There is something forgotten about women. The thing forgotten about women, by not remembering, renders all chaos as ripples atop a country pond. ... No, I think as tsunamis upon all oceans. ... Societal suicide.
What we've forgotten about women, every woman, is anatomy, physiology, bodies formed and carried sacred, precious. Where inside beautiful sculptured bone, flesh, reside precise location, somewhere, a holy sanctuary, a divine tabernacle, where silently the miraculous hand of God reaches down from heaven, on cue, forming tenderly, delicately, bodies and breathing lives of our sons and daughters. Positioned. God. His Holy Spirit. Not for one moment, but for nine months. No, a lifetime, creating.
From here, somewhere in woman they spawn, our children, ourselves.. Mirrors of God's unique image. The angels marvel. Now and for eternity.
Before the burning bush, Moses removed his sandals by command of deity. While there in fire God spoke gently.
Yet, increasingly it seems, we, descendants of Adam, gravitate a million ways, for a million reasons, to this holy place among us. That is, to women, - to ravage, to rape, to use, abuse, forget, roll over to sleep, ... women, to market, to cheapen.
But what is holy in men, except that we approach with kindness, appreciation, reverence, that which is holy in women, then guard carefully, and teach others the same ... ?
God said it is not good for man to live alone, so He made for man a helpmeet. What God makes, He makes perfect. What God says is so, is so always. If women have failing; if wives, mothers, daughters, sisters and grandmothers have sin; the sin seems always the act of succumbing to the instinct to give men and boys exactly what they ask for. When to give them what they ask for, turns those men and boys into selfish beasts. Or if not beasts, then something of the same in lessor measure.
Hereby we set women up to forget the holiness inside them. When they do, humanity loses.
PORNOGRAPHY
In the 1970's, a federal study valued all hard-core pornography at ten million dollars. Today, the most common estimate of annual revenues are at ten "billion" dollars, or equivalent to the 2005 gross domestic product of Ghana. "You could say the culture of pornography has leaked into our lives, but it's more like a flood." said Julie Hanus in her article "The XXX Factor" (UTNE magazine, 2006) "Even as we attempt to delineate our relationships to modern pornography, the line between what is and is not pornographic is eroding, making the task daunting." ... "You could say the culture of pornography has leaked into our lives, but it's more like a flood."
What is frightening, is the availability of internet porn. At the 2003 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, some two-thirds attending said the internet played a significant role in divorces that year, pointing a finger at online pornography. Yet, "seven or eight years ago pornography had an almost nonexistent role in divorce.", reports author journalist Pamela Paul in "Time" magazine (January 19, 2004).
And what about our children? In 2001, a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, an independent national health organization, found that 70 percent of 15 to17 year olds admitted to stumbling upon pornography online, and 23 percent of them said it happens often.
But then there's the tragedy, continued trauma to both the one watched and the one watching. "Harm is being done to all our fragile sexual selves, which may be incapable of withstanding the relentless assaults of a multi-billion-dollar industry whose principle effect is to make a mess of our relationships." ("Damage On Parade" by Charles Foran, UTNE magazine, 2006)
Martin Amis calls it "the obscenification of every day life". Ariel Levy, author of the book "Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture" (Free Press, 2005), says this "Raunch Culture" may be hardest on adolescent girls. Blitzed with images of how to be "hot, young women, already prone to insecurities, have a difficult time distinguishing the fake from the real."
Pamela Paul, when interviewing American men and boys, learned how "obsessive porn surfing wreaks havoc on their conceptions of women and sexuality. "They become impatient with their real-life partners and numb to the pleasures of conventional sex. Pornography leaves men desensitized both to outrage and to excitement, leading to dissatisfaction with the emotional tugs of their own lives."
And again, there "is" great harm to those who are "pornified". In a study by Ms. Paul conducted in 1998, it was determined that "two-thirds of prostitutes suffer from symptoms identical to those of posttraumatic stress disorder - twice the percentage that was found among American soldiers returning from the war in Vietnam." She goes on, "There is something twisted about using a predominantly sexually traumatized group of people as our erotic role models. It's like using a bunch of shark attack victims as our lifeguards." ... "... people getting off on the acts of those who are themselves traumatized and are being traumatized by what they are doing." ... " ... Pornography may be stalking one emotion more than any other. That would be the shared feelings we have for fellow humans, along with the inclination to recognize kindred suffering, and even lend aid. ... ."
Pornography might well become the death of empathy ....
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