by Alastriona Ametza

Created on: December 01, 2008

I am happily married and we have looked the porn issue in the eye and then some.

How do I respond when he looks at porn?

I respond badly, so therefore he doesn't do it in front of me. I reacted badly and now that part of his life is closed to me. We have been together for 9 years and it still is a part of us that hasn't gone away. Recoiling in fear and insecurity doesn't make the desire for the pornography go away. In the most basic way, men are trained to be that way by society in that human perfection is the overall desire and women are not at all that far behind. We only need to look as far as the history of Western civilization to learn where this initiated. Please bare with me for a moment as I digress into history momentarily.

One out of three people in America are Christian. One of the oldest stories in Judaism is the story of Lilith and her polar opposite Eve. In some Bible translations Genesis 1:27 reads, 'So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.' In Genesis 2, the Bible goes further into detail and explains the actual creation of the female. Some conclude with the separated creation accounts of a woman that it means there were two wives.

Mythology has given her the name of Lilith. She was in this account not made from Adam's rib, but from the Earth just as Adam. The story goes onto explain that Lilith became disgruntled with the missionary position during sexual intercourse and demanded to have the 'upper' hand. Adam denied her this and she left the Garden. This plays into the entire dichotomy of the female sexuality. Lilith is considered the strong center of womanhood while Eve was the lazy counterpart of felinity. Lilith was considered the mother of demons and was given women in childbirth and newborn infants as her domain. This is the mythological backing for SIDS and the high rate of female mortality in birthing. Lilith would come and take them away.

That is just the beginning..

Women and sex has been objectified (and our sexuality demonified) so much in our society and it's not this way in other parts of the world. America has a largely Puritan background and it hasn't been released totally over the time, you can see it in our newspapers the listing of people prosecuted over time. That has Puritan roots, there is so much shame associated with enjoying sex that is not supported in Biblical text.

My undergraduate work tells me that we should let go of this kind of shame, my Christian roots say though that we don't need the porn industry to satisfy our creative desires for each other.

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