What we've been afraid to tell you

How men have hurt women gripped by the porn industry, and how they can help them heal

Note: this is a piece I was invited to write last year for a Catholic men’s magazine. Due to some editorial disagreements, the magazine did not end up running it. I’ve posted it here unedited from that final submission.

I vaguely remember many moments, but one distinctly, where pornography was cast solely as a “man’s” struggle. I was sitting on the floor of a massive room at a conference center as a junior in high school, in a “girl’s session” at a major Catholic youth conference. The “boy’s session” was taking place in another room, and one can only guess its contents.

“We need to pray for our brothers in Christ, because they struggle with a very difficult battle against pornography and lust,” the speaker said to us at the conclusion of our session. “They’re in the next room, learning how to fight for you and protect you.”

I felt alone in that sea of young women, feeling suddenly like I should be in the men’s session. By that point, pornography consumption had been a hidden part of my life for almost 4 years, and would continue to be for a couple more before I would finally begin my journey of recovery and healing in college. Throughout the entirety of my struggle, I never once heard from the Church that it was even a reality for women to experience habitual sexual sin or addiction. I recovered largely alone. It wasn’t until I began sharing my own story that I learned the truth: statistically, at the time of that youth conference, at least one-third of the crowd of a thousand girls were likely consuming pornography, and those numbers have only become more grave. Recently, a study revealed that 60% of women admit to consuming pornography regularly. That percentage climbs to 80% when we focus on the 18-25 age bracket.

I am not in denial that men have also needed more prayers and support with this struggle for a long time. But fathers, brothers, men–women are in need of your prayers, too, and we have been afraid to tell you. I now have the honor of carrying the stories of thousands of women through a nonprofit that provides resources for recovery from sexual addiction to women, and there are common threads in many of their stories: the negligence of fathers, the denial of brothers, and the condemnation of husbands.

As the gap between men’s and women’s consumption of pornography rapidly closes, I hope the gap between us in recovery also closes. This beast must be faced, and it must be faced together–and I ask you to be open to hearing what your own daughter, sister, girlfriend, or bride may be afraid to tell you. Our healing as individuals, a culture, and as a Church depends on it.

The Negligence of Fathers

I have heard the visceral heartbreak of fathers at the discovery of their daughters’ struggles with pornography, masturbation, or another sexual sin. Perhaps they were prepared to address it with their sons–but often, it comes as a shock for it to be a daughter. Rightly so, fathers raise their sons to be protectors, and by the time something as evil as porngraphy enters their life, men can mostly just hope their sons are prepared for the fight. When it’s a daughter who falls to pornography’s trap, a father can’t help but feel that he has failed as a protector. And perhaps, in a way, he has, but not in the way he may think.

But more painful than the heartbreak is the answer to it: that it was never his job to protect his daughter from her own free will. This is not to say it is not the duty of the father to protect his children through catechesis on the harms of sexual sin on the soul, and to be vigilant in the areas that he is able through monitoring technology use and installing preventative softwares. But as one psychologist told me: “It’s not about if your child is exposed to pornography anymore. It’s when.” Sexual purity feels like a realm that’s easily guarded by a father, and when it comes to an outside predator, it certainly is the duty of a father to stand between his daughter and harm. But when the enemy is unseen, and engaged from within her own soul–you cannot stand between her and it, especially when she is on the cusp of adulthood or already there. Her vice is her enemy to fight, and her agency must be recognized if she is ever to win that fight. The only person who can recover from an addiction is the addict. Perhaps this attitude is easier to adopt when fathers think of their sons: when a son is consuming pornography, a father can quickly recognize that he has done all he can, and he now must support his son in his struggle for virtue. The same recognition and support must be given to daughters when, despite parents’ best efforts, they find themselves the prey of pornography as well.

When this has become the case, fathers, you must receive your daughter’s story as a loving father, and hold it alongside her. Hold her, in her confusion, her fear, her shame–her desperation for help and answers. The best possible thing you can do is not hold up her purity as an inherent prize that cannot be violated except by a failure of your own, but to educate her on the fact that in the end, her sexuality is hers to toil for virtue in. However painful, you cannot choose sanctified sexuality for her. She must choose it for herself, and that choice involves a long, imperfect road–but a road that is worth traveling. You can remind her of that, only if you defend that purity is not a virtue once given and once lost, but rather, like all virtue, one that is adamantly sought and fought for over the course of a whole life.

I have heard many stories from the thousands of women involved in Magdala where fathers have felt their failure was in “allowing” their daughters to discover pornography. And, while it is true that fathers must protect all of their children from exposure to pornography (again, not just their sons), you must also protect them from the attacks that come after the sin is committed, things like shame, silence, and suffering alone. The greatest danger to your daughter is in not creating a sense of safety in which she can come to you for help, and not reminding her of her dignity when she feels her mistakes have robbed her of it. That is when your protection of her comes into play: when shame is about to call “checkmate” on a soul and keep her in silence. You must keep yourself open to helping her in healing and recovery.

This begs perhaps an even more difficult point–you cannot hold your daughter’s story, the weight of her mistakes, if you do not first face your own. If pornography or another sexual addiction is a part of your life, even in your past, that you have not reckoned with–in order to protect your daughter from shame, you have to address yours. And if you do, you can offer a strength coupled with compassion that is transformative for those around you, especially your children.

The invitation to start an apostolate, and venture into sharing my story publicly in order to do so, came very suddenly. I had notable people offering to help me get off the ground if I gave my consent. In my hesitation, I reached out to my own father. When I shared my fear at people knowing my story, and my intimidation at leading something largely untouched in the Church, my dad said simply: “Why not you?” His reaction of pure confidence, and his lack of shame at my own story being public, is the kind of “holding” I’m referring to. His words and his ability to hold my story was the final blessing I needed to begin this work.

Fathers, if your daughters find themselves ensnared by pornography, you cannot get stuck in it being just “your failure.” At that point you must be the voice of the Father to her in the midst of the pain. Your words can carry either more shame, or incredible blessing and healing.

The Denial of Brothers

When I share about my work with men, I am met with a plethora of reactions–such as a certain incredulous shock that women too can struggle with sexual sin and viewing pornography. But one reaction rises to the top of my experience: a certain territorial identification with their sin. Men have asked me to defend the legitimacy of my work with statistics, and when presented with them, still deny the reality before them: “But it’s still not as bad as men, is it?” I get the sense from these types of conversations that there’s a territorialism over, or identification with pornography as a disordered “man’s realm,” a place of unique masculine sin. There is an aura that if women struggle with it too, it undermines men’s struggle, so ironically the knee-jerk reaction can often be an undermining of women’s struggle in turn. Some of this comes from a failure to recognize how pornography consumption has changed–the reality that men used to have to actively seek porn in the physical sense in order to find it. Yet, we are long past the days of men popping up the collars of their trench coats while ducking into an “adult store.” Clinicians warn of the “triple A” influence of addictive substances and behaviors: affordability, anonymity, and accessibility. Pornography now has all three, in spades, and that radically changed its audience. The advent of internet pornography meant it became dangerously accessible to both men and women, and the porn industry has capitalized on that and brought in a whole new customer base.

The denial and downplaying of men, especially our brothers in the Church, is a pain point for me even now. Our organization’s work currently serves women in 37 countries and counting, and as of this writing, our waitlist to get into one of our virtual small groups is almost 600 women long, only growing by the day. My team and I stare down this heartbreaking epidemic of addiction daily–it’s a desert that seemingly has no end. When our brothers deny us their support, or worse, that the desert and epidemic even exist–we’re left with no oasis, no defense.

I believe it is first and foremost the task of women to learn to be vulnerable about their struggles with sexual addiction, primarily with one another. But I believe the secondary duty lies with men–to acknowledge the reality of women’s entrenchment in sexual sin and addiction, privately and publicly, and to advocate for women’s recovery needs alongside their own. When this has happened, it has provided a balm to my soul, both personally and professionally. I have had men come alongside our mission, offering their spiritual, emotional, and financial support, with a mark of strength that keeps me going. Women do not yet have the same conversational freedom as men in the Church to admit these issues–men can offer that freedom.

Brothers, do not underestimate the damage of your denial, downplaying, and silence, but also do not underestimate the power of your support and advocacy. Even if you just acknowledge in your social circles that women do indeed struggle with pornography and sexual addiction, you give any woman who hears you the courage to admit it, even if it’s just to herself. Your sisters in Christ need your support, your compassion, your experience facing this beast, and your prayers.

The Condemnation of Husbands

Lastly, some of the denial and territorialism over pornography as a “man’s struggle” is also often coupled with a certain despair. Phrases like: “if women struggle with this too, who is going to pull us out of this pit?” come to mind. I have heard several iterations of this in response throughout my work to the revelation that women struggle with pornography, too, as recently as last week. This response fosters hurt and righteous anger among myself and those I serve when this is where the conversation turns at the revelation of women’s struggles with sexual sin; not just because it strikes me as selfish, but because of the undue and unrealistic pressure that puts on women.

Men, women’s sexual purity is not your savior from a lack of your own. There is only one woman who was given the grace to carry on her shoulders the glorious weight of perfect purity, and she is raised up before us all as the standard. Women besides her, on the other hand, have to work out their salvation in fear and trembling just as you do; that weight our struggle for purity as well as your own is not one our shoulders can bear.

Women are possessors of a powerful sexuality, accompanied by powerful desires, just as men are. That sexuality and those desires can express themselves very differently, but what they have in common is the potential for great glory, or grave sin. We make a mistake when we typify that sin, sort it into categories; we forget that evil has no boundaries. It strikes with precision, yes, but it's insatiable in its consumption. Women are just as capable of grave sin in their sexuality as men are, because lust does not discriminate when it comes to its prey. I have seen so much formation for men, especially in the areas of sexual sin and recovery, that tell them to “fight for her.” For unmarried men, this can often be explicitly spun into an image of a beautiful, spotless bride, that is the “reward” for the fight against pornography and sexual sin. In reality, there is every chance that the bride you’ve been fighting for has been doing a lot of battling of her own. I have had men lament to me that their one-day wife may not be a virgin, or may have consumed porn, even though these men have done so themselves–not to mention that tragedy is also something women have long been taught to brace ourselves for in the men we marry. This may be related to the world’s double standard with men and women, where the promiscuity of men is rewarded and praised but that of women’s is condemned. But also within the Church the double-standard of purity can also lead to an expectation that a woman will be the exemplar of chaste behavior in a relationship, rather than accepting chastity as a responsibility equally shared by a couple. The result is that two sinners that can help each other heal are divided.

Further, if a husband’s belief has been that women hold the standard of purity, then they cannot be expected to share with you when they need help recovering from a sin or addiction that is desecrating it. A lack of recognition on your part of the reality of women’s sexuality, and therefore the reality of its brokenness, casts the woman you love into silence and robs you of the chance of coming to her aid, as a spouse is meant to do. The condemnation women experience when the man they love is disappointed in her lack of perfect purity–all while experiencing a lack of his own–can set their recovery and healing back years due to the pressure to hide any flaws. This is not to say that you cannot be saddened by the presence of sin in a loved one’s life, or feel a sense of betrayal; but if that sadness turns into condemnation and shaming, you were waiting for an ideal, not a real woman.

Husbands, or those who will one day be, I ask you to allow this belief to change into a new hope: that our Savior and His Mother are the hands that reach into this pit of sin with us to lift us up; it was never the responsibility of men or women to do so for one another. Your bride is worth fighting for, not in spite of her past or present sexual sin–but because of it. Instead of looking on her story with disappointment that she didn’t live up to an ideal in your mind, open your heart to the love Christ has for her, and you, that He wants you to be a vessel of: He saw the inherent dignity of each of us, and claimed victory over our sin on our behalf. As a spouse, you are meant to serve as a “permanent reminder…of what happened on the Cross,” as St. John Paul II wrote in Familiaris Consortio. Do not run from the mess of a woman’s story, or from your own, because He didn’t.

In my own husband, I have been blessed to only experience mercy and tenderness when it comes to my story. I have never once felt any shame or condemnation from him from the first conversation we had about the subject; in fact, I’ve felt his deep honor and reverence for the redemption and healing I’ve experienced. Expecting a perfect spouse from the beginning not only will leave us disappointed, but it will also blind us to the stunning work of God in another’s life.

Conclusion

When I was asked to write this article, I was invited to “hit men square between the eyes”--an invitation that I found to be exemplary of the kind of male advocacy women need. Over the last few years of my life, as my work has taken me deep into the darkness of sexual sin and brokenness, I have uncovered more and more of the pivotal nature of men’s roles in women’s experiences, and at times, that’s left me with a lot of heartbreak. At worst, they are the perpetrators of unthinkable misdeeds that leave lifelong damage; but more often, they are just vessels of unintended negligence, denial, or condemnation.

But on the other hand, I have seen that pivotal nature used for the best. I have seen what the strong hands of men are capable of when they surrender them to the Lord for His use: fathers provide blessing in the midst of shame, brothers provide advocacy and support instead of denial, and husbands provide intimacy and pursuit in the face of condemnation. I can guarantee that there is a woman in your life who has something she is afraid to tell you. I invite you to be the man–whether father, brother, friend, boyfriend, or husband–who finally offers her space to be looked on with love as she finally speaks. Even that may seem like a small action, but it is nothing short of heroic.

Finally, I believe adamantly that where responsibility has been laid down–whether out of passivity, fear, or just exhaustion–it can be taken up again. Men, it is historically undeniable that the lid of the Pandora’s box that is the pornography industry was opened by you. But now, in a world where that industry is rapidly claiming almost as many women as it has men for decades, I believe you can close it. With the strength that can only come from hoping in your real Savior, with the merciful tenderness necessary for difficult conversations, with the self-mastery it takes to conquer your own sinfulness–you can end this, and on behalf of your daughters, sisters, and brides…you must.