How is pornography damaging to people and society, much more so than is commonly believed?
What are some of the major myths associated with pornography, and how can we protect our children from it?
And how can we help ourselves or our loved ones who might be addicted?
In this episode, we sit down with Matt Fradd, author of “The Porn Myth: Exposing the Reality Behind the Fantasy of Pornography,” and host of the podcast Pints With Aquinas.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I’m Jan Jekielek.
Jan Jekielek: Matt Fradd, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Matt Fradd: Thanks for having me.
Mr. Jekielek: Matt, you have written the book “The Porn Myth.” I’m going to tell everybody what made me think of you. We talked a little bit about this offline. The other day, I was at an event. There was a pretty prominent speaker. They directed us all to a website where we could get more information. I had my iPad, I put in the information. I stared at the iPad, the screen flashed a number of times and suddenly, hardcore pornography appears. Of course, I clutched the iPad to my chest, hopefully no one saw anything.
It got me thinking, “Clearly, this was some small change in an address, I typed it in wrong, and clearly this was some kind of a way to get people that aren’t expecting it into looking at pornography,” and I thought, “My goodness. What if this was a 10-year-old kid or whatever, 12-year-old kid? I don’t know.” Pornography is a very, very serious issue in my mind and this captured my imagination. Tell me about the porn myth.
Mr. Fradd: For the last several years, 10 [years] even, I’ve traveled the country and internationally, speaking almost exclusively on the issue of pornography, which is a very interesting thing to do. It makes Uber rides interesting when people ask you what you do for a living. And I speak to about 70,000 people a year—high school students, college students—and after having spent so much time interacting with young men [and] young women who would say they are addicted to pornography, they’re seeing the negative effects in their own life, they want to stop, they’re not sure how, responding to objections that individual students or teachers had, I thought it would be a good idea to put it down into a book.
