Crystal Renaud is the group leader of Victory Over Porn Addiction, a support group and workshop for women who are addicted to porn. The group forms at Westside Family Church, an evangelical megachurch in Westside, Kansas. Renaud was inspired to start this support group, as well as the website, Dirty Girls Ministries, by her own life. At the age of 10 after finding a pornography magazine in her brother’s bathroom, she says she wasn’t able to get enough of it and was led to masturbation, phone sex and cybersex.
Renaud starting Victory Over Porn Addiction in 2008 and her group is still very small–the last graduation ceremony she conducted for this group had only three members. However, she does know that there is a market for this type of support group and workshop, modeling her own group after another website, XXX Church, a program working to help people with their porn addiction. The bottom line of both of these religious groups is that they emphasize prayer and abstinence, not only urging their followers and members to abstain from having premarital sex with a partner, but also with themselves. They spread the word that masturbation and even arousal and sexual thoughts outside of marriage are sins, rather than elements of healthy sexuality.
It seems as if it is perfectly fine for a woman’s sexuality to be up for discussion regardless of where she is in her life. If she is unmarried, according to religion and to programs like Renaud’s and many others out there, she is prohibited from having a sexuality at all. Not only that, but she is forbidden to even merely think of sex in any context. Married women are universally stereotyped as being frigid and by grabbing excuses like they have a headache or are too tired to have sex with their husbands out of their back pockets and it is scenarios like this that we see in the campiest of comedies on television and in film that we are supposed to laugh at and even relate to.
I think that religious groups like these focus too much on condemning. In the New York Times article on Victory Over Porn Addiction and the other evangelical groups like it, a woman is referenced who “slipped” two times one week–slipped, we can assume is watching porn and/or masturbating. This woman said “I slipped two nights this week…I decided that every time I’m tempted I’ll just let everything out to God, then pray specifically for someone else, do selfless acts, to get away from being selfish.” This is not only not helpful, it is damaging to this woman’s self esteem. The thought and belief that women should not enjoy sex and their sexuality, I believe, is severely damaging. Self-gratification is a healthy part of life that should be celebrated and explored, for those who are sexual beings.
I am very curious as to what constitutes an addiction in the eyes of these workshops and support groups. I do not believe that porn is all bad; yes, I know that may surprise a lot of you out there who believe feminists are anti-porn. I, however, am not by any means. There is a lot of porn out there that demeans, objectifies and exploits women and a percentage of women in porn do feel trapped in that line of work, depending on the money in order to survive. However, if a woman is in the sex industry on her own terms, I don’t see anything wrong with that, as long as she is performing in porn where she feels comfortable and even satisfied with appearing in. We also cannot forget about the women directors who are currently making porn. The sex industry is a lucrative one and if a woman can excel within it on her own terms, our role as not only feminists, but as fellow women, is to support those people who are striving to make a living.
If the woman in this article masturbated twice in one week, I think that figure would be below the average of what the normal, healthy, sexual being experiences in one week. I masturbate more than twice a week and I have a healthy and gratifying sex life–does that mean I have an addiction? Of course not, because I am a sexual being who strongly believes in a woman’s right to sexual liberation. A sentiment that is not shared by these evangelical groups.
Another woman in the article said something that deeply disturbed me and further proved that these groups can truly have a damaging effect on women. The woman, who is 17 years old, said, “You have to take into consideration what’s best for the one you’re going to be with. Say someday I’m married and my husband can’t please me as much as I please myself. That’d be terrible.”
So not only are women being told that masturbating or watching porn two times in one week constitutes them having an addiction, but 17 year old girls are having to take into consideration a person they most likely haven’t even met yet and who won’t have a place in their lives until maybe 10 years from now? For a woman to actually have that thought signifies that she has already given up control over herself, her life and her sexuality and it’s deeply saddening.
In an episode of Sex and the City, Charlotte gets a Rabbit Habit vibrator and after barricading herself in her house because she was too busy masturbating, she divulged the fear of not being able to meet a man who could pleasure her like that piece of elastomer could to Carrie and Miranda. Why was that line written? Because it’s hilarious to the point of ridiculousness. As a person with a good box full of sex toys, I can tell you from experience, masturbation is one thing, but having sexual and physical contact with another person is another. While (hopefully) the end result from both is an amazing orgasm, the experience itself differs pretty dramatically. What is the next support group to come out of these evangelical churches? If women have an orgasm, even if it’s one orgasm a month, they must be an addict because they enjoyed themselves?
Renaud says she tells women who may slip and text her for support to pray about their situation, saying that distraction is a big part of recovery. If Renaud really wants to distract these women, as well as herself, why doesn’t she start a campaign against human trafficking, child pornography or pornography that demeans and exploits women?
I have not addressed Arizona’s discriminatory, Nazi-like immigration policy head-on, but I had mentioned it within another post on the general 
Pam Grier is known for a lot of things. She is known as a truly gifted, hard-working, dedicated and passionate actor. She is known for being at the forefront of the blaxploitation scene, for her role as Coffy, Foxy Brown and for Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, a role, it turns out, that Tarantino wrote specifically for her. She is also known as Kit Porter, the ex-alcoholic and known singer who turns her life around and truly re-discovers herself within a group of supporting and loving friends, who just so happen to be lesbians, in Showtime’s The L Word.
The 40th anniversary of Earth Day is just around the corner on April 22nd and to celebrate, 
Last year I had the opportunity to 
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Is it My “Feminist Duty” to Mention Mother’s Day?
So, yesterday was Mother’s Day. For the past three years I have written on Menstrual Poetry and for those three years, I have written about Mother’s Day and how this one day, for me, brings about anxiety, panic attacks and an overwhelming sense of loss.
It’s no big secret that I am a survivor of child abuse, neglect, sexual assault and rape. I have written about all of this on this website many, many times and a few years ago I had given an interview to the Scranton, Pennsylvania Times Tribune about being an adult survivor of childhood sexual assault and also made my childhood life experiences public to a crowd of a few hundred people at the Scranton, Pennsylvania Take Back the Night rally at Courthouse Square. But regardless of the amount of times I write about it or talk about it, the gut-wrenching, crippling, bottomless pit of emotion does not go away. Sure, I have learned healing techniques from the Women’s Resource Center, whom I sought help for my anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression from after calling the RAINN hotline one day when I was alone in my first apartment, feeling defeated and as if I were trapped inside a bubble of negativity. There are also some amazing resources online for survivors, like the Survivor Manual, started by Angela Shelton, a survivor, filmmaker, author, comedian, writer, actress, model and all-around fabulous and inspiring woman. If the amount of resources made available to survivors tells us one thing, it is that we are not alone and that sentiment inspires and motivates us to heal and to help others in their own healing journeys in any way they will allow us to. But healing is a journey–a very long journey and in the end, while you may have come to terms with what happened to you, there are still days when you can do nothing but “sit in your shit,” a term I could not help but adopt from my counselor at the Women’s Resource Center.
Having a “dark day” or period of time where you can do very little but sit in your shit is perfectly okay and it is completely normal. Wallowing and grieving is part of the healing process and you have to allow yourself to do that throughout your entire healing process. I remember reading that on any major given holiday, there are twice as many phone calls made to rape crisis and assault hotlines than any other time of the year. Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Easter, parent-specific days of recognition and all holidays in between are major triggers for those affected by assault in some way.
Mother’s Day has been my biggest trigger for over ten years.
While I have written posts about Mother’s Day and how it affects me on a severely personal level for the past three years, this year I contemplated what I would write about and kept coming up with virtually nothing. I have said it all before and nothing about this aspect of my life has changed, so what else was there to say? This year, Mother’s Day seemed to be on steroids. Between two email accounts, Facebook, Twitter and the general blogosphere, for a week I have not been able to get away from the “Happy Mother’s Day” sentiments and this year, I really wanted nothing to do with it. So my approach for this year’s Mother’s Day post? Complete and utter avoidance. But that didn’t necessarily work out the way I thought it would–obviously.
While visiting my daily reads around the feminist blogosphere, Mother’s Day was undoubtedly a major topic of discussion and conversation.
It was the Feministing article that really struck a chord with me–and not necessarily in a completely good way. It is definitely an inspiring and motivating piece for those who find themselves “with-mother,” with sentiments like “you only get one [biological] mother” and “it isn’t fair that mothers only get one special day a year,” but to someone tragically without, I can’t imagine being this high-strung, this emotional and this triggered more than one day a year.
But as a self-identified feminist who runs a feminist-centric blog, one must ask themselves–is it my “duty” as a feminist to blog about Mother’s Day regardless of my personal triggers and downright discomfort with the subject? Motherhood and a woman’s right to bear children is a major feminist issue. From the absence of paid maternity leave as a fundamental right to women with careers to women being formally and socially judged if they receive welfare and choose to become mothers; not one of the road blocks women hit repeatedly from the time of pregnancy to actively parenting are okay and I try to blog about these problems as much as I can, but this conversation becomes more involved, wide-spread and more passionate on Mother’s Day. The day I cannot bring myself to see the silver lining in if said silver lining hit me over the head like a baseball bat.
To the credit of the Feministing article, it did mention “sparents,” a term coined by Mia Freedman. Sparents (or “spare parents”) are those nurturing and responsible adults who play essential roles in shaping the lives of children who may not be biologically theirs, but that doesn’t stop them from teaching, sharing, guiding and experiencing.
I didn’t have “sparents” exactly, but I did have a kick-ass, liberal grandmother who gave me the foundation to grow into the woman that I am today.
So, to my GramPat–
Thank you for showing me exactly what a proud, independent woman looks like. For your undeniable and unwavering love, regardless of the mistakes I have made in my life and will continue to make throughout it. For raising me with the respect to make my own decisions and form my own point of view and for your guidance. For reminding me to never be too proud to ask for help and never judging me. For instilling in me the knowledge that women can do anything and giving me the courage to speak my mind and do what I believe in. For not making too much fun of me for being 23 years old and still not knowing how to cook. For all the school projects, middle-of-the-night Walmart runs, early-morning deep, philosophical conversation accompanied by cup after cup of coffee and for teaching me who is on the 50 dollar bill, which to this day I still know the answer to (Grant.) Thank you for making me look up how to spell certain words in the Dictionary, you’re probably single-handedly the one to thank for my excellent spelling skills and for making me look up anything I wanted to know more about in the Encyclopedia first before you gave me your point of view on the subject.
Thank you for your infinite wisdom and thank you for helping me become the woman I am today. I hope to one day become even a fraction of the empowering and inspiring woman you are.
But even though I have been fortunate enough to have a deeply inspiring grandmother who is still a tremendous mother-figure in my life, that cannot erase the sense of loss that is felt when you have a mother out there, who is not deceased, but just doesn’t want you. To realize that you are not wanted by the very person who brought you into this world is a deeply damaging and tragic realization. My mother does not want me and she never has; when she had me, she did nothing but make my life into yet another statistic–another case of child neglect and emotional and physical abuse, another case of childhood sexual assault, another case of irreversible mental illness.
So last night, when sitting here thinking of the day in which we recognize the good in motherhood, I sobbed. I sobbed for the mother I have never had; for my loss of a fit and capable mother that I deserved. But what gives me that little comfort I need is the fact that there are people in my life who want to be in it and who deserve to see the woman I continue to become.