To my sons:
You are just little boys. You play with action figures and Legos. The highlight of your week is when we have Lucky Charms for breakfast. You ask me if Transformers really exist. You are a long way from having to shave. But if the statistics can be believed, it probably won’t be long until you have your first exposure to pornography.
I can’t tell you how this breaks my heart. I don’t know how it will happen, but I imagine you will be confused. You will enjoy something that you also know you shouldn’t be enjoying. You will feel shame and you’ll have to decide if you’re going to talk to me about it or not. Please talk to me.
I know you see me as your mom, but I am also a woman. I want to speak to you on behalf of the woman who will someday be your wife, the little girls who will be your daughters, the sisters of yours who are growing into women before our eyes.
For all the hype around porn, it really isn’t that complicated. Porn is marketing. Porn is trying to sell you something. It’s trying to sell you an idea of who women are. Porn is lying. The more you believe the lie it sells to you, the less you will be able to enjoy the truth. (And there’s so much more I want to tell you about the lies porn is telling you about YOU and your worth and your value as a man. A conversation for another time. Along with the conversation I need to have with your sisters about what porn will mean to them.)
Porn wants you to believe that women don’t age. Women don’t have cellulite. Women have the bodies of little girls with the sexual appetites of grown women. Women want all manner of degrading and scary things done to them even if they say they don’t. Please don’t believe those things. They will set you up for a lifetime of unrealistic expectations and unhealthy attitudes towards women. You are feeding into a society that tells your sisters they need eating disorders and boob jobs to be acceptable. You are paying money to an industry that will encourage your daughters to prove their worth by sending naked pictures to their boyfriends to be passed around at school. YOU are doing this when you give porn your money, your time, your heart and mind.
