Two weeks ago, Tucker Carlson set off a conflagration in media and politics when he interviewed the ardent America First advocate and white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Most of the news coverage centered on free speech, cancel culture, and antisemitism. Only a few commentators remarked (and those ineptly) on what Fuentes said, much later in the interview, about pornography.
In short, this twenty-seven-year-old pariah, who has offended everyone across the spectrum of mainstream American thought, nevertheless spoke sensibly on this one issue.
Something that is almost never talked about is that this is a generation that is totally sexually dysfunctional, I think, because of pornography. . . .
It is impossible for a real woman to compete with the availability and the novelty of pornography. A real woman is only one person. . . . Porn is—you could have a hundred different women in one sitting, doing anything. Whatever niche or idiosyncratic thing that a person might be into, it’s there. . . .
It’s reality distortion. . . . Just like psychedelics distort reality, just like an internet society is a form of delusion, so is porn. . . . Especially among young men, they know it’s a problem. It’s ruining their lives! And they know it.
It’s nuts to see a guy who fulminates against “world Jewry” on the same page—granted, this one fluttering page—as Matt Fradd, Jason Evert, and Trent Horn. But the groypers’ guy agrees: pornography is ubiquitous, pervasive, and grievously destructive to human relationships.
Fuentes’s popularity with young men appears authentic. It thus seems reasonable to read his remarks as underlining the impression that the conventional warnings against porn are not working. So what should we do differently, or at least in addition?
This will sound counterintuitive, but part of the problem is the relentless focus on pornography itself. This is like a general grinding his army down on the enemy’s best fortifications, when the better strategy would be to settle in for a siege and let starvation turn the tide.
Orthodox Jews have an ancient tradition of “building a fence around the Torah.” The Torah prescribes the essential laws for Jews—the ones Sodom and Gomorrah couldn’t be bothered with, and we all know how that turned out. But the rabbis, concerned for the welfare of the Jewish people, laid down laws on top of the Torah—“lesser laws” not directly from God, like forbidding the holding of a tool on the Sabbath. This “fence” of extra laws safeguarded the people: a guy might incur a rabbi’s punishment by picking up a tool, but dealing with that rabbinical law would save him from transgressing the divine commandment not to work on the Sabbath (see Deut. 5:12).
This is what we need when it comes to the scourge of pornography. We build a fence around pornography by identifying related “lesser” evils and fostering righteous hatred for them. There are many of these, right in front of our faces. Men will need to focus more on some, women more on others, though both sexes should cooperate in campaigning against all of them.
Integrity and the MPAA
Twenty years ago, a high school freshman I knew would consciously avert his eyes from the local mall’s gigantic Victoria’s Secret ads to “avoid sinful thoughts.” I made fun of him then, but now I admire the memory of him.
For men, this is where the fight against porn starts: with all the little gateways the world has planted to ensnare us. Neither the Catechism nor the Church’s tradition offers a “porn pass” for mainstream movies, no matter what the Motion Picture Association of America has to say about their appropriateness or how many Oscars they win. Nor do a few square inches of fabric or skillfully placed set pieces fix the problem because technically there’s no nudity.
Men must cultivate a healthy disgust for these snares, which enflame lust even when they’re not pornographic themselves. This is what integrity implies: a worldview that recognizes evil everywhere it shows up and doesn’t scramble to make exceptions for the sake of comfort or human respect.
One useful technique is to meditate on the rank inauthenticity of these precursors to porn. Think of the artifice that goes into a Victoria’s Secret ad: the careful photo shoot staging, the make-up, the circus show of staring photographers and technicians. Likewise with the Oscar-winning movies—not technically porn, we’re assured!—where two effective strangers come together and contort their bodies and mouth out noises to pretend they’re having sex. Often they leave their families at home to do this, with their spouses’ consent—and then they rake in money and fame and awards!
With enough scrutiny, the fakeness becomes glaring, and then repulsive. If we dial into that aversion, we can stop convincing ourselves that it’s okay to put up with a little cheesecake or fan service or even nudity in an otherwise “perfectly fine” movie. We can seriously clean up our viewing habits or even stop watching TV altogether.
Does this mean avoiding almost all cinema and television and pop culture? In a world saturated with temptations to lust, yes, absolutely, it could. Embrace it. Call it a take-no-prisoners hard pivot back to custody of the eyes.
Modesty and Instagram
Holy things are covered—our Lord in the tabernacle, the chalice that holds his blood, the altar on which the Mass is offered. It’s not just flattery to say that the woman likewise should be covered. Her body—of the same kind as the one that bore our Lord—is holy, too. It’s controversial to say so, but the edicts they tell me the nuns issued in the mean old fifties have merit.
There’s more to this than hems and necklines and sleeves. A woman who protects her modesty by her dress can then turn to protecting society with her witness. If men should hate the “pre-pornographic” snares of the media, what should women hate? Namely, Instagram and its analogues, and what they represent: a culture in which women command astronomical attention directly proportional to how much they’re willing to exhibit. It starts with 5,000 profile pics on Facebook and bikinis on Instagram and progresses to OnlyFans, where women are so empowered in their promiscuity that it’s hard to find a man to blame for exploiting them.
What empowers good women is to hear that yes, women do have great power, which means that women too are capable of great evil. OnlyFans proves it. Women who respect themselves, who want a culture that breeds good men to marry, whose maternal instincts flame over at the thought of their sons and daughters lost to some internet pit of filth will be righteous to trumpet their hatred of women’s power squandered on vanity and ambition and sin.
We need more women to speak about this—not to shout from the rooftops, necessarily, but just to be ready to express their disgust when the occasion calls for it. “Instagram grosses me out” has power, just as “That movie is porn with a veneer” does. This sort of witness, calmly and charitably expressed, will cause people to do a double-take.
The advice against pornography must start with “Don’t,” but it can’t end there. Demolishing the gateways to it—to consuming it and to creating it—must be part of the cure. This work is especially necessary where it touches on embedded cultural institutions: television, advertising, fashion, social media. Speaking out and standing out will mean ridicule, ostracization, and contempt, but Christians should be used to that kind of thing.
And eventually, with courage and steadfastness, it works. When porn is just not that interesting anymore—not to watch, and not to do—it will die.