Pretty much from the time I was 13 I’ve been taught that frum women aren’t horny, they don’t have the same needs, wants, or desperation as men, and this is why we spend so much of our time talking about the supposed sin of masturbation (most of the rationalist crowd can argue day and night how it’s not a sin, I agree with the rationalists on that point) My entire yeshiva education was based on our constant need to waste seed and seek out sexual experiences. If you look around the internet at sites that seek to fight porn and internet addiction one may get the idea that women don’t like porn or sex. In my dating experiences this seems to be the opposite, in fact, I’d argue that frum women, underneath their tznius uniforms, are a bunch of raging horn balls. Unfortunately, so many women succumb to the pressures of kallah class indoctrination where they are taught that men watching porn is considered cheating and if they want to flip the table around it’s grounds for divorce.
Ever so often you can find one of these “I caught my husband in the act” articles on one of the super frummy sites like Yeshiva World of Matzav, you can read such articles in the Yated or Jewish Press and they are always quite vague. Much of the time they don’t actually say what they caught their husband doing, I’m always assuming that they caught them in a gang bang with a bunch of the chassidishe neighbors, but nowadays it could be as harmless as the secret Facebook account or watching some twerking videos on you tube.
I was looking at Guard Your Eyes last night and they have some great stories about addiction by both men and women. The links are all about “tikkun habrit” and they are hilarious. Now, I’m sure that sex addiction exists within the frum community, a good friend of mine went out with a guy who was definitely a sex addict once, but I think the focus on the evil perils of porn is a little overblown. Can you imagine if the frum community stopped wasting so much energy to prevent people from doing something they will do anyway? How much bittul z’man goes into hiding porn, sneaking around, and feeling shameful about lying to your spouse. I’m sure that marriages, where the porn consumption is open and free, are full of shalom bayis.
It seems that the focus on tznius, sex, addiction, internet, and so on is a great way to keep control over a vast portion of the frum community. It’s also a great business, the entire internet asifa (a huge advertising scheme for the internet filter racket) and it also provides material for 90% of the mussar shmuessen out there. Without our focus on masturbation and porn, what on earth would yeshiva high schools teach?
But the most dangerous thing to come out of this whole “men are addicted to porn thing” is that it makes women look like these holy untouchable creatures that hate sex and sexual fantasy. I should probably admit now that I’m not much into porn, in high school it was fun to hide my magazines in between ancient gemara’s and the bathroom ceiling, but the internet has ruined it all for me. I don’t like having such a big menu. The frum community’s addiction to tznius has confused me even more, women don’t like sex, but they like dressing sexy?
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