Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 498 | Exposing the Threat Porn Poses to Kids | Guest: Benjamin Nolot

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

Today we're talking to Benjamin Nolot, the founder and CEO of Exodus Cry, an organization dedicated to ending human trafficking. Nolot has a new documentary being released called "Raised on Porn," which aims to expose the harmful effects that pornographic material has on kids. We discuss the biological effect of adult content on young brains, as well as the ways it normalizes abusive behavior among young men. --- Today's Sponsors: Canva is a design platform that empowers you to create & share stunning content in just a few clicks. Right now, get a FREE 45-day extended trial at Canva.me/ALLIE! Gabi uses your current policy to compare your coverage with 40 of the top insurance providers. Start saving on your auto insurance today at Gabi.com/RELATABLE. Good Ranchers safely delivers American craft beef & better-than-organic chicken, right to your door. Save 20% on meats when you subscribe at GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE, plus get an additional $20 off & free express shipping on orders using promo code 'ALLIE'! --- Show Links: Watch "Raised On Porn" film: https://bit.ly/3l1ABqB "Protect Children Not Porn" campaign: https://bit.ly/3urod68 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in, conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed. You can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey, guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week. All right.

Today, we are talking about a subject that you guys have been asking me to talk about for a long time. That is the dangers of pornography. We are going to talk to the head of Exodus cry, which is an anti-trafficking, anti-exploitation organization that's doing amazing work to liberate children and women from the billions-dollar sex trafficking industry. A part of the sex trafficking industry, what drives demand for sex buying is pornography. There have been many attempts by people on the left and the right to try to separate these two issues and to say, oh, you know, porn can be ethical. It can be moral. It's fine.

it's not hurting anyone that really couldn't be further from the truth. And this is a really big problem. Kids today are being as the title of the documentary, the Exodus Cry is about to put out, says raised on porn. I mean, we've seen, of course, different kinds of sexual exploitation and trafficking make the news. R. Kelly was finally convicted for exploiting children,

for racketeering for sex trafficking. but this isn't just happening in these kind of rare instances. This is happening on a daily basis and not just in, you know, the Middle East, of course, it is happening very prevalently there. It's not just happening in Asia. It's happening in the United States. It's happening in L.A. It's happening in Houston.

It's happening in Dallas. It's happening in D.C. And what's driving sex buying is minds that are conditioned to sexual exploitation from a young age and pornography enables that. And the age of first exposure to pornography is getting lower and lower. There was a Barna study in 2016 that found that 28% of Christian men and 11% of Christian women say they were first exposed to pornography before the age of 12 compared to, interestingly, 23% of non-Christian men and 24% of non-Christian women. This is a very pervasive issue.

And unfortunately, there are many institutions and many powers that profit from ensuring that kids are able to access pornography and that kids are unfortunately even the subject of pornography. And we're going to talk about with Benji why that is, why there are not common sense measures put in place to make sure that kids are not. accessing pornographic material. But unfortunately, this kind of pornography is this kind of content is available on TikTok. It's available on Instagram. It's available on Twitter where you only have to be 13 years old and there's not even that much of a check on that. But you're technically supposed to be 13 before you can get on these platforms. Then once you're on the platform, you can see anything. And so he is going to tell us how all of this works. He's going to tell us about how his organization is pushing back against this. And this is a monumental task. I mean,

40 million, this is according to the Recovery Village, 40 million U.S. adults regularly visit internet pornography sites. 10% of U.S. adults admit to having an addiction to internet pornography. So 10% of U.S. adults admit to that. And that's a large number. I mean, that's millions of people. And then there are people on top of that who don't actually admit it or maybe don't even know that they're addicted to pornography. And unfortunately they are. What this does to the psychology of children, how this can damage children's view of sex.

I mean, it's heartbreaking. And it's so important that we know this. It's so important that we raise awareness about this. And then, of course, that we are doing everything we can to protect our children from it. And I hope that one day that the creators of these websites, the creators of even these social media companies, are held accountable for this.

Unfortunately, I think that they not only know what they are exposing children to, and they obviously don't care because they're not actually limiting their exposure to that, but they also know the different kinds of the different kinds of damage that the social media sites are doing to young children. There was an expose, there was an article written. for the Wall Street Journal that talked about a report that Facebook, that Facebook itself created talking about the insecurity that has caused even the suicidal thoughts that are caused in young girls in particular and looking at images on Instagram.

So this is what the Wall Street Journal reports. 32% of teen girls said that they felt bad about their bodies. 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. The researcher said in a March 2020 slide presentation posted to Facebook's internal message board reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves. That is exacerbated by pornography, which is we will talk about with Benji also deludes girls into thinking. that there are certain expectations of them and their sexual performance that are not real and are not grounded in reality. And gosh, as Christians, like, we have to lead the way in

showing what healthy sexuality looks like, what it looks like to actually love your body, what it looks like to steward your body in a way that is responsible, to steward your mind, to help our children form their thoughts in a way that is not. just God glorifying, but also is beneficial to themselves. And so I know that we've had a lot of heavy stuff that we have talked about this week. It's been heavy. I didn't mean to do that. I didn't intend to do that. But I really wanted to talk to Benji because he's just a wealth of information on this topic. And it's so, so important that we know how big of a deal this is, that we also connect it to a lot of the false teachings that we're seeing within the church about

that sex positivity quote unquote looks like being affirming of all kinds of sexual inclinations and sexual identities and sexual behaviors. That's not true. Like there is a link between that and the unrealistic expectations of pornography and the exploitation that comes with child trafficking. Like God gave us the boundaries of sex because he loves us, not because he's a fuddy-duddy, but because he believes in true freedom and true health. That's my personal commentary. Benji won't be talking about that.

But what he gives us insight into is really, it's the details about what goes on in this very exploitative industry that it's so important for us to know about. Hey, this is Steve Deast. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity and reality. itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where

we are or where we're headed, you can watch the Steve Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Benji, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do? Yeah, my name's Benji Nolo. I'm the CEO and founder of Exodus Cry, and we're an organization that exists to combat sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. Gotcha. And you guys have a film that's coming out tomorrow, actually Friday. And it's called Raised on Porn. What is this about? Yeah, raised on porn is a film that tries to quantify the impact of childhood exposure to pornography. And so in my work to fight sex trafficking, we started to look deeper at some of the underlying root causes and really kind of narrowed in on this aspect of demand and came to the realization that if men stop buying women and children for sex, the entire sex trafficking industry would implode overnight.

And we would see the largest exodus of human beings from systematic oppression that the world is ever seen. So central to the aspect of demand is pornography consumption. Every John Sex buyer that we talked to had a history of pornography consumption from childhood. Wow. And so when we discovered that, we started to see out just across the broader culture, the broader landscape of our world, what a widespread problem this is that kids growing up in this media internet age are now exposed to pornography at younger and younger ages. It has become the sex ed for a generation and our findings about the impact of that on these children was deeply disturbing. So we decided to make a film

about it that really sounds the alarm and tries to create awareness about this public health crisis. Wow. You know, I don't think that many people think about the link. Surprisingly, I think a lot of people don't think about the link between child exploitation and pornography. They mostly think of pornography as just kind of this adult issue or, you know, maybe they think of someone hiding Playboy magazines under their bed and it's just something people do. And if no one is getting harmed by it, you know, why is it a big deal? That's something that I hear about a lot. There's even people, you know, I'm a conservative, people who I didn't. as libertarian who think that, you know, people like me who are anti-pornography, that we're just fuddy-duddies, we're these theocratic authoritarians. Can you talk a little bit more about how pornography is not just something that happens in a vacuum that doesn't harm anyone? Yeah. Well, I mean, there's so many layers to unpacking this issue. I think, first of all, just acknowledging, you know, that the world has changed, like, since the internet. And, and so we are a part of this great social experiment, being the first generation to grow up with widespread

exposure to such potent content. So people are going to debate about the impact of pornography on adults and the legitimacy or lack thereof of its place in our world today. But I think that one thing that we can all agree on is that, like you said, this is quote unquote, adult content. And we call it pornographic content. But so inherently, we understand that this is not something that is being created for children. Yet the problem is, is that the way that the internet has been constructed is a city without walls. And so there are no safeguards. There are no protections for children who are online. And we know that children are online. And so in conjunction with this film called Raised on Porn, that will be released exclusively through our Magic Lantern Pictures YouTube channel, we're launching a campaign called protect children, not porn. And this campaign is meant to demand that we put age verification walls in place, that we require a government issued ID for any website that is hosting or distributing pornographic content. So really putting the pressure on big tech and big porn to show up where

matters to protect our kids to show that the safety and the mental, emotional, and sexual well-being and health of our children is more important than the convenience and sexual gratification of adults. And it's shocking that this hasn't happened to this point on the internet, you know, has now been around for longer than two decades. And this should have been there from the very beginning. And so, you know, sites like Twitter that welcome 13-year-olds to start an account, and yet at the same time, welcome, collude with, and enable the most graphic, hardcore, pornographic content to be widely distributed. You know, what's up with that? Right. Are you an adult platform? Are you a platform for children? Like, what is it? Right. And the fact is nobody's said anything to put pressure

on them to have to decide. And so it's organizations like ours at Exodus Cry and others that are, you know, trying to sound the alarm on this because, again, it's the safety, the future, the mental, emotional, and sexual health and well-being of our children that is at stake. And this truly is a crisis. Their lives are being hijacked and having lifelong damaging implications. So we just want to see that changed. Let's talk about some of those implications. is the psychological impact of a child, say even a 13-year-old, being exposed to pornography? Yeah, I mean, so, you know, the biopsychosocial response of a child to pornography varies from child to child, but there are some consistencies that we know. First and foremost is what happens

in the brain. Children's, you know, brains are not fully developed. The frontal cortex of our brain is not developed until we are in our mid-20s. That is the judgment center. It's the center where we make, that has critical thinking that sort of like puts the breaks on things we might otherwise try to do. And then the frontal cortex is, that might not be a good idea. It thinks of consequences. Absolutely.

So children who are exposed to this content are, you know, quite literally, neurologically overwhelmed. And then what happens is that because exposure to the, this graphic, potent content is associated with arousal. When you have a child who's not fully emotionally developed and matured, physically developed and matured, neurologically developed and matured, they don't have a framework to understand what's happening. And so it often creates a lot of confusion. There's arousal, but there's shame and there's guilt and there's curiosity.

And this toxic cocktail go together. and end up, like I said before, often hijacking children's lives. It sets the wet concrete of their sexuality around the sexual appetites of pornographers. So pornography is colonizing the sexuality of a generation. It is colonizing the sexuality of children. You know, we have a handful of sociopathic, narcissistic, deviant pornographers in the San Fernando Valley, who are setting the sexual template for an entire generation, and almost nobody is saying anything about it.

What do you mean? What do you mean by that? By what? So that group of people you said in the San Fernando Valley who are setting that template. Yeah, these pornographers, right, are putting their own deviant sexuality into the creation of these videos that then go out and are feeding the masses and feeding children and and indoctrinating them and conditioning them with sexual appetites that are not their own. See, like we had, I've interviewed scores of people about this who, you know, are sex buyers or just

any number of people that have been affected by pornography. And oftentimes what happens is a child will go online. well, the most readily accessible pornography today is gonzo porn, which is this really violent, aggressive pornography. So a child sees that. Then it becomes associated with arousal. Now that becomes a part of their sexuality. And so when they get to an age where they want to experiment sexually, what they think is normal might be choking a girl and slapping her while calling her, you know, all kinds of derogatory and misogynistic, contemptuous names. And then the porn industry plays it off like, well, this is just fantasy. And it's like, well, it's fantasy in the sense that

you're passing on a delusional view of what sexuality is, but it's not fantasy for the person who's being abused creating these videos. And it's not a fantasy for the poor child whose sexuality is now hijacked for the rest of their life because, you know, they saw it. And then you have these pornographers telling you over here that, well, it's the parents' job. And it's like, no matter how hard parents fight to protect their kids, they can't control every single situation in which a child might be exposed to something online. And that's where it comes back to the responsibility lies at the doorstep of big tech and big porn to rebuild the internet with walls. Like, it's just the most logical thing, you know, that I can think of that. Like, of course you would have those

protections for children. We don't let children go into a liquor store and just go buy, you know, hard alcohol. Right. We don't let, right? We don't let heroin peddlers just go on to our children's, you know, school yard at recess and sell them heroin. So why do we think it's any different with this visual heroin that they can't simply just detox from? It's in their head now. Right. And it's, it's literally in their being. Their nervous system has been deeply affected by this. So yeah, The implications are enormous. And at this point, you know, we just feel like we are fighting for the soul of a generation. And so our hope with this film is to galvanize more people to look seriously at this really important issue. And just to affirm what you're talking about, about the access to that kind of, you know, aggressive and even abusive pornography and kids and how it's shaping them and impacting their view of sex and what's normal. I read an article in the Atlantic a few months ago by Elizabeth Bruning, and it's not something, I don't

necessarily agree with everything that she was saying, but she does point out the dangers of kids being able to access porn, and I'll read you some of it. So this was, she interviewed some teenagers, and one of them, Thalia said, when I first started having sex, I thought that I was just because of watching porn and also listening to other people my age, talk about sex, the weird ubiquity of BDSM culture. I thought that I was just supposed to like being choked in stuff. Joy 18 agreed. I think there was a point in my life where I tried to convince myself that I could possibly be into that. And now that I've grown up, I'm like, no way I can never do that or allow anyone to do that to me. Callie, age 18, says that the person that she has had sex with, he's not even as exposed to porn as I would think

that most boys are. And he thought that choking was a normal thing. This is something that apparently teenagers are confronting not just the desire to have sex before you get married, which I think every teenager for all of time has been confronted with, you know, culture trying to normalize that, but a really type of aggressive, abusive, dominating kind of sex that cannot be healthy and certainly doesn't speak to a healthy frame of mind, right? Well, what the BDSM community would say about that is that this is a fetish and you're kink-shaming, and that's just up to blah, blah, blah. But the reality is those kind of violent, abusive things,

it's not a fetish. That is abuse. That is violation. And we have to just call it for what it is. And it's sad to me that a generation is growing up, having their appetites, cultivated, shaped, developed by the porn industry because that creates a dire situation for young girls. girls who are being preyed upon by, you know, these young men who have been fed a steady diet of

corn since they were children. It's creating a very dangerous situation. Yeah, it definitely is. And you mentioned the internet has been around for a long time. Pornography. Internet. Pornography has been around for a long time. Why wouldn't these companies, you know, they all say outwardly, oh, you know, we don't want minors on our site. But they are kind of pushing again. some of the policies that you are advocating for to have some kind of gatekeeping system to keep kids off the site. Why do you think that is? Why hasn't this happened so far if we know that there is a need for this kind of barrier? I mean, you know, I can only offer conjecture about what may be going on in the minds of these, you know, executives of these large big tech and big porn companies. To me,

seems like such an obvious safeguard that you would put in place to protect children from exposure to this. So my, you know, logical deduction is that their motive for profit is greater than their interest in the protection of children. Yeah, because it's a great question. Why aren't they? And, you know, is it okay if I just tell you a story on this? Yeah. So I've, I've, I've, I've seen, you know, the end of this. I traveled, I've traveled around the world fighting sex trafficking, found myself in Cambodia in a little village outside of Pen-on-Pen called Swipak, and went there to interview some friends that were working on the ground there to address child sex trafficking.

And when we pulled up, there was a large, heavy set Western man out in front of one of these brothels bartering for sex with a child. and as when he saw me coming in our film crew he took off up the street we started to follow him then he broke out into a full-blown sprint so we chased him down through the alleys and out to the main street he was jumping on the back of a moped taxi and I grabbed him by the back of his shirt at the last second and yanked him back and my adrenaline was pumping and my heart was beating and I suddenly found myself face to face with this man who had flown halfway across the world to buy a child for sex.

There's no explanation for that other than there was a history in this man's life that brought him to this point. You know, people do not wake up one day and decide to fly halfway across the world to start buying children for sex. So I just want to bring it back to that point that I started with to say that, you know, this isn't just always about me. what point does my personal freedom, you know, cause the next person's slavery. And so I think that we do have to pull back and look at the larger landscape of our culture and what is then the best interest of all of us. The idea of society is that it's better, you know, for us to do it

together than alone. And so we have to think that way. And when you see large amounts of men now going out into, you know, pay to have illicit sex. When we see a demand increasing for sex with children, we have to start asking the question, where is this coming from? And when you talk to these men, every single one of them have a history in pornography consumption that was like a slippery slope

that escalated to this point. It's not to say that every single person who views pornography will end up there, but enough do that we have to start having. these conversations. Yeah. Two weeks after that, is it, can I mention just one last thing on this? Oh, keep going.

No problem. A couple weeks after that, I was back in the States. We were putting together this awareness center for, to kind of about modern day human trafficking and slavery. And I reached out to this friend in Cambodia and said, you know, do you have any relics of, you know, trafficking in Cambodia that you could send to us that we could feature and tell a story of about. So he got back to me and he said, actually, we just raided a brothel this week. And he said, he said, we've recovered some evidence that I'll send to you in the mail. And so a couple weeks

later, a few weeks later, I get this package in the mail. My wife opens it. I get home from work. She said, babe, you got some, you know, some package in the mail. I'm not sure what it is. And so I open the package and I pull out these pajamas of a seven-year-old and I'm trying to wrap my mind around why I'm getting a package of pajamas in the mail. And then I look at the crotch and they are still stained with the blood of this girl's abuse. And all I could think was all the girls that we saw when we were there in Cambodia. And you just can't even fathom that, somebody would look at a seven-year-old in that way. But here we had the evidence, literally staring us in the face of this person's abuse. And I thought to myself, you know, all this talk about

pornography and, oh, it's just, you know, about being so sexual and, you know, we're so sexually liberated. You know, this is the end of that pornography. How do you stare that a seven-year-old and the child and tell them something good about pornography? So the reality is, is that we live in a world in which pornography is trespassing into the lives of our children and disrupting their childhood, stealing their innocence. It is cultivating deviant appetites in the hearts of the consumers who eventually go out and seek to fulfill those that results in the abuse of more children. So what we are talking about is a world that has become extremely dangerous for children, and it's up to all of us to do our part to change that.

Starting with Twitter, starting with Google. Why when you go on Google? I typed, I was looking for a sermon from one of my favorite pastors. I typed in his name. I hit videos and what popped up was a whole bunch of pornographic videos, the thumbnail right there. Why is that on Google? Right. Is there literally no interest, no regard for the safety and sexual and emotional and emotional?

well-being of our children? I don't think that there is. And I also think that those platforms are too busy trying to censor political speech and speech that it deems unpalatable, you know, according to their own ideology to really pay attention to that kind of thing. I mean, that's really, honestly, that's the more charitable take. The more, the less charitable take is that it is purposeful. And of course, you don't like to think that.

I don't like to think that. I don't like to put those motivations, those kind of nefarious motives on people. But when you ask the question, as you did, well, why aren't there those limits in place? They're so common sense. There are pretty simple limitations, I would guess, to put in place. Why aren't they being put in place? It does seem that it's purposeful. And then if you look at some of the stuff, I had a mom on here on Monday who, this is a Texas mom.

She is in a suburb outside of Dallas. We're not talking about some of the more liberal. places in the country. Her daughter had 10 books that were recommended to her. Several of them included pornographic content. One of them had a child rape scene. The other book started out with 13 different ways to commit suicide. These were books that were recommended to her eighth grade daughter on a book list, a book club that was mandatory for her class by her teacher. So when you look at that and when you look at what seems to be a growing culture of sex, of young kids, I'm sorry, but it's hard for me. Maybe I'm being cynical or maybe I'm just

being spiritual. Maybe I'm looking at scripture and I see that the powers that be are truly as dark and as evil as we can think of. And I just wonder if it's purposeful. Well, you know, the reality is, is that studies are now showing that a lot of people who are exposed to porn at a young age, it does bring about guilt and shame and confusion around their sexuality that oftentimes ends up later leading to these poor children attempting suicide. And so that is part of the equation. That is part of the reality. And the other side of this tragedy is that human sexuality is a beautiful thing. It is a gift to our humanity. And it's sad to me that something so beautiful and something that was created for such intimate purpose of human connection

is being so polluted and desacralized and distorted and twisted in our world today. So for those of us who, you know, have put our own reputations aside to just speak out about this are criticized as, oh, you're just anti-sex. Couldn't be further from the truth. It's actually our high view of humanity and our high view of human sexuality. And our regard, respect, reverence for this gift. That is the reason why we are fighting for this. And so I think that, you know, for all the talk about the sexual revolution,

creating the sexually liberated world, what it hasn't produced is a reverence for sex. And the way that it's treated today in our world is tragic. Yep, it is. And you mentioned this kind of accusation that people who stand against exploitation are anti-sex. And, you know, there is even within, you know, people who profess to be Christians to be sex positive. And that means apparently accepting all different kinds of, you know, sexual acts. And the low bar is some kind of cheap form of consent. Of course, I believe that consent is very. important. But that is how they use that standard alone to say, well, then pornography is fine, well, then, you know, a minor doing what they want to do, engaging what they want to engage in, even if it's some form of abusive sex, that's all fine as long as the person can sense. Our sexual ethic and our idea of what is healthy sexuality and a healthy understanding of the body is so distorted that we think anything is fine as long as a person wants to do it.

But what you're arguing is that the want, the desire is actually being distorted. It is actually being imposed on people by these perverts who are producing the content. So it's not like people are having these natural desires and just doing what they want. The desires are being perverted and put upon them. Really, in kids' cases, without their consent. And so it's just a completely distorted way to view it all, don't you think? Absolutely. And there's a big difference between consent and mutuality.

Consent can be manipulated. Consent can be bribed. Consent can be coerced. So, as you said, consent is a very low bar when we talk about something as fragile as or sexual serenity. And what a higher standard is is mutuality. It doesn't just say, what can I get away with? what can I get you to do, it actually is more interested in your partner and having a

sensitive, empathetic regard for what do you want? What do you desire? And there's this beautiful exchange of mutual interests that, you know, can lead to an intimate, powerful, safe sexual encounter. And so even our understanding of the idea of consent has become so distorted. But as you said, it's, you know, how do you qualify the appetites of somebody who have been raised on porn? And what we see in a lot of female consumers, in 2019, Pornhub reported that 32% of the visitors to their site were females. So there is a trend where more, you know, previously it was thought to be this was a male issue.

More and more we're seeing females become consumers as well that initially starts out of a curiosity for what their male peers are looking at. And but then over time, again, because of the nature of sexuality and the curiosity and arousal associated, it draws them into. But what they are viewing in pornography is a certain version of, you know, what it means to be a woman in a sexual encounter that is extremely abusive. And yet they internalize that and it becomes normalized within them. And then over time, they begin to buy into destructive patterns of thinking and being that make them complicit against themselves without even realizing the destructive thought patterns that they've bought into. And so it's extremely sinister even on that level of the way that it normalizes in viewers,

things that, like you said, aren't part of their authentic sexuality, that aren't part of their authentic quality of self-possession and autonomy, that are something that they have been indoctrinated with. And now for a young girl who's grown up watching these images of women being humiliated, subjugated, degraded, abused, that to them becomes normal. So when their male peer wants to, you know, choke that, do every manner of abusive, you know, sexual acts to them, they think this is, this is what sex is. Right. And again, like I said, that's the tragedy because that's, it's actually not what sex is. Yeah.

Sex is about enhancing the life experience of your partner. And hopefully they're attempting to do the same. together it creates an enhanced sense of intimate connection. It's not about what can I do to every part of your body for my own gratification and sadistic pleasure. Yeah. And I mean, God gave us this beautiful gift of sex. It's a gift of common grace, which means it's not only Christians that get to engage in it and celebrate it. It's people of all kinds. It is a gift. It can be life-giving, and it's supposed to be, in all cases, life affirming. And I think you described it so well when you said that women and men,

but in talking about women, they become complicit against themselves. So even though they might be saying that they're doing it with autonomy, they're doing it to, you know, show their power and their strength, really the pornography that they're consuming and even how they are exploiting themselves is really more making themselves their own adversary than their own advocate. And I thought that this was interesting. In the New York Times, it talks about there's an opinion piece that came out five days ago by Michelle Goldberg. And the headline is this, why sex positive feminism is falling out of fashion.

And she talks about how today's feminists have actually kind of started to wonder if this whole idea of empowering the so-called sex worker and pervasive pornography is actually as empowering to women and to the cause of feminism as, you know, maybe their predecessors said that it was. She talks about this trend that is apparently on TikTok cancel porn. Rebecca Jennings of Fox says this. It's just one facet of a conservatism, for lack of a better term, that's proliferating on TikTok from rather unlikely sources. Young, presumably progressive women, for the most part, who think that what's sometimes called choice feminism caters to patriarchy and the male gays. Liberal feminism telling young girls that hookup culture is liberating, conditioning them to think that if you don't have

extreme kinks at a young age, then you're born in vanilla and encouraging them to get into sex work the minute they turn 18. And so even though I might not agree, you know, with their entire ideology, these young women that are talking about this from the standpoint of feminism, I'm wondering if hopefully there at least is a subset of Generation Z who is waking up and saying, hang on a second. Just because it's self-exploitation doesn't mean that it's empowering. What do you think about that? Are you hopeful for that? Well, there's only so long that we can go without finally saying that Emperor's not wearing clothes. Pornography is about women's suffering to feed the male ego, nothing else. Right, right. So if you look at, so yeah, it doesn't surprise me that,

that people are, you know, starting to grapple with reality. I sometimes wonder why it has taken this long. But yeah, the delusional notion of pornography is being this sex positive, liberating, empowering, you know, experience that is going to enhance our sexuality is, is absolutely a lie when you look at it from every angle, when you look at it from a human right standpoint of the way that this is being created. So when I talk about pornography, like as a genre of media, graphic genre of media, you know, we're critiquing that graphic genre of media for the people in it. I have an enormous amount of compassion because I spent a year going undercover into the porn industry making a documentary that we're going to release next year.

And, you know, I have enormous amount of compassion for the people who are in that industry because the vast majority of pornography is created against a backdrop of coercion. I actually have one pornography described to me the way that he does a porn scene and gets the girls to do these things that he wanted. And after explaining this highly coercive way that he does it, he said to me in the face, how is that not trafficking? I had a pornography literally say this to me. So they understand, you know, what they are doing. And so when you look at it from a human rights standpoint in terms of the way that it's created, or if you look at it from a public health standpoint and the impact on consumers, you know, and what they're being exposed to,

it's disturbing on both sides. Pornographers have created a porn universe and they have created the porn man as an avatar for male consumers and the porn woman as an avatar for female consumers to enter into this porn universe in which there is a story and a script and a character that has played out over and over and over. It is about the giving power to men to subjugate, dehumanize, and humiliate women while they never say no and enjoy every advance and the more aggressive, the more pleasurable it is for them. And this formulaic script gets played out over and over and over and then it gets injected into the minds of our children. And like I said before, why isn't anybody saying

anything about this. Right. It's so disturbing. Unfortunately, we do live in a reactionary culture where if one side that you're supposed to disagree with says something, then what they're saying must be bad. So if it's, for example, if the majority of people that speak up against the dangers of porn are evangelical Christians, which that doesn't make up everyone who speaks up against porn, but say that someone perceives that as a majority of people who speak up against it, I do think that there's this knee-jerk reaction to say, well, they must just be prudes. They must just trying to be trying to control women. And so porn must be good. So I think that could be part of it. The other part of it is just people who are lost, who are dark. There are people who just don't know.

I've heard people try to make this argument, you know, trying to separate the pornography industry from exploitation and trying to separate pornography from sex trafficking and child trafficking and talk about ethically made porn. Is it possible? to separate those two industries, or are they inextricably intertwined? Well, that's interesting because there was a documentary that came out called, it was the follow-up to Hot Girls Wanted, and it was Hot Girls Wanted, and it was Hot Girls Wanted turned on or something like that. And one of the episodes was about this ethical porn and this person named Erica Lust. And it starts off with her giving this

talk, Ted talk in which she declares, I am not trying to get girls out of porn. I'm trying to get girls into porn. So at the very outset, her mission statement to get girls into porn is set forth. And then we see, you know, follow the journey of how this is so ethical and hearing about how this is supposed to favor women and all this stuff. So there's all this buildup. And then we get to the actual scene where she's going to film a porn scene. And it's this person who's this woman at this piano and she's playing this beautiful piano and then a man comes up behind her and is supposed to start having sex with her. Well, the man comes up behind her and grabs her by the hair and starts aggressively having sex with her from behind. And at this point, the actress girl says, stop, stop.

And they're like, what's the problem? She's like, it's hurting. And then this, this, you know, ethical porn director says to her, well, just fake it and encourage her to push it. And encourage her to push And then afterwards, at the end of this, as well, at the end of the day, we're still just an entertainment industry. So this whole idea of ethical, you know, is slapping a label on it to try to sanitize what we know is inherently harmful. And the idea that like the real problem is with Christianity is such a scapegoat to, for people to offload their responsibility and accountability to approach human sexuality with any

kind of ethical framework. Now, I'm not going to say that there aren't damaging aspects to, you know, some of the, you know, some of the purity culture messages. Right. We've talked about that on here as well. But the thing is, is like this idea that, you know, the way that we compartmentalize and polarize each other in today's world, aren't we all kind of wrestling to understand our existence, you know?

And so this idea that, you know, there's, you know, people who aren't Christians are so much different than those who are. No, we're all wrestling to understand how we got here, what this is all about. And Christianity offers one explanation. for that, Jesus was the embodiment of it. And who was this person? He was a person who lived a life of love and compassion and consideration of the vulnerable and by virtue of speaking the truth to power got himself innocently killed. Is that so awful? So I am trying to follow in the tradition of Jesus who lived a life of love and compassion and consideration of the most vulnerable demographic of people

in our society. Sue me. Yeah, right, right. And that is one. And I know that we're not necessarily talking about, we're not necessarily talking about theology. I would just add to what you said that, you know, I hear a lot of activists kind of say that, you know, Jesus was killed by the state for being an activist, but ultimately he was killed because he is God. And he fulfilled that prophecy. And because it's not necessarily just that he spoke truth to power, but because God or that for him to be the sacrifice for those he is called to himself. But you're absolutely right in that he gives us the example, the right template, in how to treat the vulnerable, and that there are people who profess to be progressive Christians who say that, you know, it's possible

to be pro-porn, to be, quote, sex positive, and to follow the example of Christ, well, the Christ that you say that you follow says that it's actually better for a millstone to be tied around someone's neck for you to be thrown into the depths of the sea than to have than to cause little ones to sin. So in order to be a part of any part of this very complicated network, it seems, that ends in child exploitation, either from the consumption of pornography of a child or the actual exploitation of a child through a child. pornography, I just don't see how someone who certainly who professed to follow Christ can be a part of that at all. Can you talk about just to end this? This is a little bit backwards,

but can you talk about how you got into exit to Christ? Like, how did you start all of this? Why did you become passionate about this? And how did that then lead to what we're talking about today and the video that comes out tomorrow? Sure. Yeah. This is a subject that's very personal for me. I grew up as the youngest of four children, somewhat sheltered in my childhood. And at the age of 11, I was first awakened to the presence of the knowledge of evil in the world when I saw a movie called The Accused with Jody Foster that depicted the real life story of Cheryl Oroyo and her gang rape ensuing fight for justice.

The scene of that gang rape is something that I will never get out of my head. It traumatized me as a young child and left me with this haunting feeling that rape, has to be the worst thing that could possibly happen to a person. But then I continued on with my life with no knowledge or understanding of how widespread this was. I thought, you know, that is something that just,

you know, very rarely ever happens in the most extreme cases, some other part of the world. Well, around the age of 30, back in, uh, see,

I'm going to date myself here, 2000, early in 2007, um, uh, I was visiting a friend in the hospital. My wife and I were speaking with them. just congratulating them on a child they just had.

And somehow we got on the topic of human trafficking. I had never heard the term. I thought, what does that mean? Gridlock on the freeway? What mean is all this? And then she began to tell us about this trend of girls who were being taken and forced into prostitution. And just the knowledge of that was so overwhelming.

I was stunned. I literally cannot remember anything else from the next night. I just remember the following day, sitting in my office at home, and just weeping under the burden of the knowledge of this and all those feelings as a child just coming up and out. And in that moment, I was pierced with this injustice. And it is a wound that I pray I never recover from because it has compelled me every day since never to turn a blind eye to this injustice

and to give my dying last breath to eradicate it from our planet. nine months later after that moment i began i was studying this i was praying into it and a widow approached me and said look i know you don't know me she said but god has spoken to me and told me to give you ten thousand dollars to start an organization to fight human trafficking wow and we took that as a sign that you know this was this was the next step for us and so um having a little bit of a background in film, I picked up a camera and went out, traveled the world, went to four different continents, 19 countries, 42 cities over the course of four years documenting the global phenomenon of sex trafficking. That documentary is called Nefarious Merchant of Souls. It's available on our

Exodus Cry YouTube channel, and it really is a snapshot of global sex trafficking. Well, that documentary opened doors for us all around the world to speak with legislative. and partner with other organizations and really start pushing to make a difference. So that's where the work of Exodus Cry really accelerated. And now we do abolition work, which is work to end this injustice. Our films are a part of that, social reform, legal reform. And then the other side of our work is our intervention work, everything that we're doing to reach people who are trapped in the commercial sex industry

and to bring them out and assist them in their path towards recovery. So that's in a nutshell, how I got into this and yeah, and who Xers Cry is and what we're doing today. And did you know from the onset that you would be, that you'd end up talking about pornography and how all of that is connected, especially how kids are exposed to it? Or has that kind of been a more recent development of your organization? Well, it was in the journey of making nefarious where, you know, we set out thinking we're going. after a situation where, you know, these girls are just being abducted and taken and, you know, trapped somewhere. But the more that we got into it, that is part of it, the more we began to see a bigger picture of what was happening. And the more we began to see how pornography was

overlapping into this in a number of ways. So after the completion of nefarious in 2012, I decided to go back to the drawing board and really investigate the porn industry, the research on pornography. I decided to go after this from a public health and human rights standpoint. And that has led me on a near 10-year journey to this point where we have been really aggressively researching, investigating, and documenting what's been going on with the role of pornography in all of this. So in 2020 is really when we kind of like came out with some of our initial findings from those years. And that was with our trafficking hub campaign that has gone viral and caused PornHub to delete 80% of the videos on their website because they were enabling and profiting from videos of real abuse. And abuse of minors.

Right. And abuse of minors, exactly. And so now that has evolved to this new campaign, protect children. not porn, which focuses again on requiring and insisting that big tech and big porn be required to put age verification walls in place for any hosting of pornographic content. Yeah. Wow. And while I'm so thankful for what you guys do, I know that there's going to be people who listen to this to feel maybe the same pang that you did several years ago and who are thinking, okay, either I want to get involved in this.

I want to push back on this stuff too, or, oh my gosh, how in the world do I protect my kids from this? And so can you give parents and non-parents who are listening just some action items that they can feel like they are contributing it in a positive way? Yeah, absolutely. I'm actually releasing a book this fall that goes in tandem with the documentary except much, much deeper. That book is also called Raised on Porn and has ample resources for parents on how to address this issue with their children and how to protect their children. So I really encourage them to get that. But I think it starts for us as parents with age-appropriate conversations with our children,

taking shame out of the home, taking shame out of this conversation, having age-appropriate conversations about bodily autonomy, the way that God has created us. And so it normalizes these conversations. because really it's not a matter of if but when children are going to be exposed to these images. And we just have to prepare for that reality. And so I think that these conversations arm our children with the critical thinking and the shame-free kind of approach to it that they'll be able to handle those situations when they come

and won't just be apprehended by their curiosity and 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. And the other thing is, there are actually a lot of protections that parents can put in place regarding devices, regarding access to graphic hardcore content, and then shoring up their circle of influence and speaking with, you know, the parents of their friends, you know, hey, if our kids come over, these are our expectations. And, you know, and so, so there is a lot that we can do. And I think just the key issue is coming up with a plan and then enacting that plan. And that is all laid out in this book, raised on horn that, like I said, are releasing this

fall. So just keep an eye on for that. Yeah, definitely. And they can support Exodus Cry by watching the film that comes out tomorrow. And I'm sure there's a place that maybe they can donate as well. Yeah, absolutely. Just go to our Exodus Cry Instagram page or our Exodus, our Exodus, Cry website and you can learn all about the work that we're doing, see our films, and help contribute towards the work that we're doing. Yeah. And I just encourage you guys to make sure that you share it as well. Maybe this, you feel like it's an uncomfortable conversation to have with your friends. Well, I love being able to just share links with people. It helps start the conversation and it allows someone else, in this case, Exodus Cry to even have that conversation, you know,

without the awkwardness of confronting someone about something as difficult and as, you know, hard to talk about as this, I would say share it maybe with your, your parent friends, share it with your friends. If you're in college, maybe who don't agree with you on this. And just also to raise awareness about how all of these things are truly interconnected. Most people that I know, no matter their faith background, want to end exploitation. and you guys are helping to do that. So thank you so much.

I really appreciate it. We'll have to have you back on to talk about your book. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Ali. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country

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