The following is an excerpt from a new book we are working on. It is called “Love Is Not A Fairytale – A Father’s Letter To His Daughter About Love, Sex, Porn & Her Future”. Our hope is that this book can serve as a useful tool that will help dads talk to their daughters about all sorts of difficult topics. This section from the first draft is from the chapter on pornography.
My daughter, you very well may see porn one day. And when you do, you will be nothing but normal. Almost all women see porn at some point. Because it’s like smoking cigarettes. Some people smoke them on purpose, others don’t. But everyone at some point will breath in that smoke because it’s just there. It doesn’t mean it’s good for you. In fact it’s quite harmful. But you aren’t a bad person because you came in contact with it. You’re just a person.
You may be doing your homework, or thinking you’re clicking on an article or really just be too tempted to see what all the fuss is about. But I need to warn you about what will happen if you do watch it.
It’s poison. And it’s an addictive poison. The more you watch, the more you will want to watch. That doesn’t mean you are a bad person, just a person, and people are wired in a way that respond to pornography like any other drug and it takes hard work and fortitude to walk away from it.
And as you continue to watch you will be exposed to an idea that will break my heart. That you are your body, and your body is all you’re worth. Even worse, it will tell you that that being desired for your body is all you should desire and need. That’s a lie. But as you watch pornography your brain will take in all that you see and begin to rewire your neurological pathways to see that process of being desired as the most pleasurable feeling you can have.
But you need to know this. The people who make porn, they hate you. They HAVE to hate you. Because the women in those videos were once girls just like you. With hopes and dreams and ideas and goals, and the people who make those videos, they had to get rid of all of that. They had to convince those girls that all they were worth was their bodies. In order to do that to these women, they had to hate women. All women. They had to convince themselves that a woman’s soul is worthless, that her mind is to be thrown away, and that like an item in a grocery store, she was only worth the sum of her body parts. So they hate all women. And they hate you.
They really want girls like you to see themselves in that same way. That same worthless way, because then they don’t need to do any convincing. They want you and your friends to find porn, and to watch porn, and to let porn do their dirty work for them, convincing you that you are just a body, and that your ultimate purpose is to simply be desired for your body by a man. They hate you because in the end they want to turn you into an object with no soul, that’s easy to hate.
So yes, you will likely see porn in your life. But when you do, I hope you see it for what it is. A bunch of hurting people, hurting each other. It’s designed to pique your curiosity, to fire all the parts of your brain that will make you feel thrilled, curious, and desire it more. But I hope you remember this, and see past what simply your eyes are taking in. And you turn away as your heart breaks.
And my daughter, you need to realize that there are a lot of women hurting from coming in contact with this poison right now. Teachers, Sunday school teachers, your friends mom’s, and your friends. Most women have come in contact with this. This doesn’t mean that they are bad women & girls. Just that they are hurting women & girls, and they need your sympathy and your understanding, and your prayers. They need you to listen and tell them they aren’t broken beyond repair. They aren’t the worst girl to ever live, they’ve just come in contact with something that hurt them, and maybe they are hurting themselves right now, but that their identity starts and ends with one phrase. They are a daughter. And if they don’t think that they are worthy of love, because they’ve been convinced that only their body’s can be loved and even there they think their body’s are unlovely, tell them what I’m telling you. “I love you”.
It only takes one person to change someone else from unloved to loved. As long as you love them, they will always be loved.
My daughter, I will always love you. No matter what you do, no matter where you go. I hope and pray that you are protected from all harm, and I hope you come in contact with as little poison as possible. But I will always be here, loving you, waiting to tell you again, and hoping that you are out there, telling others the truth about love.
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