POSA™ Blog

The Ten-Day Debate at The Economist, with Dr. Robert Jensen

The Economist magazine sponsored an online debate on the question "Can porn be good for us?" Dr. Robert Jensen argued against pornography and Cindy Gallop argued for, with guest commentaries. At the end of the 10-day debate, readers voted 81% against pornography.

(For those not familiar with Dr. Jensen, he is a long-time mentor of mine whom I had the pleasure of interviewing four years ago on the topic of pornography and again in March of this year- see Related Content, below this blog post).

In the ten-day debate over at The Economist last week, the always-brilliant and outspoken Jensen gave these as his opening remarks: 

Have you ever noticed how your powers of discernment have noticeably sharpened during this entire journey of being partnered with a sex addict/compulsive? Part of that comes from frequently having to figure out if you're being given the truth, weighing out what you're told against what you perceive.

While we are having to rely on our intuition over and over again while in relationship to a SAC (sex addict/compulsive), it might be worthwhile to learn some basic skills that can help us along the way.

In the TED Talk video below, fraud specialist Pamela Mayer encourages us to educate ourselves on how to detect a lie but then we're also admonished to "....go the extra mile from lie-spotting to truth-seeking....and ultimately to trust-building". I don't know a single POSA who wouldn't desire that exact trajectory. Cautiously, of course.

While men (and boys) are raised in a society, now a global society, thanks to the Internet, that not only accepts that they'll watch porn, but actually pushes it on them at every possible turn, superstar comedian Russell Brand came out speaking against it.

This is really important because Brand enjoys and benefits quite nicely from his bad-boy image and rock-star status out in the world, not just with girls and women but even amongst his huge "bro" following. To have taken the unnecessary (for him) and hugely unpopular position he took here, claiming that pornography harms us and makes him feel ashamed to use it for lots of reasons, was, plain and simple, an extremely brave move. I am very impressed.