clearly – it is getting worse and the effects I see around me as a young woman are intense. Thank you for writing this article Rachel, I am definitely opening my eyes to it and speak up as that is really needed but mostly I am intending to be the true model for other woman by treating myself with respect and loving care.
This is a big topic and one that needs to be outed and expressed and you are right it is getting more extreme. All of this is sending the wrong kind of signals out everywhere especially to young people who are influenced by what is in the media, as you so rightly say “On top of that, we have a massive problem with the fact that young people are learning about their bodies, sex, sexuality and how to express as a woman or a man from the pornographic images in advertisements and music clips.” And it is not just music videos. Fifty shades of grey is now a film and someone reviewing this said it was romantising domestic violence! This is awful, and really serious. We cannot do this anymore and we should not have let it get so bad in the first place. Like you I am not a prude but what is going on in the media with regards to objectification, body image, and what is considered ‘okay’ is seriously harming. Great that you called this out, now we need to take it further.
Thank you Rachel for bringing truth to this subject. I must admit that I have numbed myself to what it is that I see around me in terms of pornography, thinking it is just the norm, not wanting to feel what is really going on. Your article has brought to light just how much I have been doing that and has led me to realise that it is time to stop pretending that it isn’t happening. To stop thinking that we are just an older generation and things are different for the younger generation. Yes, they are different but the different isn’t good.
Rachel, I just love reading your writing.
‘Meanwhile, there is a lived reality that includes younger and younger children engaging in rough, painful and degrading sex acts’ – this really brings it home. If we are sitting here thinking ‘Oh but it doesn’t really affect me’ – it’s not about us, it’s about where our world is going. Time to stop!? Definitely.
Rachel you have absolutely nailed this. Everything you have said here I agree with. The pornographic state society is in really needs to change. As a mother I see the impact of this on kids who are just trying so hard to be cool and fit in. The impact on women and men is just as insidious. This is an important blog and something we need to talk about a lot more.
A deeply enlightening article Rachel. It is amazing how so many turn the blinkers on to what is going on around us so to speak and accept it as normal. We don’t realise the rapid change. I am only 22 years old but within my own life time porn has gone from magazines, to photos on line, to videos and now websites and mobile phones and much more. It is getting more invasive and entrenched in our lives. It is no longer the ‘secret and hidden’ thing some do in their spare time but very very alive.
Great blog Rachel. I wonder about the self-esteem of people that work in this industry, be it dancing for these video clips, topless barmaids, strippers, doing promotional work walking around in a bikini with fake smiles on their faces handing out advertising material …all those sorts of jobs. The money might be good, and therefore some may see it as a great achievement, either for the money, or to be admired, but what is it doing to their self-worth? I have observed that some of these women resort to drug taking to numb how they feel about themselves working in the industry, and the cycle continues because they then need the big bucks to support their developing drug habit.
It is crazy Margaret, that the apparent admiration falls flat in reality, leaving women and men involved in the industry still in need. Enter the drugs or alcohol, that eat up the money, keeping them caught in a cycle. All because we are so willing to walk all over our true self worth, our self-respect and the dignity that is innate in all of us.
Fantastic article Rachel thank you! As I read I felt a deep sadness for the innocent young minds that are being bombarded by this highly damaging filth that we (society) have normalised. I too veil my eyes to what I don’t want to see ‘out there’ but what changes? We need to voice what’s not ok otherwise we will continue to accept this lowly standard that does not align with the incredibly amazing beings we all are.
This is one ass kicking blog.
Thank you Rachel, what you experienced and took the time and responsibility to share has opened my eyes and heart to speak up about pornography. The question remaining with me is, ‘How do we explain this to our children?’ It can never be legitimised as a loving way of living.
What a fantastic contribuition you make here Rachel to an important conversation for our times. I haven’t wanted to engage in this either, thinking that I could tune out simply by not watching certain material. But the constant messages that are in the faces of the young will set them up to have a very distorted view of the world of women and men. We do have a responsibility to speak out about this disturbing trend.
A very relevant post. There is pornography at every turn. On tv, billboards beside roads, new agencies and as you observed our music industry is littered with love less sex. Thank you for speaking out and encouraging a different way to live.
Reading this article has certainly deepened my awareness around pornography and the evil it is doing. It is everywhere and I have been living in ignorance of this fact. By speaking up about it and how it makes us feel we make a difference. Thank you.
The worst part about is that it is so thick in our mainstream culture that we often don’t even notice it..
Thank you for calling this out Rachel, it does seem that pornography and being overtly sexual has leaked into our every day lives and is far more easily accessible now than ever before.
It is disturbing to think that children who have mobile phones can also have access to pornography at school and let’s face it they will be curious.
Great blog Rachel, which made me think of my own experience with porn. My first exposure to porn was not until I was 24 years old – I had not even heard of it before then. “Playboy” magazine was hidden by adult men and teenagers had better watch out if they were caught with one. Women did not get to see them. As a young adult in the 70s, porn was a curiosity, something you went to special shops and looked at for fun once with your friends in the holidays. But I noticed as we grew older that the flippant ‘curiosity’ value was, for some, being replaced by a craving coming from an inner emptiness. Take-home porn videos burgeoned. This seemed to become the way couples had ‘sexy times’ without opening to true intimacy with each other, sexy times because real love and tenderness were too unfamiliar and frighteningly vulnerable to allow. It seemed to become the way groups of young men got together with alcohol and drugs and coped with their emptiness by group validation of contempt for, and objectification of, women. It’s almost as if the contempt and objectification are shields used to cover up and prevent having to feel and admit the hugeness of tenderness and love that is really there inside them, wanting to be expressed with a woman in that beautiful openness – terrifying! To me, I feel we have progressed downwards into a spiral of degradation of self and others. For years I’ve heard the ‘free speech’ and anti-censorship arguments abound, but Rachel I love your expose of the obvious illogic: “The free speech advocates seem to feel that these images have no effect on anything or anyone. Hold on, if that is so, then why go for the porn and the sex? If that argument holds true, then why don’t they portray something else? Clearly they don’t because ‘sex sells’. In other words it does have an effect, and it does have a grip on people.”
I’m a guy and I think pornography is gross. I used to look at magazines as a teenager because apparently that’s what a teenage boy is supposed to do. But as I’ve grown up I’ve seen what it does to people, how it distorts relationships and creates problems between lovers and generates false expectations and warps people’s understanding of natural beauty. It seems to be the way some people deal with wanting to be close to someone but without the risks of getting your heart broken.
How many young people are “doing” porn to fit in? How many are looking at it because they think they have to or else they are deemed weird, prudish, or that super judgemental concept, frigid? These are perceptions that try to narrow us into a framework of perceived normality, and all the while we miss the true beauty of our innate dignity, self-respect, respect for others and connection from our hearts.
I think porn really affected the way I related to women for a long time until I saw how harmful it was.
Dean, I can say it affected the way I related to myself as a woman. I did not measure up physically and it warped my sense of what intimacy with a man was meant to be. It affected the way I related to men too. It cast them as being a certain way, unfeeling and interested in only “one thing”. I accepted that casting as the truth.
Yeah… and then as a guy when a woman thinks you’re only after one thing… what happens when you’re actually after more than one thing, i.e. you the whole thing! You love her, you adore her, you want to marry her, you want to have her children, you want to make sure she doesn’t get tired, you want to make sure she doesn’t put everyone else first to not ruin her health…
.. then it gets really tricky because she may not see where you’re coming from, because of these warped perceptions we have allowed to go on in society. So we all miss out men and women equally when the one thing we really want is total connection. I hope this hasn’t simplified things too much, as I know there are many factors that contribute to the difficulties we have in relating to each another intimately.
But no matter how you turn it pornography just kills natural relationships.
Porn has always revolted me and I told myself I was prude, but the truth is, I was able to feel the absolute lovelessness in it, the lack of respect and dignity of both the men and the women in it, and just saw what seemed like a vile act, not an act of love. I can see now just how damaging it is for young people to have such easy access to porn, and to think that intimate relationships are based on rough sex.
Thank you Rachel for expressing the rot that has set in, in our society and the gradual slide of what we accept as normal. History is full of societies that went off the moral and ethical rails- are we prepared to stand by and let ours fall the same way? It is so hard for our kids to choose to be respectful of the opposite sex when they are bombarded with sexualised images.
And isn’t it amazing that we seem so unwilling to learn? As a society it seems we prefer to pretend that there is no link between one event and another. It is as though the things that cause harm cannot be directly attributed to their effects, and hence the effects we suffer can be seen to be purely ‘random events’.
This is the way we avoid responsibility, and avoid saying “this is wrong” even when we know in our hearts that it is.
This is the way we avoid responsibility, and avoid saying “this is wrong” even when we know in our hearts that it is.
There is another totally awful consequence of pornography….. that the beautiful human body cannot be seen without sleazy connotations and creepy sexual energy abounding. What should be the amazing, nurturing tranquility that can come from seeing a woman’s body has been denied by the destructive pornographic associations that go with nakedness. Today I came across a lovely photo on a social media site of a woman naked in a garden, being herself in her joy and fullness, not putting out any sexual energy, not hooking or seeking anything, relaxing to behold. But I realized that the energy the looker is in can contaminate this photo. Lots of people would foul that lovely image with the filth in their own minds, rendering pornographic that which should be honoured for its beauty and tenderness.
You are so right Dianne, we can poison images with the way we look.
When our eyes are configured to see things in a sexual way, then an image can be smeared with that.
Thanks Rachel for this outcry, saying enough! This pornography-infused life is so overwhelming it is hard to know where to start. Talking about it feels like a first step and especially talking about it with our children and teenagers – it is so important to raise the awareness of how this is so not normal and ok.
So true Rachel. Porn is never ok, it is extremely harmful in all ways.
Seems to me that we’re doing everything to avoid the true intimacy we could otherwise experience if we but stop focusing on the surface.
Very exposing blog. Your comment, mattsjosefsson, really says something. Pornography is really the antithesis of intimacy, the fake mirage posing as ultimate intimacy, enticing us and then leaving us less, but still wanting more.
Great article you have written exposing the many different forms of porn distributed throughout society.
This is a great expose Rachel on the ‘normality’ and dumbing down of pornography these days and how as you say it affects us all. I have a pretty strong sense that our predecessors who fought for free speech did not have freedom to abuse in mind — because this is what these pornographic images are. ‘Shock value’ is acceptable because it turns heads and has people comply — with their wallets and their beliefs about themselves, and the result is both men and women alienated from each other and themselves. Many women walk in a lack of self esteem and confidence constantly striving to measure up the body ideal that is unnatural for most, and men get taught from a young age that a woman is to be objectified, maybe even treated rough here and there, in order to be a man. And this is in a progressive society with so-called free speech and amazing technology at our fingertips. I do not see this as progressive — there is a rot we’ve dared not let ourselves accept is there — because when we do start to see this rot, we may just start to truly speak up.
This sentence of yours just jumped out of the page at me:
Or have parents simply given up? Have they fallen into the trap that I fell into, of becoming willfully blind to that which is glaringly and painfully evident?
Yes, I have in some ways!!! I hate to admit it but there is a part of me that does not know how to deal with the imposition of the music videos which all the kids at school talk about, and therefore my daughter wants to watch. There is a part of me that knows the harm in them but then another part that just wants to turn a blind eye and pretend I know nothing.
It is full on, and even my daughter and her friends know how disgusting and wrong some of them are, they still want to watch them and know about them, so that they are not the odd ones out at school. The pressure is huge.
Absolutely all true. It is time to say enough. As a school teacher I see first hand the impact of sexually explicit music videos and pornography have on students. It really is all the norm now. Sexting is done by the majority of students and is not seen as an extreme act what so ever. Only when students begin to claim back their true essence will this force and momentum drop away. Sadly it feels like that is some time away.
Your direct experience is precious Tracy. As teachers you are in the “front-line” to witness the changes and how rapidly they are occurring. It is so important that we hold these conversations, and do not stop until people are willing to open their eyes and see what is going on, now in plain sight..
Thank you Rachel, for bringing light to such an important issue that we are facing nowadays, it is time we open our eyes and say no more to this rubbish that clearly is affecting everyone.
I recognize the ignoring, seeing it but then go like: “oh well, that’s how it is”, This week I was passing a huge billboard together with a friend and her young daughter. The billboard showed the naked behind of a woman, and full frontal, oily and all shiny, wearing only a g-string. I could see her daughter was looking at it and to be honest, I felt awkward and a bit ashamed, that we are allowing these kind of images. But I realised I am part of it – of the allowing by not opening my mouth. So yes, enough is enough, it’s time we express and say no to these kind of billboards.
These powerful words needed to be said. Thanks Rachel, for not holding back. It is certainly one thing for an older person who grew up in a less overtly sexual world to close their eyes to what’s going on. But it’s a whole other thing for children to be absorbing the porno-horrors plastered everywhere in front of them. And our closed eyes leave our youth in danger.
Pornography certainly does have an effect, and the terrible consequences for our children are evidence of that. For a developing child, even a fleeing exposure to an emotionally-loaded experience can hard-wire their brain nerves into a way of perceiving and behaving that lasts a lifetime. Such scars can be inflicted in just seconds of exposure. Yet our modern children are being consistently assaulted by highly sexualised, degrading imagery and expectations. No wonder “younger and younger children are engaging in rough, painful and degrading sex acts.” Why are we surprised? Our whole society is responsible. Enough certainly is enough!
Thanks Rachel, those subtleties and ‘beeps’ that we just let slip by until the beep becomes a roar…your article draws much needed attention to the roaring, flashing, screaming signs that we are objectifying women and girls, though media and music.
In Australia children as young as 6 are being taught how to use you tube during school. It is important that our children learn computer skills, but exposing your child to you tube potentially invites them to play in pretty much all aspects of society. You would never take a child into a sex shop yet by teaching them how to you tube we are giving them possible access to exactly this. Parents have the option of placing a parenting controls on their electronic devices (if they know how), but even with the parental controls children can still access images of Miley Cyrus topless on a wrecking ball…
I agree, I know the film clip you were speaking of and having not viewed film clips for a long time by choice I was shocked. It is crazy how this is available readily for children. The messages this has for young girls about how to dress, act and what to do, and also on young men, making them think that to objectify women is ‘cool’… Just so not cool. It’s taking away their beautiful innocence and replacing it with disrespecting themselves and others. It definitely time to say enough is enough
Agree!, it has become normal, so normal that it is scary. And we do need more people speaking out saying this is totally unacceptable and we have a deep problem in our society.
Great blog Rachel – you write so passionately on this topic that as you quite rightly say needs to have much more discussion about. A call to humanity to take off the blinkers – rub the sleep out of our eyes – and truly see what is going on. This quote stood out particularly – “On top of that, we have a massive problem with the fact that young people are learning about their bodies, sex, sexuality and how to express as a woman or a man from the pornographic images in advertisements and music clips.” – this is a very serious issue that you have raised here and I see it reflected on the street when I walk and view some young men & women and how they are with each other and how they dress. We as a community need to address this.
It is true Sarah. For me the greatest shock in writing was to recognise my wilful blindness, that I was a complicit part of this problem.
Reading the comments that people are making I feel there is so much more to address about this issue and to keep calling it out until the so called “prudish” voice becomes the normal voice that speaks the truth of who we are: delicate, graceful, dignified beings for whom respect and care of others is innate.
Yes that really hit home when I read your reply Rachel. We collectively need to talk about this so our voice becomes the normal one because I too can find myself going it’s just the sign of the times etc… But when will it stop? What will it take to stop?
In my office late last year when the naked Kim Kardashian photo was going around the world and the photo of her naked was on my msn and my colleague and I were talking about it. And then I did a double take and went – woah – that is soft porn on my msn and we are talking about it in the office. When did that happen????!? Porn (soft or hard) was something that was in a dodgy video cassette buried under someones bed somewhere. Not anymore – it is everywhere.
Rachel you write ” Who are the women and men in these clips? What inspires them? What do they long to express? How do they really feel about the way they are being used?” and you completely got my attention. These people are being used to sell a product – and it would appear with no consideration for who they are as human beings. If a child was constantly banging their head against a wall and hurting themselves we would all stop and ask what is going on, yet countless numbers of men and women are hurting themselves when it comes to this abusive pornographic material, yet we don’t stop to ask what is going on? Why are children as young as 9 watching porn – and worse making their own porn – Yes this is happening! Let’s start asking Why? If not our blinkers are going to stay on and our eyes will remain closed. Thank you Rachel for caring enough to write this and to start asking why!
Thank you, Rachel for explaining the harm and degradation that pornography inflicts on everyone so clearly, at the expense of the few who make lots of money out of it and abuse everybody else as their faceless puppets, whilst they themselves are the puppets in an even bigger scenario.
So true Gabriele. The people pulling the strings and allegedly profiting from the suffering of others are themselves completely controlled and manipulated by something far larger and more insidious.
I agree Rachel and Gabriele… both are playing a harmful game that effects an even greater number of people.
Yes Gabriele I agree that the harm of pornography affects everyone when it is displayed in every facet of our lives. The harm goes much deeper than we could ever imagine.
Just being busy with a look or how to be sexy and looked at is another way to numb humanity from feeling. What I see on adverts like this is the emptiness behind it- and how the emptiness feeds the emptiness.
Brilliant blog Rachel. So much to ponder on. I’ve numbed myself out to this degradation of women – so far from who we truly are. It’s harming to think that pornography is normal. The time is ripe for more open discussions with family and friends, no more blinkers.
‘I have learned to ignore them and pretend they are not there. I have learned to keep my eyes open, but place a veil across my vision, blocking out the things I do not want to see.’
Thank you Rachel for this great groundbreaking sharing. Reading your article and actually allowing myself to see and feel what is really going on in our world feels like a wake up call. And yes I absolutely agree the effect of all these porn images is enormous and don’t reflect us as the beautiful men and tender women we innately are at all.
We are missing so very much in the name of “sophistication”, and in our pursuit of what is called free speech, but has degenerated into freedom to speak as long as you agree with the way things are.
We are tender, we are beautiful. But both of these qualities can be bludgeoned into non existence by this reduction of our beautiful selves into sexualised body parts.
I couldn’t agree more Rachel. I have observed that I have allowed myself to intellectualise and normalise the horrendous energy behind so many things, even today I was sucked in by a movie that will probably become a cult classic. It subtly then not so subtly sold pure pornography and violence in the name of ‘entertainment’. I left dealing completely shell-shocked. Many kids and families were present as the movie had been marketed as fun and lighthearted, they looked miserable walking out of the theater despite the ‘happy ending’ pun intended most unfortunately porn is sold in the guise of art, fashion and freedom but the truth is it is denigrating and harmful to us all.
Great article Rachael, how much further can we go, the extremes and boundaries we push ourselves to, to shock and get attention. How empty the world has become.
I don’t see happy playful teens anymore. I see stress, sadness, tension etched on their faces. Where are the role models for them to inspire to, that should be us, showing them the way to navigate life. What chance do they have with the world exploiting them.
What I find striking is that we foster an attitude among young boys that it is only normal if you like looking at women strutting about half naked as you describe in these music videos. So boys of school age have no option but to comply or risk being bullied for being not normal. It seems no room is given for boys and girls to develop healthy respectful relationships with one another, and learn to communicate in a natural way.
Intimacy and love have no place in any of this and it dismisses the desire that is innately there to be met and appreciated as the individuals we are. What doesn’t help this situation is the models from the videos who are often used to form a strong voice in support of a women’s right to bare almost all. This happened recently in support of the Sun’s newspapers page 3, which it seems has been axed, but replaced with virtually the same images minus the topless poses. The sooner we move away from the vacuous argument that this is all harmless fun and call it for what it is, the more opportunity we will have to reduce the harmful social behaviours that are a consequence of all this.
Porn has seeped into so many aspects of life, especially music videos and advertising. Also as you say there is pressure to join in, especially the young seem to be in the thick of it. And now I am left reeling from reading that “According to a number of perfume and expensive clothing advertisements, the latest fashion for women includes being raped by a man, perhaps even a group of men.” As you say ignoring it does not work. It will NOT go away. We need more true role models who can show a different way, re-turn to a way that honours who we know we are in our heart.
I can see this treating women and men as objects everywhere. I saw an advert at Singapore Airport for a high end perfume and the model’s face was photoshopped until it became a grimace. The effect was subtle – the mouth, the nose and the eyes were just a little out of proportion but I was amazed that nobody noticed.
All this porn, all this treating humans as objects seems to numb us a lot.
This article is powerfully written. I have also “worked hard at ignoring the billboards on buses and at the sides of roads, but the fact is the images are there, affecting all of us anyway.” I feel a silent and unexpressed rage at the depth to which humanity has now accepted the unacceptable…or perhaps, more truly put, that I have accepted the unacceptable. To portray women like this is becoming more and more extreme: at what point will it stop?
I add my voice to yours Rachel, Enough is enough. I too am one who has chosen not to see the magazines and videos that are so sexually explicit but at the same time am shocked by them. We all have to speak up and say loud and clear that these images and behaviours are deeply damaging and are not acceptable in our (so-called) civilized world.
It is sad to see that women and men have become objectified.
This unrealistic portrayal means that society sets a bar – for themselves and others.
Men can see women as these goddesses with toned backsides who endorse sexual abuse – and women can see men as these box ticking hunks who have a body to die for but are tough and dominant.
So we’re already setting unrealistic markers because the TV/ celeb role models told us that is how the world is.
Sadly, music videos are just one area in which the media exploits this and keeps society small, self conscious and constantly trying to obtain something outside of oneself.
Yes – it is getting worse, but that’s exactly why it is so important to expose what is really going on.
Rachel – you’ve certainly done that in this amazing blog!
Rachel, there are no words to describe what you have shared here. This is an article I will re-read again and again and again. There is so much here, so many great questions for one to explore individually and collectively. Even though I have never been in a music video and behaved in this way, as I read your article I have a feeling that I have also subscribed to this way in how I have viewed and treated my body and this sophisticated ‘open-mindedness’ and liberal, laissez-faire attitude I adopted. Through the self-respect I have developed, through the support I have received from Universal Medicine, there is a strength in me coming through that my body is not to be used as a sexual object in any way, shape or form and neither is anybody else’s – man, woman or child. This I now see as a form of abuse that is totally unacceptable and needs to be eradicated from our world. I will post more as I explore further.
Isn’t it incredible to reflect on the absolute lack of care, and as you so beautifully expressed it “liberal and laissez-faire attitude” we adopt. In my twenties I treated myself in a way I would never do today, yet at the time it seemed so normal….after all everyone was doing the same.
One of the reasons I did not speak up was the pressure to be “normal”, fit in and not be too strange or confronting. “Open mindedness” was just another way of saying compliant and unquestioning.
However, being “normal” has never brought the change we so urgently need. And “open mindedness” has just hastened the slide into the degenerate state that fills our world.
Thank you Shevon for bringing so much more to light.
Rachel, an amazing article, you cover it from all angles. We are so contradictory about porn and sex, on the one hand we quite rightly abhor paedophilia, yet we casually allow sexual images everywhere and music videos are now soft and in some cases porn. And we pretend that it doesn’t affect us, yet they do, otherwise they wouldn’t be used – crazy isn’t it and yes well past time to say enough.
I myself didn’t realise how much I’d gotten used to blocking out pictures of women on billboards, until one day I saw an ad by a company based on the theme of real women and these women did indeed have shapes like me, and it hit me that I didn’t normally see this, I had to look twice, as it wasn’t what I was used to seeing, just shows how normalised the images we see or not can become.
Upon beginning reading this article, I connected with a deep rage within myself as I too, have felt some of which you have expressed. I found it filled with such richness and much for every reader to ponder, question and inspire to call out this insidiousness which we have permitted to invade our society and say enough is enough.
Thank you Rachel, for lighting the way.
Rachel, thank you for this extremely powerful wake-up call. As I have neither children
nor visit a gym, I had no idea that we had slid so far down that slippery slope!
Such decadent displays in the past have often been synonymous with a declining
civilisation. Let’s hope that this time we can read the signs and take action.
Thank you Rachel this is a subject that the world needs to stand up and address. There was a program I watched the other day about the Pornafacation of todays young. At the end of the story they showed that kids age 5 are now in a simplistic way, in some areas being taught sex education. With cartoons and drawings showing what is not acceptable and if anyone should show them photos like that they should tell an adult.
In 2013 there was 7.125 billion people on the planet…2.3 billion were connected to the web.
Steve. I agree that it is not acceptable to be showing children as young as 5 sex education material. Let them grow up rather than have their innocence taken away so young.
Rachel,you are a true power house, never holding back and always straight to the point!Thank you for writing this blog.I remember turning off the T.V so many times when my children were little and yes, it has got worse,much worse.
And worse still Mary, pressure to comply and join in. We cannot be seen to be a prude! Our natural innate self respect, self love and dignity seemingly have no place in such a world, and so it is time for us to re-claim those gorgeous qualities and make life about the expression of them, first and foremost.
This article has revealed a lot. For years I have found music videos to be too sexual and leave nothing to the imagination. What kind of message is this sending to our young and impressionable. Is there a regulating body who monitor if videos are too sexual?
Hi Rachel, your blog is much needed in a world that has accepted porn as the norm. This has gone on for far too long. From a young age our eyes are bombarded with sexual images, TV, Videos Media, so it becomes an accepted part of our society and we numb ourselves to it because no one else seems to be speaking up. Children see these images but no one is telling them they are wrong and so they grow into adults thinking that the sexualisation of women and men is the norm. I remember when I was young (so this was the 60’s) being at a friend’s house and they showed me some pornagraphic magazines that their father had hid in the house. I remember giggling with my friend thinking it was funny (maybe because we had found her father’s hidden stash) but I don’t remember feeling bad or this is wrong, so I had already numbed myself to seeing what was before my eyes. If someone had pointed out to me then that this is wrong, and why it was wrong, maybe later in life I would have had more respect for my body. It is difficult to say how much seeing those images affected how I then related to my body as I got older, but I feel it would have contributed to how I saw things later in life. I also remember thinking there was nothing wrong with going topless on the beach, but now I can see it is another step in not loving my body enough to say no. All these ‘small” things in life build up a disregard for our bodies that can then allows us to accept the pronographic images and the sexualisation of our bodies. As long as we don’t hold the innate love and respect for ourselves and see the beauty in each and everyone of us we will allow the exploitation of our bodies to continue. Thank you Rachel for speaking up.
Yesterday I wanted to look at a very cute film clip of an Australian bird doing a mating dance online. Before the clip came on there was an advertisement for women’s underwear, with a headless model writing in her undies…apparently very sexy as only a women with no head can be.
This was a nature film clip, one that children might want to look at, yet here it was with an advertisement filled with imagery that could fill a thesis on the levels of harm and abuse it conveyed in 30-40 seconds. It could be switched off, but only after 11 seconds – time enough to send the message, loud and clear.
Entrenched harm is there at every level. We need to call it out.
Inspired, I will now see if I can write a complaint about that ad to whoever hosted the clip. Our voices have value and power, but only when used!
I loved reading this article as there’s a lot of truth here.
I remember growing up and seeing a lot of music videos on the TV over the years. I remember as I got older and older the clothes these dancers and singers would wear would get smaller, tighter and more see-through. It just shows how acceptable this type of pornography has become in society.
I also remember as these trends started to be introduced, my peer groups would follow and suddenly wearing a skirt at or below your knee was unfashionable. I know that in the past it was seen as risqué to have your ankles on display, now it seems perfectly acceptable to show everything except for your underwear…
I agree with all that is being called out and the Truth that’s expressed here. I remember sometime ago watching a music video that came through to me from You Tube and feeling horrified. It was then I realised that there is all this debate around porn being seen by young teenagers but actually this is just the end result. If kids are watching these videos from as young as 3-4 years by the time they reach 11-12 years is it possible they have become desensitised to what they then see in Pornographic movies. The music videos are the the start of the slippery slide. Thank you Rachel for a powerful piece of writing.
Brilliant blog Rachel. Enough is enough. I have 2 young grand children. I have fears for the exposure they will be subjected to. We need to stop this relentless abuse of us all and bring back love and tenderness.
Wow Rachel, your article is very powerful. I have tears rolling down my cheeks, I feel shocked to read this but know that what you write is true, I can feel how I have ignored what is going on.
I see given up, hunched over teenagers and girls in winter in tiny skirts trying to look sexy and I hear a lot about this ‘stage’ of giving up as teenagers and that it is considered ‘normal’, a lot of parents I know talk about this stage and prepare themselves for it. Your article exposes what is going on and that this should in no way be considered normal, ‘Many young women and men are dull-eyed. Some of them have given up, barely speak and are perpetually physically hunched over. These are teenagers, at a time when vitality should be high, and life naturally glorious! According to some people, this state of apathy is just a ‘stage’ and ‘normal’. Apparently it is not normal to look radiant, with clear eyes and an open face. It is also not normal to dress with respect for self and the weather.’ Thank you for writing this.
Rachel, this is amazing and thank-you for articulating what has long been felt by myself and many others. I, too, was a music video junkie as a teen yet stopped watching when I had children – just too busy! When they’d grown a few years, I tried watching them again and found I simply couldn’t – I was shocked by the sexual violence and explicitness and could not watch with my children around. Nor did I want to. I have always said that if I couldn’t watch it with my kids it wasn’t worth watching (so I became a big but discerning kids tv fan!). And it wasn’t just the images either, the lyrics became increasingly offensive to the point now that it is actively promoted to be seen as a sex object because “it’s all happening around the back”; to “die young”; to “stay up all night” and to “get wasted”. These other messages get sung over and over to catchy tunes and are further imposing upon our young people to be sexual objects and that it’s not worth living long or well with natural vitality and their own innate beauty. Even as I write, I realise there is so much more harm in society’s complacency of this blight upon us than we are prepared to admit. Are we ready, truly ready, to take responsibility for this? It’s not hard to speak up about it once we do and certainly it is time to say: “Enough.”
It is incredible, as you say Rachel, that people can protest about a pedophile coming to live in their street, but see nothing wrong in letting their kids watch what are literally pornographic music videos in their own home. Somehow they haven’t made the link, or maybe they don’t watch the videos? You have really alerted me to this growing abuse that is all around us, I shall start talking about it when I see it, to whoever is around. It will be interesting to hear the responses.
Very true Ryan. Porn has been the norm for too long. These girls are beautiful and shine as they are and they don’t realise it. True parenthood is desperately needed.
A clarion call for change. Not a stone unturned. An amazing article Thank you . Enough is Enough!
Hi Annemarie, we cannot leave a stone unturned. Imagine 100 blogs on this subject, each person turning over the stones they see! Pornography would be debased, even if it takes a few years for it to completely disappear as people come to feel what it is doing to them.
More stones to be turned in so many facets of life.
So true Rachel. The illusion is thick. Thank you for the Inspiration.
Enough is enough awesome
Yes Graham.. how awesome that we can say it and write it and print it and share it with the world.
Thank you so much for this very powerful blog Rachel. I am cringing at how I too have had, until now, a veil over my eyes. It has inspired me to start the conversation with my teenage sons and share what you have written.
Thank you Jane, it was a joy to write. It got me out of bed at 1.30am…I was filled with the words that I had to get out of my finger tips! How wonderful to speak to your sons, and give them your essence as a stable reference point in a world that is pulling them every-which-way. They are blessed.
Rachel Mascord – a huge appreciation for this inspiring, informative and well written article. This needs to be on the front page of every newspaper in the world for people to have the possibility of feeling the truth in your words and how people worldwide are just in acceptance of this as ‘the norm’ . It is true – this is getting totally out of control and influencing children in a very profound and harming way. Comments in reply to this article are also deeply inspiring. No more sitting on the fence with blinkers on for me – Enough is Enough.
It is true Rachel that everyone needs to take responsibility along the pathway that takes us to this awful destination. I feel though that it is the silence of people, so called consumers, that has allowed the rot to go so very far. How much further it has to go really depends on us.
I recently had an opportunity to fill out a survey for the gym. It was an opportunity to express how I felt about the videos…but I asked myself later why did I wait for the survey and not initiate the conversation on the heels of writing this blog?
Why wait for permission to address what is so clearly wrong when that permission will perhaps never come?
This has been a strong lesson for me in claiming truth and claiming it in full.
It is affecting children, true. It is harming us all. I feel myself wanting to shrink when I see the sort of image on the side of a bus that I would really rather not see. We live in an ocean of pornographic imagery that we have become dull to, and skilled at ignoring. The more we ignore the stronger the imagery gets, just to get our attention.
How vital is it for us to see it and feel it in full again.
They are not feeling confirmed in the beauty that is naturally there. I guess that in the yearning to be acknowledged as beautiful they fall into the trap of going with what they have been told is beautiful, to their own detriment.
It is sad to see, and a wonderful thing Ryan that you can see the innocence and sweetness, no matter how they try to reject it.
Thank you Rachel, a very important area. Looking back whilst I can see how my generation allowed more pornography dressed up as art than the previous it’s clear that the next generation has gone a step further and then some and we allowed it. What is interesting is that I along with many others have just accepted it as normal. It is great to be reminded of what is really going on and choose to change that.
It is just a downhill slide, as we become increasingly dulled to the ill effects. It has to get more extreme to make an impression.
So strong and so true, enough is enough. Pornography in its many forms is pervasive in our societies and creates a separation from others that is very destructive. Censorship does need to be reviewed. Thank you for committing to challenge what needs to be challenged and call for change – I am inspired.
This is just a small start, and initiating call to awareness. And naturally it is not just about “banning” pornography – but getting real about what porn is and waking up to its effects.
As a man who has used porn throughout my teens and some of my twenties, I can attest to the fact that it does seriously skew your perception of women, men, sex, love-making and all that the foundations of our lives are based on – relationships. It took a long time to unpick all the harm that I had done to myself and I can’t honestly say that I feel completely free of it today. As you say Rachel, it is everywhere and anywhere. People use sex to sell just about everything from toothpaste to socks to cheese. It’s the one thing people respond to most, I would say because we have a serious lack of self-worth, self-respect, self-care and self-love on a societal level. We are so numb to the harm it does because we care more about getting stimulated. Nowadays if I catch myself looking at women in a sexual way, I can immediately feel how horrible it is for her and how denigrating it is for us both.
It is very inspiring to read that you are catching the look and the thought and feeling the effect…on both of you.
Pornography warps our thinking; it normalises self denigration and makes it OK and even worse, expected to just not care about yourself. I read an article recently that was describing the unprecedented levels of violence in porn. The women get so badly injured that they must leave the industry within months…appalling. And this is our new normal.
Thank you Jinya for being so honest. The fact that it is still with you today reveals how entrenched pornography and sexualised behaviour can become. I too suspect there are elements in me of this too.
I had a previous relationship with a man who had an addiction to porn. I worked hard to get him to see the harm…then I asked one of my brothers for advice…”Isn’t it reasonable for me to ask him NOT to do porn out of respect for me?”..my brother said “All men do it. There is nothing you can do.” And I gave up…I accepted it! But never again. This issue needs our integrity!
I so relate Jo. It is devastating to the man and his partner equally when he requires his transfixion with porn to be satisfied more than his need for true intimacy.
This is wonderful Fiona. There has been a silence drawn around the many who feel the harm of pornography – perhaps due to a fear of ridicule, or ostracism, or being perceived to be prudish. The more voices that are willing to say “no” to pornography, and call out the harm it is doing, the more it gives voice and courage to others who have always been in agreement.
That is how we bring about much needed change.
This really is the most amazing well written blog I have come across so far. What you are saying makes sense and yet never has it been said like this before. Thank you Dr Rachel Mascord for spelling it out to us and saying it as it is.
I do have blinkers on as I do not want to see this stuff, but nevertheless I am affected and I get this now after having it confirmed in your article.
You have answered a lot for me here as I started to notice how extreme the music videos with famous celebrities are, and then their public appearances in magazines and newspapers who cash in simply because of how they dress – it is nothing short of utter pornography.
Then there is the sweet girl next door image of another celebrity who I have watched over the years turn into a sex object but with the innocence bit on the top. To me it is the same – just a different coating one sugary and one in your face and raw for all to see.
You talk about open mindedness and I agree that is the cover up for saying I will say nothing and let it continue. By saying nothing we actually condone the actions by our inactions. I came across this quote ‘If we speak our truth then this is the first step to initiating change’.
You have inititated change Rachel in a big way and I am grateful that I chose to read this article because I have deliberately avoided the posts on this blogsite which were titled Pornography. So for me this is a first step and now nothing will hold me back from saying what I feel and in this case, this has to Stop.
So great that this has opened up your power in this area Bina. It is a very confronting thing to take off those blinkers that we put on to not see what is happening all around us. Once seen, we cannot help but express the truth about it to the world.
So many people are feeling the same way, and are reticent to express it…but the time for reticence is long gone, as society is showing us.
Thank You Rachel for your response. You have inspired me to share this article and I recently printed it and was approached by someone who was heavy into Pornography. They said they are ready to read it so that means they are ready to see and feel Truth because this is what comes out of this profound article. They know me to never deliver anything that I did not feel was Truth.
I love your comment about so many are reticent to express the truth about this to the world and the time for reticence is long gone…
Deep Appreciation to you Rachel and this blogsite for bringing this discussion out into the world at this time, allowing the Truth to be expressed.
That is awesome Bina. It shows what a powerful and true connection you have built with that person, that they are willing to “go there” and read it.
Bina, I am so inspired by your honesty here. On reading through all these comments this morning, I too am realising just how much I have preferred blinkers rather than speaking truth. What you say is so true – ‘By saying nothing we actually condone the actions by our inactions’ and ‘If we speak our truth then this is the first step to initiating change’. Thank you.
Beautifully said Bina. You express with such humility, openness and innocence here it is inspiring to feel. Approaching pornography and sexualised behaviour in our society in this way will only enable us to see more and will naturally inspire change as we will be open to seeing what action is needed. However when we block ourselves off, close off and don’t want to see or hear anything we’re not open to how we can contribute to real change.
Our innocence is such a precious asset, and yet how many of us have dedicated ourselves to shedding it as rapidly as possible, as though it is a burden or and impediment? It is perceived to be uncool and unsophisticated, rather than a delicate barometer that tells us when something is not right.
When we celebrate and live from our innocence, pornography stands out so starkly and is so repellant.
What I now feel, from reading these beautiful open comments is that just as it is time to say ‘no’ to porn, it is time to say ‘yes’ to innocence, openness, and our true delicacy…these are foundations for true discernment.
Thank you Rachel and Shevon, I love your sharing about saying “yes” to innocence, openness and true delicacy. The power that lies within those is true sexiness expressing pure joy and beauty!
Bina, your oneness and honesty is very inspiring. We as a society really need to look at what harm is being caused by porn, especially when young kids are sexting. Why are teachers not standing up and putting a stop to this? When we all stand up and say no more, only then will we have inspire teachers to make a change.
The comments that Alison shared are telling, teenagers can easily feel how empty such videos are but get sucked into being a part of the problem by peer pressure. Regulation has to be there to protect our young children and give them a future that isn’t harmed by normalising sexualisation of everything. Talking about it and standing up to what is not acceptable is a great start.
Thank for sharing Rachel and yes Stephen it is time we talk about it and stand up to what is not acceptable. We can all feel the harm and emptiness in the pornography but choose to ignore it, to override what we feel, to get a bit of relief from the world.
I was just formulating another blog in my head today on this very subject. The sad news is videos are now officially x-rated. I’ve seen two recently that were so easy to bring up on YouTube I actually cried. I’m struggling as to post on my blog or not. The exposure, though necessary, is not something I want to be a part of. The worst part is they are #1 songs our 10-18 years olds are listening to. And the supporters are masking the pornification and extreme female only objectification as ‘art and humor’. I’m seriously deflated.
Ah. The post above me mentions one. Ugh.
Hi Catherineanned44, thank you for your reply. I can understand why you feel deflated by this issue. It is also important to see that many people are seeing this use of pornography for what it is. They are writing about it in the mainstream press too. When we have felt and seen the truth, our role is to present it, and keep presenting it. We do not need to be shy or back down in the face of disapproval, judgement or apathy. Like the little boy in the fairytale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, we just keep pointing out the truth.
At some point, the natural respect and decency within the heart of everyone will re-awaken. All that is required on our part is steadiness and patience. Rachel.
Thank you Catherine-Ann – your comment on this blog has also brought something to my awareness – I am shocked at how so much is available on You tube (and others) with little or no censorship. It also saddens me to realise how much I have ignored things like this and chosen to be part of the problem rather than standing up and being a voice for a deeper awareness of the insidious harm with what the majority are also now regarding as ‘normal’. How far down this slipper slope do we have to go.
You have raised so many important things Rachel. The flooding of pornographic images and music is a huge issue. It is interesting to see teenagers’ reactions to Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines – a distasteful song with two video clips, one for general release (still disturbing) and the unclassified one that is freely available on YouTube that portrays topless 18 year olds bouncing around. The song has been described by some commentators as ‘rapey’ – I feel that this is too cute a label for something that is so denigrating to women and men. It certainly blurs the line for ‘no’ actually meaning no in consenting to sex.
There is a presentation of teenagers watching the clip and then interviewed about their responses. You can see the discomfort on the girls’ faces. They ‘like’ the song but are obviously disturbed by the clip. A young man interviewed on watching the clip said he felt “lesser for watching it”. One of the girls says she felt ‘uncomfortable’. The reactions are troubling… but some of the teenagers really do call it out for being exploitative. There are a few that say they feel less for watching it and violated by having seen it.
What is also problematic is that they can see the obvious problem with the video, but the message of the song (that sex without consent is ok) is lost in the catchiness of the song which the teenagers largely like. So the message of pornography – that it is ok to denigrate women and sexualise them – succeeds with or without the video.
Yes indeed, Alison. There is a cunning intelligence behind the putting together of these ‘soft porn’ videos with the most amazingly catchy songs. “Blurred Lines” in particular stands out – I remember listening to it on the radio in my car and bopping along to it, and then being horrified when I saw the less disturbing version on daytime TV. I felt completely violated. As Rachel A. says above, this is a colossal money spinning operation, with businesses deliberately hooking young people more and more into the sexualised version of reality portrayed in the videos. We have got to do something about this.
I agree completely Marika. There IS a way to be sexy, and gorgeous, without giving yourself and true beauty away. You can be deeply self respectful, deeply beautiful and sexy, but it is not be found in the ads and video clips that abound today.
Thank God for Natalie’s gorgeous clip for “Just Take The Picture“. It is true medicine for the world.
Isn’t it astonishing to find ourselves staring back at our history and having to ask ourselves have we changed at all from the animalistic darkness that we read about/watch from medieval times. We are more connected than ever before yet we abuse ourselves and each more than ever before…we take technology and turn it instantly into a weapon and hand it to our kids. There is no safety catch for text messages…until it’s often too late. As is often mentioned true role models are starting to step up and be celebrated for the self respect they bring, I for one aim to be a role model and deny the pressure of being a square…I know and love the fact I can be sexy without having to send a sex-tee.
So true Natalie Benhayon shows us that we can be deeply sexy but remain intact. Not getting lost in the need to please or impress but to move and be in the world from a place of deep connection – Natalie so beautifully reflects that this is what true sexy really is.
I will never tire of watching this video of Natalie, it is super sexy without any ounce of imposition.
Thank you Rachel for your well thought out and easy to read presentation of the current situation regarding sexually explicit imagery being presented basically EVERYWHERE we look. It is overwhelming. I’ve shook my head, averted my eyes, signed petitions, and refused to watch video clips that I know contain said images. I have not actually seen the Miley Cyrus video you refer to. Why would I watch something that I know would gross me out and make me feel sad? Still there was a part of me resigned to accepting that this is the way it is. Well, your article has re-lit a fire in me that was smouldering. I will be speaking up from now on!
You have raised an interesting question Gayle. Do we watch or not? I was shocked by what I saw when I returned to the gym. By not watching it, I had avoided the confrontation, but had lost connection with where things had fallen to. I am learning to look, but from my heart, never to loose connection to myself, and never to give up again.
Rachel this is fantastic… it is so true, we as a society see these sexually degrading music clips as normal and our teenagers are mimicking the behaviour they see. Another scary point is, if this is seen as normal and a teenager wishes to push boundaries to show their mates they have goon one step further, what is it they are choosing, and will this be seen as normal and acceptable to the next generation? Like you say Rachel, to what point does it need to go before we step up and say “enough is enough”? I recently heard of a video game and the way to accrue points in the game is either bending over prostitutes in back alleys or selling drugs…
This is not progression, but just plain sad and demoralising.
Wow Toni, that is awful stuff.
One thing that disturbs me is when I see girls of 8 or 9 dancing like little pole dancers, and singing song lyrics that sound like a script from a porn video!!! By all means, allow young women to grow with awareness of their beauty and sexiness, but with a deep foundation of their sacredness and preciousness, for without that, how do they discern what to say yes, and what to say no to?
Also…
My daughter and I were looking through the target catalogue the other day and noticed that the girls aged around 7-10 were photographed looking sweet, just as themselves. Over the page the older girls – probably 12-14 were posed as sex symbols, pouty, staged – not themselves. It was a really clear difference. Gorgeous, happy, carefree to being made to be something – ‘sexy’, pouty, no longer themselves.
It’s EVERYWHERE.
Yes Kate… everywhere, down to the catalogue.
Thank you for raising the issue of the song ‘Blurred Lines’. It is a song I have avoided, but I have heard the lyrics are beyond appalling. It has created an emotional uproar, so I guess it has ‘won’ on both counts… those who ‘love’ and absorb it, and those who go into reaction. It is time, that we say “enough”, free of emotion, free of reaction, but clear from our hearts, and from the bodies that we have built love, sacredness and true beauty into.
I was looking at a kids clothing catalogue the other day and it was even worse than this. It was the 7-10 year olds who were sexualised. Amazing. Shocking. And horrible to look at. The images weren’t selling the clothes through the lovely colours and patterns (which was even more insane because the clothes themselves were actually really lovely), they were selling the clothes through sex. Plain and simple. You look at the pictures and you don’t see the clothes, the colours. You don’t see cute kids having fun. You just see sex. And all that comes with that, as expertly outlined in this blog. 7-10 year olds.
Agree Ottto. This is really ugly indeed.
Amazing Rachael. It’s a tricky one. As a parent of an 8 year old I just keep her away from it as much as I can. That will change to me explaining it to her as she gets older. I won’t let her watch ‘rage’. Kids at school know all the songs though and she comes home singing them. There is one out at the moment that is full tilt naked women breasts and vagina on show by a group called blurred lines. It reeks empty sex. It shocked me, everyone at uni was talking about it, told me to watch it on line saying it was so funny and such a great song. It was cheeky boys living the dream. Made them feel like dancing. I made it through about 30 seconds and turned it off reeling. The next day when they asked me about it I was blunt about what I felt and what they were getting as they danced to it… One women said I know but it just makes me feel like dancing so it’s ok. I don’t think she really understood the depth of the porn. It is strong. The image portrayed of women definitely affected me as a young teen. I felt so wrong and fat and ugly. If only I knew then how beautiful I am, what beauty is. I will make sure my daughter knows exactly what those images are. That beauty comes from deep within. That those women are people and the impact of what they are doing on them deep down. This is a really important issue you have raised that is affecting us all – all of the time.
I shudder at what you have shared here Kate with regard to the nature of these videos and how they are viewed as funny. Rachel Mascord is correct – Enough is enough.
Great article. Really awesome you have put all these together. It is a great reference and support when acknowledging this apparently inoffensive, sophisticated, appealing, funny and trendy phenomenon of our digital culture. A great support when dealing and commenting all these with our children and young people, and as you said between us, the adults (still carrying and dealing with our childhood hurts). How many times do we hold back, pretending things are not there? We don’t want to come across as something that will threaten our gained position and social acceptability… we are very scared of speaking out because we might be judged in the wrong way. Well, with your article you have shown us that we need to express what is not right, not from a place of superiority or self-righteousness, but from a place of truth, a place of love, where we mention things such as self-love, self-respect, self-honour, self-awareness… we need to use these words with the clarity and love behind. We as humanity really need to hear them, in order to come back to what we all know deep down we miss so much. Thank you.
It is true Luz, we hold back so much all of the time. We are so afraid of rocking the boat… but what boat? The ‘boat’ of society is so flawed, so unsupportive for the majority of humanity that it needs to be rocked, shaken down, and rebuilt on the foundation of self-respect, equal respect for all, self-love, and ultimately love.
Thank you Rachel for this amazing article. You are spot on and it’s a devastating process, specifically youth are in. It started with playboy and penthouse and the selling of a lifestyle for the free thinking, open-minded middle class men, and since then pornography has found its way into the mainstream of society affecting any area you can imagine. It was a strategically planned process of tainting everything with sexual images and making people getting used to those images. It’s a huge business and it’s all about money making.
For me it’s real evil, because it’s not only a sector or area or some people doing it, everybody is involved. The big TV channel owners own porn channels, every hotel has porn channels and they refuse to shut them down because it’s a huge money machine. So it’s not that there is the porn industry and then there are the other entertainment industries, it’s all together the same people.
I work with youth on the normalisation of violence, and internet porn is a big topic there as porn has ‘hijacked our sexuality’ and boys and young men, starting by the age of 11 or even younger are learning their sexuality from internet porn. Girls and young women are not watching it so much, sometimes when they get older and their boyfriends want them to. Basically what happens is, that when they have their first sexual relations the boys want to ‘play out’ what they learned through internet porn and as most of them are watching the very violent version of internet porn, which is ‘gonzo porn’ it’s all about violence, abusing women, objectifying women and mistreating them. It’s never about love, intimacy, etc.
There are the first testimonies of young people (around 18 years) who are in therapeutic treatment, because of having serious issues with the abusive way of having lived their sexuality at a very young age. They feel that basically every time they had sexual intercourse that they have been raped, even though it was consented, but they thought that this is what sex is about and so they forced themselves into it. They do not blame their boyfriends, because they say they did not know better.
Related to this is the growing perception of women that they only feel attractive when they look like a porn-star, basically learned from all the porn-star like popstars as you well mentioned (from Britney Spears to Miley Cyrus), the media, etc. It looks like that the lack of true love and intimacy has been filled with porn and the physical extremes.
There are studies about the ‘brain addiction’ to porn and they say it’s similar to street drugs. I read about a study in the USA where young men are so affected by the high consumption of porn that they by the age of 25 had erectile dysfunction. They started to study this and could not find a control group as it was impossible to find men within the age of 14-30 who were not consuming internet porn!!! They would consume up to 8 hours a day internet porn! Often they were not capable of having a relationship as they did not know how to relate lovingly and create intimacy and to enjoy being with a partner.
So for me it’s like a very dangerous disease that infiltrates everything and everybody and nobody is aware of it. We have got to a state of normalisation of violence and pornography that is really worrying.
It is very important to raise awareness about what’s going on and to help young people to build self care and self loving relationships with themselves and their bodies, so that they have the power to say NO to this.
As a parent of two girls I talk very openly with them about this and the evil that is behind it and that there is no love in this. They are still not relating to boys, but the boys in our older daughter’s class are watching all internet porn. So I feel it’s so important for them to really build their bodies from love and be very self-caring that they ‘naturally’ will never accept less than this, but the peer pressure is huge. I feel the more true love they live during their lives the less needy they will be when it comes to their first relationships. The same with the music videos and fashion, I really support them in building their sexyness from self love!!! For every mainstream music video they watch they have to watch ten times Natalie Benhayon’s true sexyness!!!!
What you have written is so amazing and so important it truly needs to be its own blog, not simply a comment. Your awareness around this issue is gold. Thank you so much for bringing more light to my blog by sharing it, but please, get it out there under its own glorious power.
It’s such an important discussion. Thank you both of you for your powerful contributions. Enough is enough – I love Rod’s idea of taking a survey in the Gym – change starts at the ground level. I was interested by your comment “OK, it’s not X-rated”. That’s the problem, This random barometer. Behind which the money-makers, advertisers, video directors can all hide. But the effect of this imagery is deeply, deeply damaging (as has been so clearly explained in this whole blog) whether there are still thin strips of clothing on the body, or not.
Correct Otto. A technical/legal box ticking definition that leaves people damaged, and allows the harm to go on…..
I agree with you Rachel, what Rachel Andras has written ‘truly needs to be its own blog’.
Rachel and Rachel, this discussion is so important. Families and schools need to get equipped to talk about it with young people. I have watched porn in the past and have felt the damage that it has done in lots of ways from the way that I have viewed women, relate with them and in expression of intimacy. There is a yearning within anyone who consumes porn and by looking at the source of that craving we will eliminate the need for it. It has to start with self-care and self-love.
Powerful addition to this article Rachel and thank you for sharing your experience. It is so amazing to hear how you are preparing your children for what lays ahead of them and supporting them to build their self love and self respect from within, so that they do not succumb to accepting pornographic relationships. In an era where the entire internet is available to us on a telephone, we need to be doing all the educating and preparing we can, so that all young teenagers, boys and girls alike, have a healthy benchmark from which to regard these behaviours. Through real and open education and true information they will be able to see pornography for what it truly is, a fake and dire substitute for the real thing, a poor excuse for real intimacy and true love.
Rachel, this is so true. I am astonished to read that in the study the young men would consume up to eight hours a day in internet porn – that is a full time job! The ideas we have have about relationships and how we need to be in them are formed very early on and can become so ingrained that we accept “That’s the way it is”. Although the internet was not so widespread when I was in my teens, I remember taking some of my ideas about sex from teenage romantic fiction and sex manuals like “The Joy of Sex”. Although I craved to be in a loving relationship, whenever I was with a man, throwing my body around sexually was the way I decided I would get that love and intimacy I longed for. Now from the immense healing I have done with Universal Medicine, I have much more respect and regard for my body and building and connecting with the Love and intimacy deep inside my own body is the only way to go. This then becomes our strongest authority if we choose to say NO as any sexualised behaviour or porn will not be in-line with the Love we have built within ourselves.
Thank you for raising this issue Rachel and for expressing it so clearly. I agree with everything you say and yes, I can feel how I just put my head in the sand like the great majority. We feel the rot and because it feels so yucky, we blot it out and ignore it and join the given up majority, but this needs to be discussed if anything is going to change. Your article has put this on to my agenda of topics to talk about with friends and family.
I have been discussing it with my patients and work colleagues. So many people are disturbed by these images, but feel powerless to do anything about it. As more people write about it, and say “no” (hats off to the anti-page 3 campaigners in the UK) people start to become aware they do have a say, and they do have a choice. They are not ‘wowsers’, they are expressing what they feel.
Thank you Rachel!! Your blog is full of truth and love. The contrast between your expression and what empty and totally lost human beings ‘offer’ to humanity in the name of freedom of expression could not be sharper. Your expression offers an opportunity for everyone to set free from this degrading, normalised, even mainstream, pervasive phenomenon. It invites us to lift the veil of ignorance and to really feel into what does this tell about us as a collective.
Pornography harms those that consume it. It also harms those who do not consume it but learn to live with it around as a normal thing even if its devastating effects abound all around. It invites us to really feel how, why and to what extent this is really harming. It wakes people like me that I could have said: oh, since I do not go there, this is not an issue for me, therefore, its existence does not affect me. It may not affect me, but it may affect the lives of people I run across everyday who are tremendously disconnected from their own bodies and because of it are easily capable of (self) harming behaviours.
One final point, you may have heard (as I did) that people may justify their addiction to porn using socially valued phrases like ‘open mind’. It is time to say clearly, the use of such phrases to justify it, is a clear sign of the level of disconnection and of numbness many human fellows have with their own bodies (fed by pornography itself). Without this, pornography would not find fertile ground to grow and grow and to keep entering our homes one way or another.
Thank you Eduardo. ‘Open mind’ may be society’s way, but how is the body going? Thank you for raising this aspect of this issue. It is so true that we allow things to go unchecked when we imagine we are not directly affected. The gym membership was great for me… it thrust me right into video clips, and body image stuff… two things I have been steadfastly ignoring, and two things that are affecting us all, all of the time.
So true Eduardo, just because we are not users, just by ignoring it we are condoning it in our society. It erodes our innocence and because we don’t hold our innocence as sacred, we continue to allow it and other equally detrimental expressions to exist in the world. If something in our society is harming us, we have a responsibility and a right to halt its existence.
Rowena, you have reminded me of something with this comment. I can recall my innocence feeling like a liability to be discarded as soon as possible…not my most sacred treasure. I had a face that clearly showed my shock at pornographic imagery or vulgar comments. It showed my innocence and natural dignity. I used to get teased about it, so I learned to desensitise myself, and mask it with a “cool” and “knowing” facade.
The blessing is the innocence never goes. It can be re-claimed and loving restored to its rightful fullness.
One of the reasons I don’t buy magazines, or watch much tv, is the way almost every advert, and much of the clothing worn in entertainment shows, is heavily sexualised. This promotes the idea that the body is for sex, not for nurture or caring, and somewhere in the socialised human psyche, if it’s for sex, then it’s …dirty. What an awful load to be putting on our youngsters. I agree with Rowena, it’s no longer enough not to look at this stuff, it’s time to sow some anti-porn seeds.
I agree Rowena and by ignoring it, it is never going to go away.
Eduardo, the point that you make about the dis-connection to our bodies leading to harming behaviour, is it. When we are disconnected we cannot feel the harm we are doing to ourselves and to society at large, as it is through the care of ourselves through our bodies that we get to feel how much we are a part of life and therefore connected with everything and everyone. Without having come across Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon, I would have continued the sexually harming behaviours I was conducting, but when we start to connect with our bodies, things we once subjected ourselves to, without blinking an eyelid, can no longer remain.
AWESOME blog Rachel. You have expressed so clearly what I too strongly feel. It is a subject that I find myself including in conversations with people I know, and I have to say my comments are not always welcome but I don’t back down as I too feel ‘Enough is Enough’. As you point out, how are these young people to grow up with these videos as role models of how to be? It all adds up to a disastrous outcome for these young people as they move towards adulthood and beyond.
I feel we ALL have a responsibility to voice our feelings so another way can be heard. Great how you pointed out how some would say “you have the choice to look or not”. Ridiculous, for these images are everywhere we look. From household cleaning products to chocolate, it’s all got a hint of porn in the advertising. Even clothes that are meant to cover bodies are sold to us by hanging off and exposing bodies.
Whatever does this say about us as a society that we have come this far away from truth. Again I agree ‘Enough is Enough’.
The images don’t leave us alone. We are bombarded, even to those terrible, massive bill-board ads for erectile dysfunction products. How does a parent explain that to their child as they are driving home from school? It is time to take off the self imposed blindfold, and see where we have allowed ourselves to slide to.
It is inspiring that you speak up, in the face of opposition, and disagreement. We need a loving voice of reason to express all that needs expressing.
So true Beverley, we use sex and women’s bodies to sell everything. We are so used to it that we are just not registering the harm it is doing. What does a young girl think of herself when surrounded by all these images, messages, videos and what does it engender in young men? It’s time to take measure and create a new way to live, honour and connect to who we truly are – our current expression is a poor reflection of who we truly are.
Very true Beverley, we don’t truly have a choice to ignore pornography and it is a disaster waiting to happen in regards of our younger generation and how they develop adult relationships. It creates addiction and worse still, violates the true gentleness and tenderness that real relationships are built on, infecting them with violence and abuse. It is a sorry mess we need to start addressing now and thank you for sharing how you don’t hold back just because others don’t want to hear.
Definitely Rachel, ‘Enough is Enough’ and we all have the freedom of speech to say ‘NO’. It is about time we truly addressed these issues you have so eloquently and astutely raised. We accept the use of (soft or hard) pornography to sell products that we otherwise don’t want or need and as you say, we become numb to what we are seeing. Time to wake up and act.
The numbness is so pervasive. How much in life have we allowed ourselves to become blind to? How much have we hoped these things will go away? You have raised another aspect of this Rowena, the fact that we are saying “yes” to the imagery when we buy the product. The two come together, and cannot be separated.
I agree Rowena. Using porn to sell products has become the norn and we have enough of it. It is time for change and reclaim our divinity as women.
Yes, Maryline, we are divine, precious, sacred… as are men. These images sell us ridiculously and heart-breakingly short and deny the radiant tender beauty of our essence.
Wow and amazingly well said. This needs and deserves to be shared worldwide. This is a brilliant and intelligent heartfelt piece of writing that exposes us as a society. I say yes it’s time to throw that 5kg dumbbell through the TV screen by saying no to these horrific sexualised images that I too find deeply disturbing. We as society should no longer be willing to turn a blind eye and let things slide further until we act. Things have already gone too far.
How about we express how we feel to the gym owners, to see if they are willing to explore this… before we resort to the dumbbell?
It has been too easy for us to put on blinkers and allow things to slide to such an extent. What a blessing that so many are awakening, and saying “no”. What I have become aware of in myself, is a reticence about saying “no” to people like the gym owners. It is time to say enough to that holding back, and give them an opportunity too.
I think that’s a great idea, Rachel. I have been put off going to the gym because of the very loud music and the images that are shown on the music videos. I am going to talk to my gym about it. I know I may be the only one complaining, but its true we have to start somewhere and stand up to what we know is not right on so many levels.
I agree, Dr. Hall, a dumbbell lobbed through the TV screen would be a good start!
Or less violently, simply activate the off-switch!
All Broadcasters should have to sign a simple contract which clearly defines what they can and can’t show, and the Government should enforce it.
Judging by the article, most people in this gym are trying to avoid the embarrassing images anyway.
What a great idea but as the media won’t even stick to their own code of ethics it is up to us as a society to so no to this. Fortunately at my gym they now only show news or lifestyle programs. However it is not simply a matter for gym owners it is a matter for the program makers, TV schedulers, music industry and all of mankind to say no this is unacceptable and wrong as by not speaking out we are condoning that which we are seeking to avoid.
Having rejoined a gym recently after a long break, I totally agree with everything you say Rachel. I was gobsmacked to see how the music clips have stepped up to R rated levels that I didn’t think would be permitted (including full nudity) at a facility where a broad cross section of people attend. Then there is the constant doof doof beat – almost as if to impose others racy rhythms onto you.
Perhaps one redeeming feature is that the majority of members, including myself, appear to ignore the screens and use headphones to listen to their own music or watch the inbuilt TVs on the equipment.
So rather than slip into complacency and merely accept that’s how it is, it’s time for me to ask the gym to consider surveying members for feedback. We have to start somewhere.
Yes. It is time we step up whenever we can, where ever it feels right for us to do so. In asking your gym to do a member survey, regarding both the music and the video content, there will be many who will benefit. And some of us who benefit won’t even be attending the same gym – or any gym! But the results will be felt throughout humanity.
Yes Gayle, so true. To be free of the driving, angst-filled rhythm and images would be a blessing for all.
Thank you Gayle for your wisdom here. Often we can think there’s no point in doing or saying anything as things won’t change but knowing that by speaking up it has a ripple effect for the rest of humanity then it’s worth doing rather than giving up. Reading these comments are very encouraging.
Great Rod. I have felt shy to say to the gym owner “Hey! Are these screens and clips really needed?”. A survey is a great idea and a great starting point.
Brilliant blog. I deeply appreciate its brutal and honest reflection of how things are, and also Rod’s comment for its practicality. Yes this is how things are, and yes we need to start speaking up in a sensible way whenever we have an appropriate opportunity.
Amazing article Rachel. It is truly amazing how insidious it has become, and how much porn and sexualised marketing and music truly effects men and women. As a man, I still notice the odd hook and belief that comes from the ideals projected by these things.
So true Joel. Those hooks are there for all of us. A big one I have noticed is the insidious body comparison, in which the observer always comes out feeling less.