I received Porn Nation:  Conquering America’s #1 Addiction, by Michael Leahy a couple of months ago in stack of books from The Ooze.  I’ve become an OozeSelect blogger.  It was the first book I read in the stack and I’ve been struggling with how to review it.

It’s a well written and poignant account of one man’s struggle with a harmful addiction to pornography.   Michael Leahy lost a lot of his life to porn.  It was difficult reading in places, because it didn’t appear that he left anything out.  I venture to guess that he was harder on himeself than he might have been on someone else.

Yet …

I’m struggling with this review.  I find I cannot say to everyone that it’s a must read.  Or even a need to read.  I’m struggling with some of the themes that Michael presented.  Most of all I find that I don’t agree with the pervasive sense of fear that is engendered by reading this book.

Is pornography America’s number one addiction?  I don’t know. It’s very likely.  I do know that it is an enormous stumbling block to making things right for women in my generation.  We will never have equality as long as large groups of men see women as sexual objects; toys for them to get their jollies on with.  In that regard, pornography is a sin.  It degrades God’s creation and abuses others.   The entire industry creates abuse … of the women, of the men of everyone associated with it.

In many ways sexual addictions are like food addiction.  If one is addicted to drugs or alcohol, one has the option of quitting cold turkey … never to face that temptation again.  However, if one has become addicted to looking at a woman’s body (for example) how does one go about quitting that?  Michael recounts his struggles with overcoming the addiction and how he broke it’s claim on his life very clearly.  He is at his best when he is telling about the personal cost of pornographic addiction.  There is much to be learned here and his private pain is worth the read.  But if I were a betting woman (and I’m not … my addiction is to caffeine), I would say that given Michael’s family of origin, he was vulnerable to an addiction of some sort from an early age.  It was his bad luck (?) that some dirty photos came his way.

The problem is, however, I don’t agree that everyone is vulnerable to pornography.  This seemed to be an underlying theme to the book.  When I finished the book, I felt vaguely unclean and as if I needed to follow my children around to obssess over their every internet move.  This is unnecessary.  We have established sane protocols with our children and I trust them.  We have good relationships.  They come to us with questions on a regular basis.  So I resented this seed of fear that got planted, and ripped it out summarily.

While I object to the pornography industry (deeply, sincerely, even bitterly).  While I also sympathize with the pain of Mr. Leahy’s addiction and recovery.  I find I can’t give this book an unqualified great review.  I felt too much fear emanating from it’s pages.  I am sensitive to fear.  Fear will lock us up and throw away the key if given the chance.  We must resist her siren song on all fronts.  There are many reasons to resist pornograpy and many, many reasons to help it’s victims, all of them … but fear is not one of them.