Machine-Gun Misogyny: Why It’s Not Okay To Use Porn To Promote Your Ministry
Blog, Essays, Social Justice — By Jo Hilder on June 19, 2012 at 12:00 pm
Yesterday morning I was scrolling my Facebook wall when I came across this post from the pastor of a local church.
“Machine Gun Preacher story in (Australian) Penthouse Magazine, May issue. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. 1 Corinthians 9:22.”
I almost choked on my Earl Grey. Er, I beg your pardon?
For those who haven’t heard of him, the “Machine Gun Preacher” is former Pennsylvanian drug-using biker turned evangelist and philanthropist Sam Childers. Childers recently toured Australia on a church speaking tour to coincide with the DVD release of a movie based on his story of the same name. I’ve neither heard Childers speak nor rented the DVD, but many of my friends have been inspired by his story. I was not really interested, but my interest was piqued by this apparent link between the well-known evangelist with an international ministry and an orphanage in Sudan, and an equally well-known porn magazine. How does a pastor get an article into such a publication, and how is it that nobody else apparently sees this as a problem? What’s going on in my own head that I actually feel there is one?
I went in search of the Penthouse article in question, online at first. I had to remove the safe search setting on my browser to even peruse any links to Penthouse magazine in the first place. I couldn’t find the article, so I messaged the pastor who Facebooked the status in the first place, and asked if he was sure about it.
Quite sure, he said. It’s on page 63.
Oh. Okay then.
There was just one thing to clarify after that – whether I was more uncomfortable with the idea that a Christian evangelist felt it was appropriate to have his story published in a porn magazine, or that this pastor could give me the page number without even flinching.
*****
I looked online all morning for the article without success, so I went out and visited half a dozen newsagents looking for the physical magazine. “Er, I’m actually a journalist.” I explained to one woman who very discreetly fumbled on my behalf in the secret drawers where they hide such things away from public view. I picked up the June issue and a few special issues and even girl-on-girl-on-girl special edition issues looking for the article. As it turns out, I must have missed the May edition by only a couple of days. In the end I had to give up because I was feeling physically sick. I began to feel increasingly…intimidated. Not by the images of the naked women (I’ve seen plenty of boobies and fannies in my time, and have a set myself), but by the atmosphere created by them. There was something about being in the proximity of those images that made me feel kind of trapped. I felt enveloped by an invisible gaze, like I myself was being viewed detachedly through a testosterone-fueled stupor from all directions. I felt physically and mentally vulnerable and unsafe – it’s really hard to describe, but the closest I can get is to say like I was caged in a rape dungeon and about to be breakfast. I wanted to get out of there.
I described all this to my husband last night, and he concurred. “You need to try and understand the kind of feelings these magazines are designed to stir up in men,” he said. I think I do understand. They seem designed to evoke a feeling in men that womens’ bodies are prey, a thing to be consumed, over and over and over. They’re designed to reduce a body down to a piece of warm flesh useful only for stabbing another piece of warm flesh into. They’re meant to create a feeling of detachment and indifference toward the people whose bodies appear in the photographs. Pornographic photos such as those in Penthouse and magazines like it are carefully mechanised to convey an illusion of sexual consent on the part of the subject. They want it. They like it. They say yes to what I want to do. Nobody here is saying what I want to do is wrong, bad or unwanted. And amongst all of this, I was searching for a piece of text about a man of God. Feel uncomfortable?
Now you’re getting it.
*****
I took my concerns back to my Facebook community and asked if anyone else had a problem with an article about a preacher appearing in a porno magazine. Most common reply, from several men I should point out, was “But didn’t Jesus hang out with prostitutes and whores?” I think I know what they think they mean – that perhaps having an article about yourself published in a magazine equates to some kind of evangelism to the people in the industry. I can see – kind of – why those with a progressive, if not slightly overly machismo – evangelistic bent might think this could be a good idea. But I have to wonder about how the article on Childers article came to be in Penthouse magazine in the first place, and what the thinking was behind it. An enthusiastic publicist? A syndication agreement? A straight out co-promotion for the speaking tour and DVD release of the movie? A real attempt to reach people with the gospel? Which people?
WWJD? Take out a half-page in Penthouse?
I feel very uncomfortable with any discussion that tries to equate the placing of the Penthouse article with the preaching activities and gender politics of Jesus Christ. More specifically, I take exception to descriptions of the women whose images appear in magazines such as Penthouse as “prostitutes and whores”. Whatever you or I may think about the industry they work in, they are in fact paid professionals, either contractors or salaried employees, executing a legitimate form of commercial enterprise. They are women, wives, mothers, daughters and tax-payers. The removal of their clothes and their posing before a camera does not make them into “whores” – only the misogynist gaze of a very stupid person is capable of accomplishing that. When a man calls a woman a “prostitute” or a “whore” , he isn’t referring to her employment or vocation. He’s telling you exactly what he thinks of her in the most derogatory terms he can think of. Jesus did in fact “hang out” with women who worked as prostitutes, but I doubt he saw them as anything other than what they were – women, who happened to have a gainful employment that was frowned upon, but widely patronised nonetheless.
Having already stated that I do not believe women photographed for porn are categorically whores, I do think that pornographic images of women are a form of abasement. As someone in possession of a female body, I feel the feminine form is diminished when depicted as an object whose primary use is for a sexual act, and which is detached from the human being inhabiting it. But having your photo taken naked is still a legal job that pays money.
Where Jesus was concerned, we find various Biblical accounts of how Christ made a specific point of addressing any abasement or denigration of women as a priority in the contexts he found himself. The woman caught in adultery is physically and morally liberated from the condemnation of her accusers. Jesus rebukes the men who try to eject Mary as she anoints him with oil. He has a dignified conversation with a Samaritan woman, and does not simply accept a cup of water from her, then dismiss her in search of some man to give his own “living water” to. In every situation that warranted it, Jesus stopped the men present in their acts of oppressing or abusing women. He actively indicated that the men see the women around them as people, and not ignore or redefine them merely as objects. They were not wallpaper. They were not accessories. To Him, they were not symbols or stereotypes, or simply “prostitutes and whores”. It strikes me that Jesus did not ever consider the women whose company he found himself to be some kind of general political or social vignette against which he might conveniently set himself. Jesus always saw the people he was with, whatever their gender or social standing.
I can’t help thinking that an evangelist who has an article published in a porn magazine may not really be hoping to actively proselytise either the readers or the industry generally. I don’t even know if Childers is aware the article appears in Penthouse. However it came to be there, it strikes me as a kind of “cred by association” grab. Perhaps his “people” are trying to sell Childers’ brand to consumers of a certain type, a certain ilk. Blokey men. Macho men. Men who like porn. Men who like to look at pictures of naked women and masturbate over them. Childers is a pretty blokey kind of guy, by all accounts. A publicist attached to him seemingly considers porn consumers to be a tenable market for the Machine Gun Preacher brand. My (male) friends on Facebook magnanimously remarked that Childers message might actually turn men from their consuming of porn. By that logic, at least in their minds, the end justifies the means. Now, I havent seen the article yet so can’t comment on specifics (see Postscript below), but if you think about it, publishing an article that discourages men from consuming porn would be a pretty stupid step for the editor of a porn magazine to take. The pastor who gloated on Facebook about the article said he felt the piece really spoke to men about how they can aspire to a mission greater than their own penis, and that perhaps the article might encourage readers – or are they viewers? what do you call people who consume porn magazines? – to seek out other, healthier avenues to vent their masculinity. I wonder if the pastor considered that his evangelist friend’s appearance in a porn mag without any reference what his attitude might be towards it might already speak volumes to readers about what he considers to be healthy avenues to vent their masculinity.
*****
I’ve heard about a new church movement called XXX who outreach specifically to the porn industry, and good for them. Creating relationships and sharing the gospel is the heart of the Message, God knows, but as Dr. Phil says, we cannot change what we do not acknowledge. You will not be evangelising porn consumers or industry workers and employers by simply placing your product on their shelves. XXX apparently goes to sex expos and pays for stalls so they can walk around and actually talk to people about who they are, what they do, and give out Bibles and build networks. If you say you want to preach the gospel in the porn industry, then it won’t be accomplished by simply placing an ad or piece of editorial in their publication promoting your product. That’s good marketing, but it’s not good preaching. It’s certainly not evangelising. It’s absolutely not building supportive relationships, unless you’re talking about the commercial kind. And perhaps that’s exactly what we’re talking about. I will say though that if you enter a marketplace and pretend you don’t see the human souls all around you, or just some of them, or some (male porn consumers) in preference over others (women who appear naked in porn) because it suits your agenda, that’s not bringing Christ. If you’re a minister, and you get your mug in a porn magazine all the while pretending you’re not surrounded by pornography, that is bloody spiritual misogyny.
Those who believe that it’s okay to ignore any of the damaging, misogynistic and exploitative and implications of pornography in order to “preach” to consumers are misguided to say the least. At worst, they are compounding these aspects, perhaps even counting on them. Women who have their pictures taken for porn mags are not “sluts and whores”, nor are they merely plebian masses to be brushed past so the more important men can be reached with the gospel, as if it could ever really be okay to treat the naked bodies of women as wallpaper, just to get a few *wankers* proselytized. Pun intended.
*****
POSTSCRIPT – I emailed the editorial department of Australian Penthouse asking for the article in question to be emailed to me so I can view the actual context and ascertain the intended message. So far I have had no response from them. Until such times as I receive the article and am corrected regarding the context, my opinion on this subject stands.
POST-POSTSCRIPT – Australian Penthouse emailed me a PDF of the article. It briefly outlines Childers past as a militant in Sudan, which followed his becoming a Christian in the US. The article is brief, contains no implicit or explicit references to the gospel at all, nor does Childers make any reference to the context in which this particular piece appears – ie; he doesn’t mention porn, or preach against it, as many of those who criticised my above article when it appeared on my blog proposed he might. In fact, true to the style of the magazine, most of the article consists of photographs: 12 in fact over two and a half pages, showing Childers either holding guns, wearing army fatigues, standing in front of military vehicles, preaching from a pulpit and posing with a Sudanese child. The actual article appears to be just a few loosely assembled paragraphs designed to fill in the spaces between the photos. It’s not evangelism, by any stretch. The article ends halfway down a page, the rest of which is taken up by a half page ad for a phone sex company, consisting of about a dozen pornographic thumbnail photographs of naked or semi-naked women. I guess it’s safe to say my original opinion is unchanged.
Tags: Advertising, church abuse, Evangelism, feminism, machine-gun preacher, Media, misogyny, Porn, pornography, sexism, spiritual abuse
27 Comments
I’m with you on this, Jo. I don’t recall the Facebook discussions the same as you, but as for the main story itself, I agree that no pastor should use porn to promote his ministry.
You won’t believe this Jo. I used to work with Sudanese refugees in Uganda and I was there when Sam first started working in Nimule on the Sudan/Uganda border. If you knew the man you would be even more appalled.
Nice work to out a truly disastrous situation. This is par for the course for Sam. He wanted to build an orphanage in a commonly trafficked area for the Lord’s Resistance Army. I worked with a chaplaincy training program when I taught there back in the early 2000s. We were teaching grown men who willingly wanted to be there to serve the Sudanese soldiers. That’s hard for sure, but Sam’s idea was outright insane. Much like your critique about the man, his intentions were not as obscene but his execution was flawed through and through. Sam’s wanted to remove children from the front lines to a a “safer” location. The only problem is he moved them from one hazard to the next.
I noticed his book and later the movie based on the book and felt outrage. Sam is careless and misrepresents the person of Christ in so many ways. What you discovered is just the tip of the iceberg, but it illustrates how profane his logic is – all in the name of Christ!
To clarify one bit. Yes his intentions and his logic are both profane in this case with Penthouse.
However, I don’t want to overgeneralize his personality, he really did have compassion for the children according to my conversations with him. I just couldn’t believe he would jeopardize their safety by keeping them in a very precarious location.
Michael, nice to hear from you. I was just thinking about you this week and wondering what you’ve been up to lately.
And thanks so much for this contribution. Clearly this supports that old adage “if it quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck…”. My greatest concern is that enthusiastic younger ministers might mistake this approach for good evangelism, and follow suit, and has been the case with other charismatic, but largely sexist, church leaders of late. Whilst I have no doubt the person I name in my article is well-intentioned, neither ignorance nor innocence is a defence. If Childers a big enough man to shoot guns at people and call that God’s work, he’s certainly big enough to understand the implications of something like this.
This was excellent Jo, very well done. You made points that I didn’t even think of (women in Penthouse aren’t “whores”, etc.) For once, I agree with James, and think that porn should not be used to promote ministry.
“For once, I agree with James?”
Just saying, it doesn’t happen often!!
Jo, I would never justify his reasoning or methods. I was appalled when I read a few favorable reviews from Christian websites about the movie and his work. Violence and perversion have no place ministry. I’m certain about that. What makes me so sick about it is that somehow the justification that Jesus or Paul would do it is rooted in a corrupted view of Scripture that is prevalent in the States (and I’m guessing in Oz).
I’ve buried my head in the sand for a bit. Don’t know when my hyper-introverted soul (aka the ostrich) will emerge in the BWC world, but for now you’re doing a fantastic job for both of us.
Dear Jo,
I don’t agree with your opinion of Sam Childers or his method of communicating the gospel. Considering you have neither met the man himself, seen his movie or read his book, as I have done, you are not in a position to air your grievances re his message and how he goes about it.
What I read and saw of this man portrays him as a ‘rough diamond’ whose life and heart is fully dedicated to the Lord and reaching today’s widowed women and orphaned children in Sudan – no matter what others think of how he goes about it. Again you have to understand his reasons.
His location in Sudan where he built his orphanage is indeed known as a very dangerous area but it was specifically chosen by the Lord and has been built and prayed over for God’s protection of the women and children that are cared for there. There are some things we do not understand about why God asks us certain things but Sam is a man who obeys the Lord regardless.
In order to understand his so called ‘unacceptable’ methods and ways of reaching the unreached you have to do some research of his life and awesome testimony. It will give you some insight an to why God chose this man in particular to do the ‘unthinkable’ to save hundreds of lives from brutal death.
Learn the facts – watch the movie and read his book.
He is a unique and courageous man of God, who has clearly been called by God – not despite his extreme ways and methods but simply because of them. I have no doubt in my heart and mind that when Sam Childers has ‘run his race’ and meets his Saviour the first words he will be greeted with will be “Well done good and faithful servant..”
Regards Karen
Karen,
With all due respect I was there when Sam entered Uganda. He is what Jo esteems him to be – reckless.
Regarding your point that God chose children to be placed in a rebel crossing? Which God? Sounds like a completely different deity from the one I’ve been taught who is a defender of the fatherless and widows.
Hi Karen,
As the title of my post infers, my issue is not with Childers, as you point out and I state, I’ve not met him personally. My issue is with whether it’s okay to use pornography to promote a ministry. It’s a pity that white, middle class Western women – specifically the ones who have jobs taking their clothes off for Penthouse – aren’t as worthy of his evangelistic motives or attentions as others seem to be. I think the placement of this particular piece of journalism says everything about Childers I need to know.
I share your disdain for the pornography industry (and no, I was not without my struggles as a younger man even as I realized the devastation that porn represents), but I have a complicated reaction to your piece.
Martin Luther King Jr. did an interview with Playboy that they published in 1965, do you condemn that as well?
Also, probably at least half of all men IN the church struggle with porn (I can’t find the exact stats at the moment, but I remember them as very depressing)–so it’s hard to think of them as “other” “blokes”. Porn is a problem; so are celebrity/gossip magazines, Cosmo, Men’s Health, People–all in their own devastating, unique ways–do we do ourselves good by singling out one over the other and heaping out an extra portion of judgement?
I appreciate your thoughtfulness, not trying to be exclusively negative, these are just the thoughts that run through my mind as I try to sort through all the issues.
Thanks Jason for your comment. In reply –
The Martin Luther King point was brought up several times after this piece was published on my blog. After consideration I would have to reply yes, I do have a problem with MLK being interviewed for Playboy. I believe that Christians in particular are wont to elevate certain people to the status of demi-gods, thus preventing us holding them accountable when they do things of questionable wisdom. All people are as capable of silliness as they are of greatness. Whilst MLK was undoubtedly an incredible man of courage and rightfully deserves a place in history because of his civil rights actions and advocacy, this particular decision reminds me that he was and always will remain a man, and was capable as such of lapses of judgement from time to time.
I proffer that this is my similar estimation of the person named in the above article. I believe it’s beholden to Christians to hold one another to account for lapses of judgement, particularly those of persons in positions of authority and influence. However, many Christians seem loathe to hold one another to account for their folly because we get all awestruck and mute when they manage to get fame along with success. But their success and fame ought not protect them from scrutiny. I have not acted disrespectfully or with an attacking tone toward this particular person, not have a criticised his work or his motives. I have written specifically to question the decision made – whether by Childers or someone associated with him – to consider pornographic material an appropriate context for editorial material, considering what pornography is designed to do – debase the female form, and feed a poisonous addiction. I also detailed the article and was able to dismiss it outright as evangelism in any form.
In answer to your second point, I absolutely take issue with Christians using other kinds of distasteful and harmful media to promote their ministries. After I ran this piece on my blog, I received several emails from women thanking me for speaking out, because their own husbands were struggling with porn addiction and they felt to protect their husbands, they could not speak out in such an open way. I was very careful in this piece not to take a judgemental tone towards those who struggle with porn consumption – very, very careful. My whole piece is designed to advocate for the ones who wish not to be tempted into this area. I have judged just two men in this piece – A) the pastor who posted the initial FB post and brought the article to the attention of his parishioners, giving the issue and page number thus leaving a breadcrumb trail right up to a stumbling block for anyone with a weakness for porn, and B) the minister whose piece of editorial appears smack bang in a room virtually crowded with sinners who need saving (what are the women whose naked pictures appear all around his article – chopped liver?) but who apparently sees them merely as a kind of wallpaper against which he can publish self-aggrandising photos of himself doing great exploits for his god.
I know this is a confronting issue, but those of us who can stomach it must indeed confront it. I do not consider it a great act of courage to get yourself published in a porn magazine. I consider it a greater act to stand against pornography wholesale and never dull ourselves against it to the extend we fail to recognize that those pictures are of women, and women are people, and people are who Jesus came for.
Great article. I think you articulated my thoughts better than I could have. Thanks for the informative essay.
Wow. Great piece, Jo.
Personally, I’ve always thought it interesting when people bring up the idea of Jesus hanging out with prostitutes. Really, Jesus is just hanging out with people, as you alluded to in the article. But there’s a tremendous difference between Jesus hanging out with people who *are* prostitutes as a trade, and Jesus hanging out with people who are *in the act of* prostituting themselves. Seriously, do they think Jesus would be hanging around prostitutes while they were plying their trade? I wasn’t their to witness his movements first-hand, but I feel fairly certain that he would have waited to hang out them until they weren’t… you know… on the clock.
That’s my opinion, anyway. I suppose I could be wrong…
When I posted this piece on my blog, Karen Spears Zacharias made this comment –
“The point of Jesus hanging out with whores was to teach those women that they had value beyond what the culture around them granted.
We have it all wrong when we think that hanging out is the whole point.”
Your comment reminded me of Karens, David. Thank you.
So basically.. Sam Childers gave permission to be interviewed in a magazine that unbelieving and possibly believing people caught in sin read.. it’s small.. it’s about him and what he does… and the guy made a judgment call based on what he can do… not what he does or doesn’t promote.. with the gospel being preached in mind…. and you have a problem with this because it’s in an arena that compromises men and women’s spirituality…. he’s never said he has supported pornography.. or the use/trade of women this way… but because he’s decided to be a light in the darkness… this is wrong? I’m confused. I seriously thought by your article title that he’d posed nude or something…. rather it’s a small article that could be either about him or an interview… !!! I’m actually going to contact the guy… he is contactable and ask him to read this and respond personally… if he has time between saving the lives of kids who are asked to either kill their own parents or die upon occasion. (Yep.. if you’d watched the movie you’d see that this is what he is up against… a guy called Kony who actually IS a faker and does this in the name of ‘christianity’ and shoots to kill using kids to do it after kidnapping them from their families and killing their parents. Um… are you getting uncomfortable now? Oh and his wife refused to striptease before he became a believer… saying she lives by God’s ways now … so I think that’s a pretty good indication of where they BOTH stand now as she took him to church and refused to go back to stripping for a living before he became a Christian.) :-/
Naomi, I suggest you back up the truck and read Michael D. Bobo’s comments above. In a few months, you’ll be able to read a book I’m editing for a friend who was one of the Lost Boys of Sudan and lived in the refugee camps at the time Childers was active in the country. He’s never heard of him. There are many perspectives on the political situation of Sudan both past and present, issues far too complex for us to merely listen to one voice or accept one simplistic solution. Violence begets violence. We also ought not allow our desensitization towards porn and those exploited by it ever to become blunted. I am opposed to exploitation and objectification on principle – whether it’s the use of children as soldiers, or the abuse of women as wallpaper.
Naomi,
I love your passion for this issue, but there are hundreds of organizations that help refugees and children of war that need your energy and your financial support. Please reconsider one like Feed the Children, World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse or Far Reaching Ministries before you make a costly mistake in siding with a crazed, addictive personality like Sam Childers.
Michael
I’ll never forget James Dobson’s interview with serial killer, Ted Bundy, shortly before his execution in 1989. I was in my car driving, and had to pull off the road because I was crying so hard.
Bundy was fully repentant and perfectly willing to accept his punishment, but before he left this world he wanted to warn of the dangers of pornography; which began, as I recall, with comic books. (I only just discovered that the interview is available on the internet.)
What your husband told you, Jo, about the affect of pornography perfectly lines up with what Bundy said; and how you felt when viewing it was exactly how I felt when I had the misfortune to view it.
So, yes, I was dismayed when I saw that a book had been written and a film had been made (financed, in part, by a former producer partner with Mel Gibson), and shocked when I read this blog regarding it.
I urge you and your readers to listen to Ted Bundy. It’s a message which I’m glad has been preserved.
Addendum: As an American, I’m still dealing with the after-effects of the violent murders at the premier of the Batman film in Colorado. Having just viewed Dr. Dobson’s full half-hour interview with Ted Bundy on YouTube, I observed that Bundy warned against, not just pornography, but violent forms of media as well.
After thirty-some years of our children being bombarded with violent and sexually-violent media, the world is reaping its results.
Not every man or woman is a firefighter. Not every firefighter is motivated the same. Some are professional firefighters motivated by career and money, while others are amateur motivated only by the safety of others. Some firefighters have no intent to be one, but wind up fighting a fire, only to never do it again. Their motivations are varied – family member trapped, sparked by courage as a mere passerby, or some other third thing.
My point is, people make the choice to fight fires for different reasons. They also choose to fight different kinds of fires. Some are too big for them, just as some are too small or rather can be handled just as easily by others less equipped.
Ministers are firefighters. Every one of them. God calls us all to ministry in some aspect or another. All Christians. No exception. Some are called to be Sunday school teachers, a relatively safe, but needed person pulling people from the fires of hell. Some are called to prison ministry, a not so easy and heartbreaking work. Others are called to the jungles of Africa, a dangerous and practically suicidal mission. Wherever you are called to pull people from the fires (hell, as it were), there is nothing that makes those lives (eternal lives) any less or more valuable than others. They are all in danger of death (eternal damnation).
I find it incredibly arrogant to discredited the work of any man or woman on the front lines of ministry, regardless of how hot the fire is their involved in just because you personally cannot handle the heat. I realize that porn is incredibly distasteful to you. But you haven’t been called to that fire. Childers and XXX Church have been. As someone who has benefitted greatly from the ministry of XXX Church and their willingness to run into the hottest fires under scrutiny and persecution, I find your article to be scathing and lacking of the humility required of someone with an audience such as yourself simply because you wouldn’t do it or you don’t understand.
You are entitled to your opinion. But I see room for the work of all different kinds of ministers. Childers and XXX Church are reaching others where people like yourself seem too uncomfortable going.
James Aaron: Point well-taken. Lines up with Jude 23: “And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.”
James, you know nothing about me, what I’ve been through in my life, nor about the people I love or work with. My confidence on this issue comes from experience, not arrogance. I have had many messages from women thanking me for speaking out on this, as they have personally experienced the effect of porn on marriage and family, and on women, but cannot speak out for fear of shaming the people they love who are struggling with porn. I stand for them, with them. Against you, Mr Childers, and anyone else who considers porn to be harmless, and a suitable platform upon which to self-promote.
James,
Consider this question, and you will understand Jo’s disgust with Childers: Would Jesus use exploitation of women and sacrifice of human dignity to preach his Kingdom?
I think you will understand Jo better if you realize what you are really addressing. Be careful how Machiavellian you become in your perspective on preaching the gospel.
When I first saw the title I thought this writer of this article was going to be a man (usually don’t notice the name of the author of articles), obviously as I read along I found that not to be the case.
Jo, as a guy I feel shame….us men are pigs and we need to speak out against this garbage…
what you wrote was amazing, the way you put yourself out there and the vulnerability you felt when exposed to that garbage…Christian men should have no part of that, I have fallen into it with the you tubes and cable networks, not porn but pretty close….there’s so much evil content in the film & print media….sex, violence & vulgarity… and so much that degrades women….
I just wanted to thank you for writing this, I think it took courage to be so candid and to uncover and expose the deep depravity of man…to read of these things through the eyes of a female is so vital. thanks again Jo for sharing your invaluable insights, it’s an extremely hard hitting message and 100% truth!