But every now and again, a particular statistic will make me sit up and do a double take, and that was certainly the case when I heard that pornography under the "transgender" category (aka, TransPorn) increased in popularity by 75% over the past year. That makes it the 7th most popular category worldwide and the 3rd most popular in the U.S. Like Planned Parenthood's research arm (the Guttermacher Institute, which reports abortion data), this comes straight from the proverbial horse's mouth--PornHub, the Amazon of Porn.
I'm going to write that again, because it didn't quite sink in for me the first time and made it hard to fall back asleep:
Pornography under the "transgender" (aka, TransPorn) category increased in popularity by 75% over the past year. That makes it the 7th most popular category worldwide and the 3rd most popular in the U.S.
We used to think the nuclear family (married mother and father with children) was normal, and that while there were exceptions (divorced parents, second marriages, widowed spouses, etc), this was the norm. Now, in the general populace, the nuclear family is the exception and minority. Sadly, you are an anomaly if you live in such an arrangement.
You could make a similar case (in a twisted kind of way, if you'll allow me the liberty) with porn. Vanilla, straight, male on female intercourse was largely the meat and potatoes of the porn industry a few decades ago. Pornography is not good, but in terms of the natural appetite, this orientation was more or less "normal." Sure, there were always kinky sub-genres, but they were just that.
Now, if you're into straight, vanilla, missionary style porn and that's what you order exclusively from the menu, you're like the kid from the nuclear family--a complete anomaly among the general populace of porn viewers.
With the commercialization of pornography, studios have had to diversify their portfolio and respond to changing tastes and market data. It's like the cereal companies that keep having to add NEW! and NOW WITH MORE MARSHMALLOWS! marketing slogans to the boxes to keep sales up. Porn is a moral epidemic, a public health contagion, and a sinful misuse of our sexual nature. But we can't forget that it is also a product, designed in a free market for public consumption.
But this acceleration of inversion (and perversion) of the "normal" sexual appetite--a 75% increase in popularity in the last year alone--is simply staggering, not to mention disconcertingly unnerving. And here's another crazy stat: while men viewed porn tagged as "trans" 22% more than women, women on “straight” Pornhub viewed the “trans male” sub-category 115% more than men.
Folks, this is not normal, and it is certainly not of the God above.
If pornography is the commodification and exploitation of genitalia removed from the human person, then wouldn't it make sense that we have been reduced to such animalistic sexual reductionism? What does it matter if the breasts you are seeing belong naturally on a woman or are artificially constructed on a man? As long as you are able to rub off according to the porn-du-jour, isn't that what matters in the end? Porn producers use Alinsky-type tactics to exploit the good and natural, God-given human appetite for sex as such:
ISOLATE IT
OBJECTIFY IT
USE IT
DISCARD IT
Rinse and repeat.
Of course, this has been happening since the beginning of time with prostitution, pimps and madames, and the Romans were no strangers to sexual perversion (which they normalized in their culture). But like the advent of the internet, the speed with which this pandemic has metastasized and warped the minds (and bodies) or our culture is simply astounding.
For porn companies, the capitalization on the trans-tsunami is simply catching the wave while it is at its crest. As big-business, they are concerned with expanding market share. After all, why limit yourself to 50% of the populace (men) when there are untapped markets (women) who may be open to exploration? Another interesting thing to note is that these sub-genres are not competitors in the way K-Mart might compete with Sears or Boscovs. It's all porn, albeit in different flavors.
No, the only competitor in this marketplace of degradation is Chastity--and she is vastly outnumbered. Those who refuse to be a consumer and chose abstinence instead are fighting on multiple fronts--against their own appetites and concupiscence; against the cultural tide; against their peers; and against the spamming porn peddlers themselves. To succeed, they must be intentional, day in and day out, and must also rely on (and be disposed towards) grace in addition to the exercise of the will.
As a product-variant, the trans phenomenon is an effective multiplier. Combined with fetishes and a dizzying combination of "gender-fluid" and FtM/MtF scenarios, you are suddenly not limited to "gay porn" and "inter-racial" porn and "MILF" porn, but an infinite cocktail of every conceivable combination.
This is so beyond the Emperor not wearing any clothes.
If you think all of this is completely nefarious, you are not off base. But it is only because you have the eyes to see the physical and spiritual reality, while the rest of the world is completely blind and will suffer for it. What a perversion is today becomes simply a different flavor tomorrow.
The Father of Lies sows the seeds of confusion, and as many an exorcist has noted, his reign is coming to a close so he is throwing everything at us all at once in a last ditch effort to drag as many souls to Hell with him as he can in the short time he has left. Things will probably get worse before they get better, but let's face it--things are pretty bad now. This may explain, from a spiritual perspective, this acceleration and normalization of something that is completely not normal, not healthy, and not good. Those qualities have Satan's handiwork written all over them. As a conniving and supremely intelligent entity, he too is looking to expand his market share--to the young, the innocent, and to the Church herself--and will use anything at his disposal to confuse, corrupt, and condemn as many souls as he can to make them eternal consumers in Hell. As Fr. John Hardon was fond of saying,
"Ordinary Catholic families cannot survive. They must be extra-ordinary families. They must be heroic Catholic families. Ordinary Catholic families are no match for the devil as he uses the media of communication to secularize and desacralize modern society. No less than ordinary individual Catholics can survive, so ordinary Catholic families cannot survive. They have no choice. They must either be holy -- which means sanctified -- or they will disappear."
The scary thing is, this stuff is hard to walk back from. As I wrote in The Healing of Memory, God can restore us by grace even when we have fallen victim to pornography use by our own volition, if we are firm and committed in wanting to live lives of virtue and chastity. But apart from the miraculous, you don't just wake up one day from a year of watching trans porn and suddenly know how to have a normal, healthy sexual relationship. The extent to which one's mind can be warped and sexual response affected by this digital refuse should not be underestimated.
The only real response to porn--trans or otherwise--is simply to opt out and refuse to be a consumer. It's not a social boycott or a social-media outrage campaign that will force the hand of the porn execs, but a spiritual commitment to chastity. Starve the beast. Refuse to play the game. Focus your sexual energy exclusively on your spouse, and do so in a way that does not use them for selfish ends. Don't be like a dumb ox led to slaughter. Remember: this is not normal.
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