Query:

This will sound nuts -- then again, maybe not?  I thought you could shine some light here if you have a moment or two.

My daughter is now 18 and while she hasn’t taken to stripping, she’s got an OnlyFans subscription.  Wonderful right?  Thing is … its fetish based.  It’s a strange world.  You name it, truly.  While she isn’t naked or stimulating herself or anything remotely close to what you would dub pornography … is this still wrong for her to do?

Doesn’t it seem harmless and well ... a bit silly?

If you have any insight at all that I can reason out please do send your input.  If I talk to her about it, I’m likely to get the answer that fetishism isn’t the same as pornography.

Reply:

Yes, this is certainly pornography.  Sexual immorality is whatever deviates from the intended purposes of the sexual powers and feelings, which are given to us for the fruitful, personal love of husband and wife.  Pornography is sexually immoral, because it consists of writing or images intended to cultivate and arouse disordered fascinations and desires.  The immorality of the fetishistic variety of pornography lies in the fact that it attaches sexual desire to things, as well as to persons being used as things.  It’s no accident that OnlyFans is used primarily by prostitutes for self-advertisement.

Pornography and the habit of using it are not at all harmless or silly.  Escape is certainly possible – but in the meantime, it subverts the imagination, reorients the desires, and alters the way people think.  Those who are habituated to pornography tend to have emotional difficulty in normal relationships, because their emotions and attitudes become disarranged and they tend to develop unwholesome expectations of others.  Over time, the things which first excited them lose the power to arouse, so they often turn to ever more extreme and unnatural fantasies in order to get that excitement back.  We now find that among young men who use certain sorts of pornography, there has even been a rise in the desire that young women should submit to being choked.

The bottom line is that you are right to be concerned, and you should not be embarrassed that your daughter’s interest in this kind of thing seems “off” to you.  It is very much “off.”  God bless your daughter and your guidance of her.

Related:

On the Meaning of Sex