The creation and use of sexual imagery of the Biblically valid kind [1] is something men and women can enjoy without shame, but there are many slanderous accusations thrown at them from inside and outside of the church. Some assert that sexual images, videos, and writings are inherently offensive, while others claim that to use erotic media while dating or married is a betrayal of one's romantic relationship. In hopes of persuading people to avoid even minimally using erotic media, there are those who say that erotic media will damage a user's friendships with members of the opposite gender by influencing the user to see them as nothing but attractive or sexually enticing bodies instead of as whole persons who may or may not be sexually attractive and arousing.
Looking at sensual or sexual imagery of the opposite gender to stir up sexual attraction, to masturbate, or to accomplish both or some other nonsinful goal does not make someone view their opposite gender friends in a sexual way or override their ability to behave normally even if they do feel sexual attraction towards them. This objection to erotic media wildly exaggerates the influence of sexual impulses and excitement on all individuals, treating sexual motivations as the primary factor that shapes human thoughts and relationships. Even having focused sexual feelings about a person does not automatically displace or prevent other sorts of emotions from being experienced towards them.
Erotic media may or may not impact someone who uses it in a way that changes how they perceive friends of the opposite gender, but it is up to the individual men and women who use erotic media to decide how they interact. Whatever changes it might bring are purely psychological and individualistic, having no ability to cause anyone act sexually towards an opposite gender friend. Sexual admiration of members of the opposite gender whom a person would otherwise not think of in a way that is even remotely connected to sexuality is not the same as sexual interpersonal behaviors.
There is nothing Biblically immoral about feeling sexual attraction to certain friends of the opposite gender, nor is there anything immoral about using these select friends as stimulation for self-pleasuring [2], but it would be wrong to objectify someone of the opposite gender, friend or stranger, by thinking of them as nothing more than a means to sexual gratification. While using erotic media could indeed create a sexual filter through which some users see some members of the opposite gender, it can never make someone sexually objectify others.
The claim that sexual images and videos of the opposite gender harms one's relationships with the other gender, like almost all arguments against erotic media itself, commits the slippery slope fallacy while treating sexuality as something to be feared and shunned. It is not sexuality itself that is destructive, degrading, or objectifying, and it is thus not erotic media, the depiction of sexual imagery for the purpose of arousal, that is responsible for any of such outcomes. Individual people, as is always the case, are capable of misusing an innocent thing for selfish or harmful ends, even to the point of forgetting that friends of the opposite gender have more than one dimension.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-truth-about-erotic-media-part-2_19.html
[2]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/09/masturbating-to-mental-imagery.html
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