If you ask most folks who have been blogging for a while, they'll remember the one "break-out" post that got them noticed, or first attracted a significant number of comments and hits. For me, it was this post about pornography back in April 2004. I wrote in response to news that several major stars of the adult film industry were infected with HIV.

I wrote that post, and many subsequent posts on pornography from two over-lapping perspectives. I wrote as a pro-feminist steeped in the anti-pornography tradition of one branch of feminism; I wrote as someone who was moved by the desperately sad story of Linda Lovelace, moved by the razor-sharp incisiveness of Andrea Dworkin, challenged by the dazzling legal theory of Catherine MacKinnon. But my intellectual response to porn was mixed with my own experience of "addiction" to pornography, and a long struggle to overcome the compulsive use of sexually explicit material. Porn addiction, particularly in my youth (long before cyber-erotica became available) had done tremendous harm to me -- and as a consequence, it had damaging repercussions in many of my relationships.

So my feminism, my faith, and my own intense desire never ever to go back into that addiction combined to form a very strong anti-pornography stance.It has been a long time since I've "used" pornography of any kind. But that doesn't mean I'm blind to the possibility of relapse. Heterosexual married men in my position -- teachers, pastors, mentors -- are famous for living sexual double lives. (The examples, sadly, are too many to list.) While some fall from grace in spectacular ways --Ted Haggard -- others commit "adultery" only with their computers. I know my own tendency towards workaholism and Calvinist striving; I know that that Puritanical streak can, left unchecked, feed a dark side.

It's so easy, after all, to feel heroic doing what I do: mentoring, teaching, volunteering, advising, chairing committees and giving lectures. It's easy, too, to buy into the lie that I've "been so good" and I "deserve" a little "me time." For a lot of men, including myself for many years, that "me time" involved the compulsive consumption of pornography.I learned early that a fulfilling sex life with a partner or a spouse is not a prophylaxis against porn addiction. I'm very clear these days that it isn't my wife's job to keep me sufficiently sexually sated that I don't stray, even in my mind. It's my job. And staying faithful in body and mind involves many things, of which willpower is actually the least important. Staying faithful to my commitments is made much easier by honoring the needs of my body as they arise. I was much more prone to use porn when I was hungry, angry, lonely, or tired; I have become much better (thank God) at recognizing my triggers. I listen to the needs of my body, and I don't suppress them. That doesn't mean I indulge every imperious demand! It means I do take the naps I need; it means I do get the (very non-sexual) professional massages that release the tension and the ache in my flesh. It's when I bottle everything up, I know, that I am at risk of "acting out."

But writing about pornography from the perspective of a recovering addict is problematic. Most saliently, it leads me -- as it obviously did in that 2004 post -- to be dismissive of those whose experience with pornography was radically different from my own. I'm not talking about the Larry Flynts of the world, mind you; I have little time for them. I'm talking about feminist voices, in the blogosphere and elsewhere, voices of women who work or have worked in the sex industry. Like so many folks, I've been more willing to hear the stories that match up with my pre-existing world view. I confess I've given more credence to those who spoke of the sex industry in negative terms (exploitation and abuse and addiction) than to those who talked about genuinely enjoying the work they were doing. What I am most guilty of is pathologizing those whose experiences do not match my world view.

I am not alone in this; many of my fellow anti-porn feminists do the same. We of all people, who ought to know better, still regularly suggest that women who work in the sex industry (or merely those who enjoy watching porn) are -- take your pick -- "deceiving themselves", "working through childhood abuse issues", "filled with a self-loathing they cannot acknowledge." Sometimes, we infantilize female sex workers, suggesting that they are in desperate need of "rescue" by we the enlightened, the middle-class, and the sexually vanilla.

One of the many changes I've been going through this year is a re-evaluation of my position on pornography and sex work. Several incidents occasioned this. First off, I was deeply stirred up (in the best way) by a panel session I went to at the Women, Action, and Media conference in Cambridge, MA, in March. Led by Audacia Ray, the panel explored the various ways in which even the feminist-sympathetic media often misrepresents the voices of sex workers. It was a challenging presentation, but it got me thinking about my own preconceptions. I started reading Audacia's blog, as well as those of Amber Rhea, and Renegade Evolution. I've met Amber and Audacia, and have long admired Ren's writing -- but after the WAM conference, really made an effort to set aside my knee-jerk anti-porn stance as I read their work.

I also got some critical feedback from a few (well, two) students in my women's studies course. These were excellent and involved students, committed young feminists, and I'm happy to say that they were both effusive about how much they had enjoyed most of the course. But each of them came to me, separately, after last semester was over to take issue with just one segment of the class: my section on pornography. One of them wrote in her journal something to the effect that "the only time you seem to get preachy and dogmatic is when porn comes up. On that issue, you just don't seem to present other points of view." Another, who told me she had worked in the industry herself, said she felt "silenced" by the way the rest of the class happily went along with what she saw as an unfair anti-porn slant. I've gotten that complaint before, honestly. And in the past, I'd been almost as dismissive of the "pro-porn" feminist view as I tended to be towards the ultra-conservative "a woman's place is in the home" crowd. Heck, because of my background with evangelicals, I was probably better about hearing and validating the views of social conservatives than I was about really giving credence to the voices of women who worked in the sex industry, or who simply -- on their own -- delighted in using pornography.

Finally, this year, I've been able to hear these criticisms without being reactive or defensive. A lot of this is due to my own growth, I realize. We demonize what we fear, and my own struggles with pornography became entangled with my ideological and theological responses to sex work and erotica. Today, I still have many of the reservations about pornography and sex work that I had in the past. What I also have is more and more "time" away from pornography. My fear of relapse grows less intense as I get more and more distance from the period in my life where porn use was pretty darned compulsive. And while I am not over-confident, I am centered enough today to do a better job of distinguishing between my fears and my convictions. I'm certainly in a better space today than I was in April 2004, when I wrote that impassioned but somewhat overwrought post.Thanks to Ren, I found this post by Debs, a woman who has long been a radical feminist (in the classic, anti-porn sense): Across the Porn Divide. She writes:

Porn is a very important issue, and this article in no way attempts to say we should ignore it, or give up fighting for what we believe is right. But, I think that all kinds of feminists need to realise just how unproductive, unhelpful, and ultimately meaningless the current stand-off is. We repeat the same arguments, we all stay in our own 'camp' and do not venture out, not even for the shortest time, to converse with the 'other side'. We each go round in our own orbits, and never meet at any point. So much more could be achieved, and we could actually start to move forward with the issue of porn and other issues, if we could take some time to visit the other side, and actually engage with them. Talk to them. Begin some kind of dialogue. You may do this with the intention of changing people's minds, which would be fine, and you may even succeed, or you may, as I do, do this in the spirit of attempting some open dialogue to escape the suffocation of always talking to the same people, who always agree with you. It is not healthy for any person, or group of people, to always live in each other's pockets, so to speak, to never here a voice of dissent or disagreement, or to be challenged on anything. A person or group who operates like that cannot progress, and there can be no movement, which is what feminism is supposed to be.

Emphasis mine.In my case, I'm ready to do more listening than talking. I've got two avowedly "pro-sex" students in my women's studies class working on a scholar's option project about feminist pornography, and I'm looking forward to seeing how their project develops. I'm reading the work of women like Ren and Amber and Audacia and others, looking not for evidence of dysfunction or self-deception, but looking to connect with the reality of their experience.I am convinced that on balance, prostitution as it exists today in the Western world hurts virtually everyone involved. I remain convinced that the porn industry, particularly the male-centered mainstream, sends out tremendously damaging messages about sexuality. I am keenly aware that porn can play a part in reducing our ability to connect with each other as full and complete creatures of light. Porn, it still seems to me, is the enemy of empathy..

But I know that the real picture is more nuanced than that. While we must not ignore the voices of the exploited and the abused, we must also pay attention to the voices of those who experiences in sex work have been largely positive, fulfilling, and soul-affirming. We must stop trying to convince women who do like porn that they all have been "brainwashed". If we want the "other side" to stop calling us Puritan killjoys, it would help if we had a bit more willingness to validate and affirm the variety of views, responses, and experiences that women who like porn and sex work can share with us.

God willing, I won't "use" porn again. I remain deeply troubled by the impact porn has on men, women, and society. But I am more willing now to participate in dialogue -- not just for the purpose of swaying others to my view, but for the purpose of better understanding. And the end goal of "better understanding" is empathy, it is love, it is respect, and it is a world in which sexuality is a means to deep joy and justice for all of us.