Ep 498 ｜ Exposing the Threat Porn Poses to Kids ｜ Guest： Benjamin Nolot
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Summary
Pornography is a huge problem. Kids today are being exposed to porn before the age of 13. In this episode, we talk to the head of Exodus Cry, an organization dedicated to freeing children and women from the sex trafficking industry.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week. All right,
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today we are talking about a subject that you guys have been asking me to talk about for a
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long time. That is the dangers of pornography. We are going to talk to the head of Exodus Cry,
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which is an anti-trafficking, anti-exploitation organization that's doing amazing work to
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liberate children and women from the billions dollar sex trafficking industry. A part of the
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sex trafficking industry, what drives demand for sex buying is pornography. There have been many
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attempts by people on the left and the right to try to separate these two issues and to say, oh,
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you know, porn can be ethical. It can be moral. It's fine. It's not hurting anyone that really
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couldn't be further from the truth. And this is a really big problem. Kids today are being,
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as the title of the documentary, the Exodus Cry is about to put out says, raised on porn. I mean,
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we've seen, of course, different kinds of sexual exploitation and trafficking make the news. R.
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Kelly was finally convicted for exploiting children, for racketeering, for sex trafficking. But this
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isn't just happening in these kind of rare instances. This is happening on a daily basis and
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not just in, you know, the Middle East. Of course, it is happening very prevalently there. It's not just
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happening in Asia. It's happening in the United States. It's happening in L.A. It's happening in
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Houston. It's happening in Dallas. It's happening in D.C. And what's driving sex buying is minds that
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are conditioned to sexual exploitation from a young age and pornography enables that. And the age of
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first exposure to pornography is getting lower and lower. There was a Barna study in 2016 that found
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that 28% of Christian men and 11% of Christian women say they were first exposed to pornography
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before the age of 12 compared to, interestingly, 23% of non-Christian men and 24% of non-Christian
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women. This is a very pervasive issue. And unfortunately, there are many institutions and
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many powers that profit from ensuring that kids are able to access pornography and that kids are
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unfortunately even the subject of pornography. And we're going to talk about with Benji why that is,
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why there are not common sense measures put in place to make sure that kids are not accessing
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pornographic material. But unfortunately, this kind of pornography is this kind of content
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is available on TikTok. It's available on Instagram. It's available on Twitter, where you only have to be
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13 years old. And there's not even that much of a check on that. But you're technically supposed to be
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13 before you can get on these platforms. Then once you're on the platform, you can see anything.
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And so he is going to tell us how all of this works. He's going to tell us about how his organization
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is pushing back against this. And this is a monumental task. I mean, 40 million, this is
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according to the Recovery Village, 40 million U.S. adults regularly visit internet pornography sites.
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10% of U.S. adults admit to having an addiction to internet pornography. So 10% of U.S. adults admit
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to that. And that's a large number. I mean, that's millions of people. And then there are people on top
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of that who don't actually admit it, or maybe don't even know that they're addicted to pornography.
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And unfortunately, they are. What this does to the psychology of children, how this can damage
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children's view of sex, I mean, it's heartbreaking. And it's so important that we know this. It's so
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important that we raise awareness about this. And then, of course, that we are doing everything we
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can to protect our children from it. And I hope that one day that the creators of these websites,
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the creators of even these social media companies, are held accountable for this. Unfortunately,
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I think that they not only know what they are exposing children to, and they obviously don't
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care because they're not actually limiting their exposure to that, but they also know the different
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kinds of damage that these social media sites are doing to young children. There was an expose,
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there was an article written for the Wall Street Journal that talked about a report that Facebook
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itself created talking about the insecurity that has caused even the suicidal thoughts that are caused
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in young girls in particular, and looking at images on Instagram. So this is what the Wall Street
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Journal reports. 32% of teen girls said that they felt bad about their bodies. 32% of teen girls said
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that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. The researchers said in a
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March 2020 slide presentation posted to Facebook's internal message board reviewed by the Wall Street
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Journal. Comparisons on Instagram. Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and
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describe themselves. That is exacerbated by pornography, which is, we will talk about with Benji, also
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deludes girls into thinking that there are certain expectations of them and their sexual performance
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that are not real and are not grounded in reality. And gosh, as Christians, we have to lead the way in
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showing what healthy sexuality looks like, what it looks like to actually love your body, what it looks
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like to steward your body in a way that is responsible, to steward your mind, to help our
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children form their thoughts in a way that is not just God-glorifying, but also is beneficial
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to themselves. And so I know that we've had a lot of heavy stuff that we have talked about this week.
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It's been heavy. I didn't mean to do that. I didn't intend to do that, but I really wanted to
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talk to Benji because he's just a wealth of information on this topic. And it's so, so
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important that we know how big of a deal this is, that we also connect it to a lot of the false
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teachings that we're seeing within the church about that sex positivity, quote unquote, looks like
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being affirming of all kinds of sexual inclinations and sexual identities and sexual behaviors.
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That's not true. Like there is a link between that and the unrealistic expectations of pornography
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and the exploitation that comes with child trafficking. Like God gave us the boundaries
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of sex because he loves us, not because he's a fuddy-duddy, but because he believes in true
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freedom and true health. That's my personal commentary. Benji won't be talking about that,
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but what he gives us, um, insight into, uh, is really, it's the details about what goes on in
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this very, um, exploitative industry that it's so important for us to know about.
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Benji, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?
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Yeah. My name is Benji Nolo. I'm the CEO and founder of Exodus cry and we're an organization
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that exists to combat sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.
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Gotcha. And you guys have, um, you have a film that's coming out tomorrow, actually Friday,
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and it's called raised on porn. What is this about?
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Yeah. Uh, raised on porn is a film that tries to quantify the impact of childhood exposure to
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pornography. And so in my work to fight sex trafficking, we started to look deeper at some
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of the underlying root causes and really kind of narrowed in on this aspect of demand and came to
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the realization that if men stopped buying women and children for sex, the entire sex trafficking
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industry would implode overnight. And we would see the largest exodus of human beings from systematic
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oppression that the world has ever seen. So central to the aspect of demand is pornography consumption.
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Every John sex buyer that we talked to had a history of pornography consumption from childhood.
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Wow. And so when we discovered that we started to see out just across the broader culture,
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the broader landscape of our world, what a widespread problem. This is that kids growing up in this media
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internet age are now exposed to pornography at younger and younger ages. It has become the sex ed for a
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generation. And, um, and our findings about the impact of that on these children was deeply disturbing.
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So we decided to make a film about it that really sounds the alarm and, and tries to create awareness
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about this public health crisis. Wow. You know, I don't think that many people think about the link
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surprisingly, I think a lot of people don't think about the link between child, uh, child exploitation
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and pornography. They mostly think of pornography as just kind of this adult issue, or, you know,
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maybe they think of someone hiding playboy magazines under their bed and it's just something people do.
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And if no one is getting harmed by it, you know, why is it a big deal? That's something that I hear
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about a lot. There's even people, you know, I'm a conservative people who identify as libertarian
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who think that, you know, people like me who are anti pornography, that we're just buddy duddies.
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We're these theocratic authoritarians. Can you talk a little bit more about how pornography is not
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just something that happens in a vacuum that doesn't harm anyone? Yeah. Well, I mean, there's
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so many layers to unpacking this issue. I think first of all, just acknowledging, you know, that
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the world has changed like since the internet. And, um, and so we are a part of this great social
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experiment and being, you know, the first generation to grow up with widespread exposure to such potent
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content. So people are going to debate about the impact of pornography on adults and the legitimacy
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or lack thereof, of its place in our world today. But I think that one thing that we can all agree
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on is that, like you said, this is quote unquote adult content, you know, and, and we call it
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pornographic content. But, um, but so inherently we understand that this is not something that is being
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created for children. Yet the problem is, is that the way that the internet has been constructed is a
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city without walls. And so there are no safeguards. There are no protections for children who are
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online. And we know that children are online. And so in conjunction with this film called raised on
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porn, um, that will be released exclusively through our magic lantern pictures, YouTube channel. Um,
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we're launching a campaign called protect children, not porn. And this campaign is, um, meant to demand
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that we put age verification walls in place that would require a government issued ID, um, at for any,
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any, uh, website that is hosting or distributing pornographic content. So really putting the pressure on big
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tech and big porn to show up where it matters to protect our kilt, our kids.
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To show that the safety and the mental, emotional, and sexual wellbeing and health of our children
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is more important than the convenience and sexual gratification of adults. And it's shocking that
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this hasn't happened to this point on the internet, you know, has been now been around for longer than
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two decades. And this should have been there from the very beginning. And so, um, you know, sites like
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Twitter that welcome 13 year olds to start an account and yet at the same time, welcome, um,
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collude with and enable the most graphic, hardcore pornographic content to be widely distributed.
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You know, what's up with that? Right. Are you an adult platform? Are you a platform for children?
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Like, what is it? Right. And the fact is nobody's said anything to put pressure on them to have to
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decide. And so it's organizations like ours at Exodus cry and others, um, that are, you know,
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trying to sound the alarm on this because again, it's, it's the safety, the future, the mental,
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emotional, and sexual health and wellbeing of our children that is, that is at stake. And this truly
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is a crisis. Their lives are being hijacked and having lifelong damaging implications. So we just want
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to see that changed. Let's talk about some of those implications. What is the psychological impact of
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a child, say even a 13 year old being exposed to pornography?
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Yeah. I mean, so it, you know, the biopsychosocial response of a child to pornography varies from,
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from child to child, but there are some consistencies that we know first and foremost is what happens in
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the brain. Children's, you know, brains are not fully developed. The frontal cortex of our brain
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is not developed until we are in our mid twenties. That is the judgment center. It's the center where
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we make, you know, where that has critical thinking that, that sort of like puts the brakes on things
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we might otherwise try to do. And then the frontal cortex is, ah, it might not be a good idea.
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Absolutely. So, so, so children who are exposed to this content are, you know, quite literally
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neurologically overwhelmed. And then what happens is, is that because exposure to this graphic potent
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content is associated with arousal. When you have a child who's not fully emotionally developed and
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matured, physically developed and matured, neurologically developed and matured, um, they,
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they don't have a framework to understand what's happening. And so it often creates a lot of
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confusion. There's arousal, but there's shame and there's guilt and there's curiosity and, and this,
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this toxic cocktail go together and end up, like I said before, often hijacking children's lives. It,
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it, it sets the wet concrete of their sexuality around the sexual appetites of pornographers.
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So pornography is colonizing the sexuality of a generation. It is colonizing the sexuality
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of children. You know, we have a handful of sociopathic, narcissistic, deviant pornographers
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in the San Fernando Valley who are setting the sexual template for an entire generation and almost
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nobody is saying anything about it. What do you, what do you mean? What do you mean by that?
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By what? So that, that group of, that group of people you said in the San Fernando Valley who are
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setting that template. Yeah. These pornographers, right. Are putting their own
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deviant sexuality into the creation of these videos that then go out and are feeding the masses
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and feeding children and, and, um, indoctrinating them and conditioning them with sexual appetites that
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are not their own. See, like we had, I've interviewed scores of people about this who,
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you know, are sex buyers or just any number of people that have been affected by pornography.
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And, and oftentimes what happens is a child will go online. Well, the most readily accessible
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pornography today is gonzo porn, which is this really violent, um, aggressive, uh, pornography.
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So a child sees that then it becomes associated with arousal. Now that becomes a part of their
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sexuality. And so when they get to an age where they want to experiment sexually, what they think
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is normal might be choking a girl and slapping her while calling her, you know, all kinds of
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derogatory and misogynistic, um, contemptuous names. And then the porn industry plays it off like,
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well, this is just fantasy. And it's like, uh, well, it's fantasy in the sense that you're passing
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on a delusional view of what sexuality is, but it's not fantasy for the person who's being abused
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creating these videos. And it's not a fantasy for the poor child whose sexuality is now hijacked for
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the rest of their life because you know, they saw it. And then you have these pornographers telling you
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over here that, well, it's the parent's job. And it's like, no matter how hard parents fight to
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protect their kids, they can't control every single situation in which a child might be exposed to
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something online. And that's where it comes back to the responsibility lies at the doorstep of big
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tech and big porn to rebuild the internet with walls. Like it's, it's just the most logical thing,
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you know, that, that I can think of that, like, of course you would have those protections for
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children. We don't let children go into a liquor store and just go buy, you know, hard alcohol.
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Like we don't let, right. We don't let heroin peddlers just go onto our children's, uh, you know,
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schoolyard at recess and sell them heroin. So why do we think it's any different with this visual
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heroin that they can't simply just detox from it's in their head now. Right. And it's, it's literally
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in their, their being there, their nervous system has been deeply affected by this. So the, the
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implications are enormous. And at this point, you know, we just feel like we are fighting for the
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soul of a generation. And so our hope with this film is to galvanize more people to look seriously
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at this really important issue. And just to affirm what you're talking about, about the access to that
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kind of, uh, you know, aggressive and even abusive pornography and kids and how it's shaping them
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and impacting their view of sex and what's normal. I read an article in the Atlantic a few months ago
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by Elizabeth Bruning, and it's not something I don't necessarily agree with everything that she
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was saying, but she does point out the dangers of kids being able to access porn. And I'll, I'll read
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you some of it. So this was, she interviewed, um, some teenagers and one of them, Thalia said,
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uh, when I first started having sex, I thought it, I thought that I was just because of watching
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porn and also listening to other people, my age, talk about sex, the weird ubiquity of BDSM culture.
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I thought that I was just supposed to like being choked and stuff. Joy 18 agreed. I think there was
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a point in my life where I tried to convince myself that I could possibly be into that. And now that
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I've grown up, I'm like, no way I can never do that. Uh, or allow anyone to do that to me.
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Callie age 18 says that the person that she has had sex with, he's not even as exposed to
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porn as I would think that most boys are. And he thought that choking was a normal thing.
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This is something that apparently teenagers are confronting, not just the desire to have sex
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before you get married, which I think every teenager for all of time has been confronted with,
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you know, culture, trying to normalize that, but a really type of aggressive, abusive, dominating
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kind of sex that cannot be healthy and certainly doesn't speak to a healthy frame of mind. Right.
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Well, what the BDSM community would say about that is that this is a fetish and you're kink
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shaming and you know, that's just up to blah, blah, blah. But you know, the reality is this
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kind of violent, abusive things, it's not a, it's not a fetish that is abuse that is violation.
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And, um, and we have to just call it for what it is. And it it's, it's sad to me that a generation
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is growing up, having their appetites cultivated, shaped, developed by the porn industry, because
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the, that creates a dire situation for young girls who are being preyed upon by, you know,
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these young men who have been fed a steady diet of porn since they were children. It's creating a
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very dangerous situation. Yeah, it definitely is. And you mentioned the internet has been around for
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a long time. Pornography, internet pornography has been around for a long time. Why wouldn't these
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companies, you know, they all say outwardly, Oh, you know, we don't want minors on our site.
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Um, but they are kind of pushing against some of the policies that you are advocating for to have
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some kind of gatekeeping system to keep kids off the site. Um, why, why do you think that is like,
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why hasn't this happened so far? If we know that there is a need for this kind of barrier?
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I mean, you know, I can only offer conjecture about what may be going on in the minds of these,
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you know, executives of these large big tech and big porn companies. Um, to me, it seems like such
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an obvious safeguard that you would put in place, um, to protect children from exposure to this.
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So my, you know, logical deduction is that their must, their motive for profit is greater than
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their interest in the protection of children. Yeah. Because it's a great question. Why aren't they?
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And, you know, is it okay if I just tell you a story on this? Yeah. So
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I've, I've seen, you know, the end of, of this. Um, I traveled, I've traveled around the
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world fighting sex trafficking, found myself in Cambodia, um, in a little village outside of,
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um, Phnom Penh called Swipok and, uh, went there to interview some friends that were working on the
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ground there to address child sex trafficking. And when we pulled up, there was a large heavyset
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Western man out in front of one of these brothels bartering for sex with a child. And, uh, and as
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when he saw me coming in our film crew, he took off up the street, we started to follow him. Then
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he broke out into a full blown sprint. So we chased him down through the alleys and out to the main
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street. He was jumping on the back of a moped taxi. And I grabbed him by the back of his shirt at the
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last second and yanked him back. And my, my adrenaline was pumping and my heart was beating.
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And I suddenly found myself face to face with this man who had flown halfway across the world
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to buy a child for sex. Um, there's no explanation for that other than there was a history in this
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man's life that brought him to this point. You know, people do not wake up one day and decide to
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fly halfway across the world to start buying children for sex. So I just want to bring it
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back to that point, um, that I started with to say that, you know, this isn't just always about
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me at what point does my personal freedom, you know, cause the next person's slavery. And so I think
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that we do have to pull back and look at the larger landscape of our culture and what is then the best
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interest of all of us. The idea of society is that it's better, you know, for us to do it together
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than alone. And so we have to think that way. And when you see large amounts of men now going out
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into, you know, pay to have illicit sex, when we see a demand increasing for sex with children,
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we have to start asking the question, where is this coming from? And when you talk to these men,
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every single one of them have a history in pornography consumption. That was like a slippery
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slope that escalated, um, to this point. It's not to say that every single person who views
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pornography will end up there, but enough do that. We have to start having these conversations.
00:24:36.240
Yeah. Two weeks after that, is it, can I mention just one last thing on this?
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Oh, keep going. No problem. Uh, a couple of weeks after that, um, I was back in the States,
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we were putting together this awareness center for, to kind of about modern day human trafficking and
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slavery. And, uh, I reached out to this friend in Cambodia and said, you know, do you have any,
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any relics of, you know, trafficking in Cambodia that you could send to us that we could feature
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and tell a story about? So he got back to me and he said, actually, we just raided a brothel this week.
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And he said, um, he said, we've recovered, um, some evidence that I'll send to you in the mail.
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And so, um, so a couple of weeks later, I, a few weeks later, I get this package in the mail.
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My, my wife opens it. I get home from work. She said, babe, you got some, um, you know,
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some package in the mail. I'm not sure what it is. And, uh, so I opened the package and I pull out
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these pajamas of a seven-year-old and I'm trying to wrap my mind around why I am getting a package
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of pajamas in the mail. And then I look at the crotch and they are still stained with the blood
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of this girl's abuse. And all I could think was all the girls that we saw when we were there in
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Cambodia. And you just can't even fathom that somebody would look at a seven-year-old in that
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way. But here we had the evidence literally staring us in the face of this person's abuse.
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And I thought to myself, you know, all this talk about pornography and, oh, it's just, you know,
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about being so sexual and, you know, we're so sexually liberated. You know, this is the end of
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that pornography. How do you stare that seven-year-old and the child and tell them something good about
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pornography? So the reality is, is that we live in a world in which pornography is trespassing
00:26:35.860
into the lives of our children and disrupting their childhood, stealing their innocence. It is
00:26:43.860
cultivating deviant appetites in the hearts of the consumers who eventually go out and seek to fulfill
00:26:52.340
those that results in the abuse of more children. So what we are talking about is a world that has become
00:26:59.080
extremely dangerous for children. And it's up to all of us to do our part to change that.
00:27:05.100
Starting with Twitter, starting with Google. Why, when you go on Google, I typed, I was looking for
00:27:12.120
a sermon from one of my favorite pastors. I typed in his name, I hit videos. And what popped up was
00:27:18.180
a whole bunch of pornographic videos, the thumbnail right there. Why is that on Google?
00:27:23.540
Right. Is there literally no interest, no regard for the safety and sexual and emotional well-being
00:27:31.580
of our children? I don't think that there is. And I also think that those platforms are too busy
00:27:38.280
trying to censor political speech and speech that it deems unpalatable, you know, according to their
00:27:44.480
own ideology to really pay attention to that kind of thing. I mean, that's really, honestly,
00:27:50.600
that's the more charitable take. The more, the less charitable take is that it is purposeful. And
00:27:58.280
of course, you don't like to think that. I don't like to think that. I don't like to put those
00:28:01.840
motivations, those kind of nefarious motives on people. But when you ask the question, as you did,
00:28:08.320
well, why aren't there those limits in place? They're so common sense. They are pretty simple
00:28:14.280
limitations, I would guess, to put in place. Why aren't they being put in place? It does seem that
00:28:19.480
it's purposeful. And then if you look at some of the stuff, I had a mom on here on Monday who,
00:28:25.100
this is a Texas mom. She is in a suburb outside of Dallas. We're not talking about some of the more
00:28:30.280
liberal places in the country. Her daughter had 10 books that were recommended to her.
00:28:36.020
Several of them included pornographic content. One of them had a child rape scene. The other book
00:28:43.080
started out with 13 different ways to commit suicide. These were books that were recommended
00:28:48.260
to her eighth grade daughter on a book list, a book club that was mandatory for her class
00:28:54.080
by her teacher. So when you look at that, and when you look at what seems to be a growing culture
00:29:00.500
of sexualization of young kids, I'm sorry, but it's hard for me. Maybe I'm being cynical,
00:29:06.880
or maybe I'm just being spiritual. Maybe I'm looking at scripture and I see that the powers that be are
00:29:11.820
truly as dark and as evil as we can think of. And I just wonder if it's purposeful.
00:29:18.040
Well, you know, the reality is, is that studies are now showing that a lot of
00:29:23.980
people who are exposed to porn at a young age, it does bring about guilt and shame and confusion
00:29:31.260
around their sexuality that oftentimes ends up later leading to these poor children attempting suicide.
00:29:38.800
And so that is part of the equation. That is part of the reality, you know, and the other side of
00:29:45.720
this tragedy is that human sexuality is a beautiful thing. It is a gift to our humanity. And it's, it's sad to
00:29:56.460
me that something so beautiful and something that was created for such intimate purpose of human
00:30:02.860
connection, uh, is being so polluted and desacralized and distorted and twisted, um, in our world today.
00:30:11.660
So for those of us who, you know, have put our own reputations aside to just speak out about this
00:30:20.780
are criticized as, Oh, you're just anti-sex. Couldn't be further from the truth. It's actually
00:30:27.260
our high view of humanity and our high view of human sexuality, um, and our regard, respect,
00:30:36.160
reverence for this gift. That is the reason why we are fighting for this. And so I think that,
00:30:43.460
you know, for all the talk about the sexual revolution, um, creating this sexually liberated
00:30:48.980
world, what it hasn't produced is a reverence for sex and the way that it's treated today in our world
00:30:54.980
is tragic. Yep, it is. And you mentioned this kind of accusation that, uh, people who stand
00:31:02.340
against exploitation are anti-sex and, you know, there is even within, you know, people who profess to
00:31:09.920
be Christians to be sex positive. And that means apparently accepting all different kinds of, um,
00:31:18.400
you know, sexual acts and the low bar is some kind of cheap form of consent. Of course, I believe that
00:31:25.840
consent is very important. Um, but, uh, that is how they use that standard alone to say, well, then
00:31:33.660
pornography is fine. Well, then, you know, um, a minor doing what they want to do, engaging what they
00:31:39.800
want to engage in, even if it's some form of, uh, abusive sex, that's all fine. As long as the person
00:31:47.180
consents, our sexual ethic and our idea of what is healthy sexuality and a healthy understanding of
00:31:54.340
the body is so distorted that we think anything is fine as long as a person wants to do it.
00:32:00.320
But what you're arguing is that the want, the desire is actually being distorted. It is actually
00:32:06.800
being imposed on people by these perverts who are producing the content. So it's not like people are
00:32:12.840
having these natural desires and just doing what they want. The desires are being perverted,
00:32:17.180
and put upon them, um, really without, uh, in, in kids cases without their consent. And so it's
00:32:23.900
just a completely distorted way to view it all. Don't you think? Absolutely. And there's a big
00:32:29.360
difference between consent and mutuality. Consent can be manipulated. Consent can be bribed. Consent can
00:32:36.160
be coerced. So as you said, consent is a very low bar when we talk about something as fragile as our
00:32:43.100
sexual serenity. And what a higher standard is, is mutuality. It's not, it doesn't just say,
00:32:49.820
what can I get away with? What can I get you to do? It actually is more interested in your partner
00:32:57.520
and having a sensitive, empathetic regard for what do you want? What do you desire? And there's this
00:33:05.700
beautiful exchange of mutual interests that, you know, can lead to an intimate, powerful, safe,
00:33:13.420
um, sexual encounter. And so even our understanding of the idea of consent has become so distorted.
00:33:21.400
But as you said, it's, you know, how, how do you qualify the appetites of somebody who have been
00:33:32.860
raised on porn? Um, and what we see in a lot of female consumers in 2019 Pornhub reported that 32%
00:33:40.760
of the visitors to their site were females. So there is a trend where more, um, you know, previously it was
00:33:48.600
thought to be, this was a male issue more and more. We're seeing females become consumers as well.
00:33:55.140
That initially starts out of a curiosity for what their male peers are looking at. And, and, but then
00:34:01.200
over time, again, because of the nature of sexuality and the curiosity and arousal associated, what
00:34:06.420
pull draws them into, but what they are viewing in pornography is a certain version of, you know,
00:34:14.960
what it means to be a woman in a sexual encounter that is extremely abusive. And yet they internalize
00:34:22.460
that and it becomes normalized within them. And then over time, they begin to buy into destructive
00:34:29.500
patterns of thinking and being, um, that are, make them complicit against themselves without even
00:34:36.980
realizing the destructive thought patterns that they've bought into. And so it's, it's extremely
00:34:42.980
sinister, even on that level of the way that it, it normalizes in viewers things that, like you said,
00:34:49.580
aren't part of their authentic sexuality, um, that aren't part of their authentic quality of self
00:34:56.120
possession and autonomy that are something that have, they have been indoctrinated with. And, you know,
00:35:02.220
now for a young girl who's grown up watching these images of women being humiliated, subjugated,
00:35:10.720
degraded, degraded, abused, that to them becomes normal. So when their male peer wants to, you know,
00:35:17.800
choke that, do every manner of, um, abusive, you know, sexual, you know, sexual acts to them,
00:35:25.060
uh, they think this is, this is what sex is. Right. And again, like I said, that's the tragedy
00:35:31.460
because that's, that is actually not what sex is. Yeah. Um, sex is about enhancing the life
00:35:38.480
experience of your partner and hopefully they're attempting to do the same and together it creates
00:35:44.980
an enhanced sense of intimate connection. It's not about what can I do to every part of your body
00:35:51.280
for my own gratification and sadistic pleasure. Yeah. And I mean, God gave us this beautiful
00:35:57.400
gift of sex. It's a gift of common grace, which means it's not only Christians that get to
00:36:03.240
engage in it and celebrate it. It's people of all kinds. It is a gift. It can be
00:36:07.720
life giving and it's supposed to be in all cases, life affirming. Um, and I think you described it
00:36:14.920
so well when you said that women and men, but in talking about women, they become complicit against
00:36:20.540
themselves. So even though they might be saying that they're doing it with autonomy, they're doing it,
00:36:26.680
um, to, you know, show their power and their strength, really the pornography that they're
00:36:31.160
consuming and even how they are, um, exploiting themselves is really more making themselves
00:36:38.960
their own adversary than their own advocate. Um, and I thought that this was interesting in the
00:36:44.160
New York times. It talks about, um, there's an opinion piece that came out five days ago by Michelle
00:36:49.960
Goldberg. And the headline is this why sex positive feminism is falling out of fashion. And she talks
00:36:58.760
about how today's feminists have actually kind of started to wonder if this whole idea of empowering
00:37:06.620
the so-called sex worker and pervasive pornography is actually as empowering to women and to the cause
00:37:14.540
of feminism as, you know, maybe their predecessors said that it was. She talks about this, uh, trend that
00:37:22.580
is apparently on Tik TOK cancel porn. Rebecca Jennings of Fox says this, it's just one facet of,
00:37:29.920
of a conservatism for lack of a better term. That's proliferating on Tik TOK from rather unlikely
00:37:34.920
sources, young, presumably progressive women for the most part who think that what's sometimes called
00:37:40.560
choice feminism caters to patriarchy and the male gaze, liberal feminism, telling young girls that
00:37:46.400
hookup culture is liberating, conditioning them to think that if you don't have extreme kinks,
00:37:51.600
kinks at a young age, then you're born in vanilla and encouraging them to get into sex work the
00:37:56.760
minute they turn 18. And so even though I might not agree, you know, with their entire ideology,
00:38:03.480
these young women that are talking about this from the standpoint of feminism, I'm wondering
00:38:08.160
if hopefully there at least is a subset of generation Z who is waking up and saying, hang on a second.
00:38:15.940
Like just because it's self-exploitation doesn't mean that it's empowering. What do you think about
00:38:22.000
that? Are you hopeful for that? Well, there's only so long that we can go without finally saying the
00:38:27.620
emperor's not wearing clothes. Pornography is about women's suffering to feed the male ego, nothing else.
00:38:33.900
Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So if you look at it, so yeah, it doesn't surprise me that, that people
00:38:41.640
are, you know, starting to grapple with reality. Uh, I sometimes wonder why it has taken this long.
00:38:47.760
Um, but yeah, the delusional notion of pornography is being this sex positive, liberating, empowering,
00:38:55.420
you know, experience that is going to enhance our sexuality is, is absolutely a lie. Um, when you look
00:39:02.480
at it from every angle, when you look at it from a human rights standpoint of the way that this is
00:39:06.820
being created. So when I talk about pornography, like as a genre of media, graphic genre of media,
00:39:12.440
you know, we're, we're critiquing that graphic genre of media for the people in it. I have an
00:39:17.720
enormous amount of compassion because I spent a year going undercover into the porn industry,
00:39:21.780
um, making a documentary that we're going to release next year. And, you know, I have enormous
00:39:27.800
amount of compassion for the people who are in that industry because the vast majority of pornography
00:39:31.920
is created against a backdrop of coercion. I actually have one pornography described to me
00:39:37.000
the way that he does a porn scene and gets the girls to do these things that he wanted.
00:39:41.760
And after explaining this highly coercive way that he does it, he said to me in the face,
00:39:46.800
how is that not trafficking? I had a pornography literally say this to me. So they understand,
00:39:51.980
you know, what they are doing. And so when you look at it from a human rights standpoint,
00:39:56.080
in terms of the way that it's created, or if you look at it from a public health standpoint,
00:39:59.580
and the impact on consumers, you know, and what they're being exposed to, it's disturbing on both
00:40:04.880
sides. Pornographers have created a porn universe and they have created the porn man as an avatar for
00:40:13.600
male consumers and the porn woman as an avatar for female consumers to enter into this porn universe
00:40:20.940
in which there is a story and a script and a character that has played out over and over and
00:40:26.740
over. It is about the giving power to men to subjugate, dehumanize and humiliate women while
00:40:35.160
they never say no and enjoy every advance. And the more aggressive, the more pleasurable it is for
00:40:41.920
them. And this formulaic script gets played out over and over and over. And then it gets injected into
00:40:49.120
the minds of our children. Yeah. And like I said before, why isn't anybody saying anything about
00:40:54.240
this? Right. It's so disturbing. Unfortunately, we do live in a reactionary culture where if one
00:41:06.160
side that you're supposed to disagree with says something, then what they're saying must be bad.
00:41:10.740
So if it's, for example, if the majority of people that speak up against the dangers of porn are
00:41:16.160
evangelical Christians, which that doesn't make up everyone who speaks up against porn, but say that
00:41:20.640
someone perceives that as a majority of people who speak up against it, I do think that there's
00:41:25.860
this knee-jerk reaction to say, well, they must just be prudes. They must just be trying to control
00:41:31.160
women. And so porn must be good. So I think that could be part of it. The other part of it is just
00:41:37.040
people who are lost, who are dark. There are people who just don't know. I've heard people try to make
00:41:41.760
this argument, you know, trying to separate the pornography industry from exploitation and trying to
00:41:48.140
separate, um, uh, pornography from sex trafficking and child trafficking and talk about ethically made
00:41:57.340
porn. Is it possible to separate those two industries or are they inextricably intertwined?
00:42:06.460
Well, that's interesting because there was a documentary that came out called, um, uh, it was the
00:42:13.500
hot, it was the followup to hot girls wanted and it was hot girls wanted turned on or something like
00:42:18.420
that. And, uh, and one of the episodes was about this ethical porn and this person named Erica lust.
00:42:23.980
And it starts off with her giving this talk, a Ted talk in which she declares, I am not trying to get
00:42:30.560
girls out of porn. I'm trying to get girls into porn. So at the very outset, her mission statement
00:42:36.560
to get work girls into porn is set forth. And then, and then we see, you know, follow the journey
00:42:43.400
of how this is so ethical and hearing about how this is supposed to favor women and all this stuff.
00:42:49.300
So there's all this buildup. And then we get to the actual scene where she's going to film a porn
00:42:53.200
scene. And it's this person who's this woman at this piano and she's playing this beautiful piano.
00:42:58.100
And then a man comes up behind her and is supposed to start having sex with her. Well, the man comes up
00:43:03.140
behind her and grabs her by the hair and starts aggressively having sex with her from behind.
00:43:08.280
And at this point, the, the actress girl says, stop, stop. And, you know, and they're like,
00:43:15.100
what's the problem? She's like, it's hurting. And then this, uh, this, you know, ethical porn
00:43:20.840
director says to her, well, just fake it. And, and, and encourage her to push on. And then afterwards,
00:43:27.020
at the end of the day says, well, at the end of the day, we're still just in an entertainment industry.
00:43:30.160
So this whole idea of ethical, you know, it's slapping a label on it to try to sanitize what
00:43:35.780
we know is inherently harmful. And the idea that like the, the real problem is with Christianity
00:43:41.280
is such a scapegoat to, for people to offload their responsibility and accountability to approach
00:43:48.540
human sexuality with any kind of ethical framework. Now, I'm not going to say that there aren't damaging
00:43:53.640
aspects to, you know, some of the purity culture messages. Um, I think we've talked about that on
00:43:59.640
here as well. But the thing is, is like this idea that, you know, the way that we compartmentalize
00:44:06.520
and polarize each other in today's world, aren't we all kind of wrestling to understand our existence,
00:44:12.320
you know? And, and so this idea that, you know, there's, you know, people who aren't Christians
00:44:17.200
are so much different than those who are, no, we're all wrestling to understand how we got here,
00:44:22.360
what this is all about. And Christianity offers one explanation for that. Jesus was the embodiment of
00:44:28.440
it. And who was this person? He was a person who lived a life of love and compassion and
00:44:34.280
consideration of the vulnerable. And by virtue of speaking the truth to power, got himself
00:44:39.920
innocently killed. Is that so awful? So I am trying to follow in the tradition of Jesus who lived a life
00:44:49.280
of love and compassion and consideration of the most vulnerable demographic of people in our society.
00:44:54.500
Sue me. Sue me. Yeah, right, right. And that is one. And I know that we're not necessarily talking
00:44:59.960
about, um, we're not necessarily talking about theology. I would just add to what you said that,
00:45:05.960
you know, I hear a lot of activists kind of say that, you know, Jesus was killed by the state for
00:45:10.860
being an activist, but ultimately he was killed because he is God and he fulfilled that prophecy.
00:45:16.320
And because, um, it's not necessarily just that he spoke truth to power, but because God ordained
00:45:24.080
that for him to be the sacrifice, uh, for those he has called, uh, to himself. But you're absolutely
00:45:29.820
right in that he gives us the example, the right template, um, in how to treat the vulnerable and
00:45:38.720
that there are people who profess to be profess, uh, you know, uh, progressive Christians who say
00:45:45.100
that, you know, it's possible to be pro porn, to be quote, sex positive, um, and to follow the example
00:45:52.800
of Christ. Well, the Christ that you say that you follow says that it's actually better for a millstone
00:45:58.740
to be tied around someone's neck for you to be thrown into the depths of the sea than to have,
00:46:03.200
you know, than to cause little ones to sin. Um, so in order to be a part of any part of this very
00:46:13.020
complicated network, it seems that ends in child exploitation, either from the consumption of
00:46:18.620
pornography of a child or the actual exploitation of a child, uh, through pornography. Um, I just don't
00:46:25.480
see how someone who certainly who professes to follow Christ can be a part of that at all. Um,
00:46:33.200
can you talk about just to end this, and I, this is a little bit backwards, but can you talk about
00:46:38.080
how you got into access to Christ? Like how, how did you start all of this? Why did you become
00:46:43.040
passionate about this? And how did that then lead to what we're talking about today and the video
00:46:47.460
that comes out tomorrow? Sure. Yeah. This is a subject that's very personal for me. I grew up as the
00:46:54.760
youngest of four children, somewhat sheltered in my childhood. And at the age of 11, um, I was first
00:47:01.860
awakened to the presence of the knowledge of evil in the world when I saw a movie called The Accused
00:47:06.580
with Jodie Foster that depicted the real life story of Cheryl Arroyo and her gang rape and suing
00:47:13.140
fight for justice. The scene of that gang rape is something that I will never get out of my head.
00:47:17.860
It traumatized me as a young child and left me with this haunting feeling that rape has to be the worst
00:47:24.440
thing that could possibly happen to a person. But then I continued on with my life with no knowledge
00:47:29.200
or understanding of how widespread this was. I thought, you know, that is something that just,
00:47:33.840
you know, very rarely ever happens in the most extreme cases, some other part of the world.
00:47:38.920
Well, around the age of 30, um, back in, uh, see, I'm going to date myself here. Two thousands,
00:47:46.300
early in 2007, um, uh, I was visiting a friend in the hospital. My wife and I were speaking with them,
00:47:52.920
just congratulating them on a child they just had. And somehow we got on the topic of human trafficking.
00:47:56.820
I, I had never heard the term. I thought, what does that mean? Gridlock on the freeway? What,
00:48:01.340
what do we, what, what mean is all this? Right. And, um, and then she began to tell us about
00:48:05.980
this trend of girls who were being taken and forced into prostitution. And, um, the, just the
00:48:13.600
knowledge of that was so overwhelming. I was stunned. I literally cannot remember anything else
00:48:18.300
from the next night. I just remember the following day sitting in my office at home and just weeping
00:48:24.840
under the burden of the knowledge of this and all those feelings as a child is coming up and out.
00:48:31.600
And in that moment, I was pierced with this injustice. And it is a wound that I pray I never
00:48:38.540
recover from because it has compelled me every day since never to turn a blind, blind eye to this
00:48:44.800
injustice and to give my dying last breath to eradicate it from our planet. Nine months later,
00:48:50.240
after that moment, I began, I was studying this, I was praying into it and a widow approached me and
00:48:56.900
said, look, I know you don't know me. She said, but God has spoken to me and told me to give you
00:49:01.760
$10,000 to start an organization to fight human trafficking. Wow. And we took that as a sign
00:49:09.760
that, you know, this was, this was the next step for us. And so, um, having a little bit of a
00:49:17.940
background in film, I picked up a camera and went out, traveled the world, um, went to four different
00:49:25.240
continents, 19 countries, 42 cities over the course of four years, documenting the global phenomenon of
00:49:31.880
sex trafficking. That documentary is called nefarious merchant of souls. It's available on our Exodus cry
00:49:37.540
YouTube channel. And, um, and it, it really is a snapshot of global sex trafficking. Well, that
00:49:44.100
documentary opened doors for us all around the world to speak with legislators and partner with
00:49:49.680
other organizations and really start pushing to make a difference. So that's where the work of Exodus
00:49:55.000
cry really accelerated. And now we do abolition work, which is work to end this injustice. Um, our
00:50:02.680
films are a part of that social reform, legal reform. And then the other side of our work is
00:50:07.500
our intervention work, everything that we're doing to reach people who are trapped in the commercial
00:50:12.560
sex industry and to bring them out and assist them in their path towards recovery. So that's in a,
00:50:19.800
in a nutshell, how I got into this and, um, yeah. And who Exodus cry is and what we're doing today.
00:50:26.020
And did you know from the onset that you would be, that you'd end up talking about, uh, pornography
00:50:31.920
and how all of that is connected, especially how kids are exposed to it, or has that kind of been a more
00:50:37.000
recent development of your organization? Uh, well, it was in the journey of making nefarious where,
00:50:44.620
you know, we set out thinking we're going after a situation where, you know, these girls are just
00:50:50.340
being abducted and taken and, you know, trapped somewhere. And, but, but the more that we got into
00:50:56.940
it, that is part of it, the more we began to see a bigger picture of what was happening.
00:51:02.020
And the more we began to see how pornography was overlapping into this in a number of ways.
00:51:09.300
So after the completion of nefarious in 2012, I decided to go back to the drawing board and really
00:51:15.460
investigate the porn industry. Um, the research on pornography, I decided to go after this from a public
00:51:21.600
health and human rights standpoint. And that has led me on a near 10 year journey to this point, um,
00:51:28.900
where we have been really aggressively, um, researching, investigating and documenting,
00:51:34.520
um, what's been going on with the role of pornography and all of this. So in 2020 is really
00:51:41.240
when we kind of like came out with some of our initial findings from those years. And that was
00:51:47.660
with our trafficking hub campaign that, um, has gone viral and caused porn hub to delete 80% of the
00:51:54.100
videos on their website, um, because they were enabling and profiting from videos of real abuse
00:51:59.280
and, um, and now minors, right. And abuse minors. Exactly. And so now that has evolved to this new
00:52:07.320
campaign, protect children, not porn, um, which focuses again on requiring and insisting that big
00:52:14.880
tech and be big porn be required to put age verification walls in place for any hosting of pornographic content.
00:52:22.920
Yeah. Wow. And while I'm so thankful for what you guys do, I know that there's going to be people
00:52:28.540
who listen to this, who feel maybe the same pain that you did several years ago and who are thinking,
00:52:36.080
okay, either I want to get involved in this. Like I want to push back on this stuff too,
00:52:40.800
or, oh my gosh, how in the world do I protect my kids from this? And so can you give parents and
00:52:47.620
non-parents who are listening, just some action items that they can feel like they are contributing
00:52:52.140
in a positive way? Yeah, absolutely. Um, I'm actually releasing a book, um, this fall that
00:52:59.700
goes in tandem with the documentary, except much, much deeper. That book is also called raised on porn
00:53:05.380
and has ample resources for parents on how to address this issue with their children and how to
00:53:12.800
protect their children. So I really encourage them to get that. But I think it starts for us as parents,
00:53:17.960
um, with age appropriate conversations, uh, with our children, taking shame out of the home,
00:53:24.640
taking shame out of this conversation, having age appropriate conversations about bodily autonomy,
00:53:30.360
the way, you know, that, that God has created us. Um, and so it normalizes these conversations
00:53:37.740
because really it's not a matter of if, but when, um, children are going to be exposed to these
00:53:44.360
images and we just have to prepare for that reality. And so I think that these conversations
00:53:50.160
arm, our children with the critical thinking and the shame free kind of approach to it, that they'll
00:53:57.200
be able to handle those situations when they come and won't just be apprehended by their curiosity and
00:54:03.420
shame. So I think that's a huge part of it is the way that we talk about this in our home with our kids.
00:54:08.520
And the other thing is, um, there are actually a lot of protections, um, that parents can put in
00:54:14.840
place regarding devices, regarding access to graphic hardcore content, and then, and then shoring up
00:54:22.300
their circle of influence and speaking with, you know, the parents of their friends, you know,
00:54:26.500
Hey, if our kids come over, these are our expectations. And, you know, and so, um, so there is a lot that
00:54:33.120
we can do. And I think just the key issue is coming up with a plan and then enacting that plan. And that
00:54:39.380
is all laid out, uh, in this book raised on porn that, like I said, are releasing this fall. So
00:54:44.540
just keep an eye out for that. Yeah, definitely. And they can support Exodus cry by watching the film
00:54:50.720
that comes out tomorrow. And I'm sure there's a place that maybe, um, they can donate as well.
00:54:56.560
Yeah, absolutely. Um, just, you know, go to our Exodus cry Instagram page or our Instagram or our
00:55:02.800
Exodus cry, uh, uh, website. And, um, you can learn all about the work that we're doing,
00:55:09.200
see our films and, um, help contribute towards the work that we're doing.
00:55:13.700
Yeah. And I just encourage you guys to make sure that you share it as well. Maybe this,
00:55:18.260
you feel like it's an uncomfortable conversation to have with your friends. While I love being able
00:55:22.800
to just share links with people, it helps, um, start the conversation and allow someone else in this
00:55:28.460
case, Exodus cry to even have that conversation, you know, without the awkwardness of confronting
00:55:34.020
someone about something as difficult and as, um, you know, hard to talk about as this, I would say,
00:55:41.060
share it maybe with your, uh, your parent friends, share it with your friends. If you're in college,
00:55:46.440
maybe who don't agree with you on this. And just also to raise awareness about how all of these things
00:55:52.200
are truly interconnected. Most people that I know, no matter their faith background,
00:55:57.000
want to end exploitation. Um, and you guys are helping to do that. So thank you so much. I really
00:56:03.520
appreciate it. We'll have to have you back on, uh, to talk about your book. Absolutely. Thank you so
00:56:09.440
much, Allie. I really appreciate it. Thank you.