Ropes And Ball Gags In Heaven?
So this guilt-plagued writer for GQ is disgusted by his own pornography preferences, and feels guilty about watching it, and all that. Really, I’d forgotten that people could be so conflicted about their porn. But this guy is so worried about it, he decides to go and interview Max Hardcore, who is still in federal prison on an obscenity beef, and then write an article about how to hate yourself for watching porn. It’s an interesting read, even if it is basically an extended loop of authorial self-loathing. Here’s the writer’s description of the first time he saw a bondage movie (or maybe it was a gang-bang movie, he coyly hints but doesn’t say for sure):
God, my rabbis told me, could only grant me forgiveness for the sins I had committed against Him; sins I had committed against my fellow humans could only be forgiven by them personally. If they didn’t forgive me, my rabbis said, when I died and went to heaven, God would cause me to suffer in the exact way I had caused them to suffer.
At the time, though only 14 years of age, I had already tired of the porn magazines I found in my house and decided it was time for full-motion video. I went to Times Square, where a group of women stood outside a porn shop, protesting and carrying placards. On one placard was a picture of a naked woman tied to a bed. She had a ball gag in her mouth and clamps on her nipples. I ducked into the store, spent every dollar I’d stolen from my father’s wallet, hurried home, and hoped the videos wouldn’t work.
They worked.
Fuck.
I wondered what was wrong with me. I wondered how many gang bangs I would have to suffer in heaven. Was it like an eye for an eye—a gang bang for a gang bang—or was it some sort of eternal gang bang that never ended? Would I be anally violated? Would I be spanked? Did they have ropes and ball gags and Ron Jeremy in heaven?
Wow. That’s a pretty brutal counterpoint to the Ariel Anderssen post from the other day (https://www.bondageblog.com/2011/10/31/ariel-anderssen-gets-back-to-basics/). The two of them should get together and fight it out.
I wonder if the guilt of enjoyment of extreme porn only stops when you have enjoyed the act (whatever it is) with a willing partner.
It’s hard to imagine all the fun people missed out on because of religion. Think of all the anger and rioting there would be if you could bring the dead back to life after they’d figured out it was all a giant lie.
That is one fucked up guy. But his problem is, he’s not fucked up because he likes porn. He’s fucked up because he’s got that whole Jewish guilt thing going. And he’s projecting it relentlessly on the rest of the world. A lot of religions work like that … get you thinking you are morally responsible for your sexual urges and then tell you there’s a way out of the guilt … believe what they want you to believe, do what they tell you to. A very old racket, depressingly still successful.
I am not sure who he caused to suffer by viewing the porn. But suppose for the sake of argument he will suffer the same way as the porn did. Then his punishment in Hell will be to be covered with something sticky.
What Pat said. I was brought up in a socially conservative version of Christianity rather than Orthodox Judaism, but I got the same “Human nature is a sin, and our faith offers the only absolution” schtick.
Terry Pratchett books feature a character of Death who basically explains that what happens to you when you die is exactly what you THINK happens to you when you die.
So while all the religious nuts are burning in their own eternal hell because they ate pork, or carried a little Jesus around with them (actually against one of the 10 commandments!), all the athiests are floating in nothing and not experiencing anything at all, and all the hedonistic self-assured people are having a whale of a time for all eternity.
Though I hope it’s not true (I’d be in the second category!), it would be hilarious if it was.
If your religion makes you feel guilty about something you did, you need to change religions. The happiest religious people I know are of the mindset “God has a sense of humour, wants me to enjoy my life but throws the occasional curveball in just to spice things up”, the most miserable are of the mindset: “You will burn in hell if you don’t do exactly everything I say (and nothing that I actually do)”.
And if enjoying sex is actually a sin (especially when hormones are raging), you really have to consider what sort of sick-minded God would make it so attractive, sinful, naturally-occurring, intimate, loving and enjoyable all at the same time.
[…] Ropes And Ball Gags In Heaven? […]
I guess there are two concerns really.
The 1st is that a porn user feels guilty because on some level they feel that sex is dirty/sinful/wrong and that they are doing something sinful by indulging their sexual urges.
The 2nd is that the actors in hard core porn films may be being abused / taken advantage of. Or that some of the ‘amateur’ BDSM porn we see and enjoy may not be consensual.
I think we have all happily dismissed the 1st concern but the 2nd does trouble me. Is there anyway to mark a BDSM porn site as being non-abusive?
It seems to me much of the guilt Dude feels comes less from deep religiosity – if he really felt all porn was wrong, he’d make an effort to stop – but the misguided thought that fantasies that turn him on relate to a reality of sexual misconduct. Obviously, lack of consent is rape. We can agree rape is bad. Pretending or consensual-non-consent isn’t the same thing at all.