Permissive society’s tragic trajectory

#1060 for broadcast on 2CH Sydney, 12 April 2015

The consequences of porn addiction are becoming increasingly apparent. As Sarah Ditum put it in New Statesman last week, “The pornographic vocabulary of sex as the violent debasement of the female body had seeped out from screens and into the lives of women.”

The director of a sexual violence counselling service had this to say in response, on my friend Melinda Tankard Reist’s blog:

In the past few years we have had a huge increase in intimate partner rape of women from 14 to 80+. The biggest common denominator is consumption of porn by the offender, with offenders not able to differentiate between fantasy and reality, believing women are “up for it” 24/7 … [leading to] a huge increase in deprivation of liberty, physical injuries, torture, drugging, filming and sharing footage without consent.

I founded the centre 25 years ago and what is now considered to be the norm in 2015 is frightening. I wonder where we will be in another 10 years!

I’m Rod Benson for the NSW Council of Churches.