As a boy, my introduction to pornography came about when I was around 12 to 15 years old I guess. My mom asked me one day if I had let my older brother use my headphones, which I had. I mentioned that to him later and he said it was probably because the headphones had been in his room on top of a Playboy magazine. She had been cleaning his room or something and happend to see the magazine, we suspect.
However, he showed me the magazine and that was that. There were other instances as I grew older when I saw my first porn video, albeit a black and white 8mm video that the neighbor brought over to show dad and us boys with the excuse that we had the movie projector (yeah, right).
I never was someone who paid or subscribed to any porn sites, but there were many occasions where I viewed or looked at porn.
Was I obsessed with porn? I don't know if 'obsessed' is the right word, as I said I never subscribed to anything, but if I started looking at it on the Internet, the hours would fly by before I knew it.
It was after my children had grown up and I had gotten tired of the sexy porn type images you can so easily find on the Internet or see in a lot of movies that showed nudity only in a sexual way that I became disenchanted with porn. Oh, I still watched the videos of "nude massages" every once in a while, but since they usually turned into a sexual encounter, even those became disturbing. That was because I had found my antidote to porn.
We had our daughter and grandson living with us before and after his birth and he became my buddy and I became his male role model. After my son had a run-in at his work with an issue that brought his porn habit to light for me, I started to wonder how both his porn and my daughter's free-wheeling sexual life came about.
It was about that time that I found a web site that featured pictures of nude women that were not sexually or suggestively posed. That web site has since gotten much more sexualy suggestive in the pictures it shows now. I do not recommend it now like I have in the past on naturist forums, but here is part of their philosophy that got me interested. If this is copyrighted material, I apologize to the owner of that site and will remove it if requested.
"So, to sum up, in line with the purposes and principles outlined above, the goals of DOMAI would be:
A world where beauty is appreciated and celebrated, where nudity is natural, and where there is no shame in looking."
There used to be a list of 10 or so reasons that clarified this statement even more, but I can't find that list right now. However, it was this seeing the naked body in a completely different way that made me realize just how ugly sexually enticing images were to me. I realized that I actually felt this way even when absorbed in watching or looking at them. Maybe it was a bit of guilt from my Catholic upbringing. Maybe it was guilt about looking at them as a substitute for my wife. I don't know, but seeing a truly non-sexual picture of a fully nude frontal view woman was freeing and finally made sense of what I had been looking for all those years without even knowing it. I even realized after a while that when I brought the site up to see who the 'Beauty of the Day' was, the first thing I looked at was her face. Then after I looked at her smile or her eyes, did I glance down to see her breasts or pubic area.
I think it may have been one of the weekly newsletters at that site that pointed me toward a naturist forum. It was http://www.nudist-resorts.org/. I started reading and responding but still found something missing. It was http://www.naturist-christians.org/ that brought the whole thing full-circle. Here was nudity as God intended at the beginning. Here were messages I could really relate to. It showed me that nudity and my Catholic upbringing could actually do-exist. Here also was a possible way out of the dilemma of my own children's foray into sexual conduct outside of where I wanted them to be.
The question I began to ask myself is "Can this sexually pervasive attitude be changed?" I read that non-sexual nudity where children from birth - or at least very young on up - see it in the home situation gives them the understanding of the naked body. They are more likely not to be dragged into that "WOO-HOO look at the naked lady in the magazine or on the Internet!" syndrome that leads them down the road to a porn obsession or worse - addiction.
That is why I started being nude around the house. I started out wrong, but that is maybe another blog post. I wanted my grandson to see both genders nude while showering, getting ready, dressing as well as throughout the house doing normal daily tasks. That is still a work in progress with the rest of the family, but I still feel strongly about it.
One of the reasons I think it is extremely important to show him that non-sexual, "Casual Nudity in Kansas" is good was re-enforced by a podcast from my favorite host Stephane Deschane from The Naturist Living Show. He did a podcast on Pornography which I highly recommend you listen to. You can find it here: Naturist-Living -Pornography. In this podcast he interviews a University professor/researcher who wrote the book pictured below.
There were many startling things that I heard, but the one that really got my attention was where she said that the average age for boys to see what she called "gonzo porn" or the really hard-core stuff is age 11. AGE 11!!! No wonder so many men are struggling with a porn addiction! That made me want even more to share the good nudity message with my family. It is still not well received, but it is at least tolerated by my wife as she will let him in the bathroom when we have gotten out of the shower and are primping in front of the mirror nude. A link to a different podcast really brought home that pornography is not limited to any person or profession, and that good, casual, non-sexual nudity can very well be the antidote and the vaccine against pornography for not only our children, but for us adults that view it. I have a few issues with some of the messages in the blog as a whole, but it has a very good message about the effects of porn and how to combat it. The link I mentioned at the top of this VERY LONG post is: Our_Bodies_and_Our_Sexuality--Pastor_Bill . Please listen to it all the way to the end. It has some amazing revelations and I wish every man - and his wife - in the world would listen to his testimony of how he was able to combat his porn habit. There are other sites that say pretty much the same thing, but I have rambled on way too long this time, so I will end it here.
If you have any desire to view porn,or if you know or suspect anyone else that may, point them to this site or any of the podcasts, especially the last one by Pastor Bill.
May God Bless you and your family and allow my humble words to help just one of His children to overcome the power of the devil in this trap of his called Pornography.
Peace,
Jeanluc
