Pornography and the Threat of Men

Why men don't want to be viewed as threats and why porn condemns them

Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

One of the major tensions between the sexes today comes from the belief that men are inherently predators, abusers, and a threat to women, children, and the vulnerable. This is rarely said explicitly, but a constant suspicion about men gives them the sense that they are a threat. No mentally and spiritually healthy person likes to feel like they are a threat to the vulnerable. You begin to develop a complex. You start to feel hatred toward yourself, an unhealthy suspicion toward yourself. Disgust with being male. Or you lash out. You grow bitter at those who suspect the worst in you. In the worst cases, you become the very thing they suspect, because you feel like you are already condemned anyway. This is horrible and inexcusable, but I believe it happens. The ugly truth is that many men are dangerous. They are abusive and negligent and predatory. For the man who is virtuous, the suspicion that men are threats feels like an unjust and discriminatory condemnation. Yes, there are countless examples of abuse and neglect by men that one can point to, but it’s not fair that I should be judged for their sins, they lament. After all, it’s only a minority that are committing the abuse. This kind of thinking has led some men to become very bitter toward women, diving deep into the “manosphere” and embracing misogyny. How can men respond to being viewed with suspicion without falling into misogyny?

It seems to me that this tension is significantly motivated by the proliferation of hardcore pornography. When pornography is so widely consumed at such a young age and when it is so violent and demeaning to women, isn’t it natural for women to view men as potential threats to their safety? When your data points for abuse are not just stories you read in the newspaper and reports or experiences of abusers in your life but knowledge of every boy you know who views pornography, would that not make you suspicious of men? If the norm in our society is that young men are raised to fantasize about abusing women, why shouldn’t women view men with suspicion? That seems highly rational and responsible!

But this is unsustainable. It’s destructive to women and men and future generations. Women need to be able to trust men to be safe, secure, trustworthy protectors. Men need to be trusted and respected by women. It is only under these conditions that relationships can be formed and marriages can happen. A society of suspicion and normalized abuse will lead to the dissolution of marriage and the decline in childbirth, both of which are already happening. Because marriage and families require safety, security, and trust. They require men who are virtuous and women who are trusting.

If men are tired of being viewed with suspicion, it is incumbent upon them to end the normalization of pornography in our country. On a personal level this means not participating in pornography yourself, which can be difficult when porn bots are thrown at you from every angle and avenue online, but it can be done. Block them. Report them. Run from them. Be the kind of man who can honestly say to a woman who asks, “No, I don’t look at porn.” On a societal level, advocate for the restriction and banning of pornography, starting with age verification laws. Encourage other men to resist. Be a mentor to younger men who are struggling. Normalize not looking at porn.

To some extent, men may just have to live with the cloud of suspicion around them so long as 62% of men view porn regularly and that porn is often violent and demeaning to women. The best we can do is to live virtuously ourselves and train our sons to live virtuously, to have grace for women when they are slow to trust us. Rather than respond with bitterness for suspicion, we must learn to respond with compassion. The woman before you who is skeptical that you are safe may have been harmed by men who were trained by pornography to be abusive. In other words, contemporary men may simply have to earn the trust of women more than they would have even twenty years ago due to the ubiquity of hardcore pornography. Is that fair? Maybe not. Does it matter? No. It is what it is. If you are a man, your duty is to face the situation you are in and earn that trust. Demonstrate that you are safe and secure. Show that you are worthy of respect. I’m not saying it’s easy. But it is the situation you find yourself in.

It will be difficult to endure the suspicion of others while you prove yourself. As I said in the introduction, no one likes to feel like they are a threat to the vulnerable. It weighs on you. The key is to regard yourself rightly. If you are not actually a threat to the vulnerable, then you can allow that suspicion to roll off your back. Ground yourself in what you know about yourself. What kind of person are you actually, based on your actions? Are you kind? Are you safe? Are you responsible? If that’s what your actions demonstrate, then don’t allow the possibility of you being someone harmful condemn you. Yes, you will have fleeting impure thoughts. Everyone does. Repent of those and don’t dwell on them. But in Christ you are not defined by those thoughts. You are righteous because of Christ’s imputed righteousness. I worry particularly for young men who suffer from impure thoughts and are viewed with suspicion by the world. I worry that they will condemn themselves as fundamentally dirty and unsafe, when in reality they are young men learning to control their passions with the help of the Holy Spirit. Fundamentally they are children of God. Yes, they are sinners, but they are fundamentally redeemed.

Women have a challenge in this pornified world, too. And that is they must be both on guard and gracious toward men. They must acknowledge the fact that many men will have had their imaginations altered by violent pornography. And yet they need to acknowledge that many men will have abstained from or repented of such behaviors and are worthy of trust and respect. The reality is that porn grabs many men at a young age, a very young age. And when prefrontal cortexes are still being formed, young men do stupid things that they later regret. Porn peddlers know this. (And this is why it’s so imperative for teenagers not to have their own smartphones and to be supervised on the internet.) Showing grace for men means allowing them to demonstrate their trustworthiness.

The tragedy in all this is that trust and love and respect and safety in sexual union is so beautiful. It literally is life giving. And the world works so hard to destroy what God has made beautiful and intimate and make it violent and impersonal. It breaks down trust not only in specific relationships, but across the sexes in general. We rebuild that trust person by person. Striving first of all to be virtuous ourselves, and then opening ourselves up to the possibility of virtue in others.

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Postscript: A reader wrote in and insightfully pointed out that someone could take from this article the idea that the problem is bad porn as opposed to good porn. When in actuality all porn use leads to abuse of some kind. That was certainly not my intention. For example, a husband or boyfriend who views non-violent porn (if there is such a thing) is almost certainly hiding it from his wife or girlfriend and therefore being manipulative and deceptive. My overall point remains the same, but this adds another layer of tragedy to the situation.