Christianet.com , the site where the poll was taken, calls itself “the worldwide Christian marketplace” and offers various products and services, blogs, quizzes and surveys.
The article also said several other Christian-oriented polls’ results have indicated porn addiction among women is growing. XXXChurch.com’s Rev. J.R. Mahon reportedly said he has noticed a rise in the attendance of women at adult-oriented conventions and fan shows.
Founded in 2002, the nonprofit Internet-based ministry said it often sends representatives to adult-oriented events as well as music festivals, colleges and universities, in an attempt to reach out to people who are interested in their antiporn addiction message.
“From five years ago when we started doing the pornography conventions to now, we see an abundance of women at the shows,” XXXChurch Project Manager Brandon Piety told XBIZ. “In Miami, at Erotica, there were more women than I’ve ever seen. It’s not a statistic — it’s a woman that’s there with her husband and then a group of girls — it’s different but true.”
He also pointed out that at the Erotica Lifestyles Expo held in Christchurch, New Zealand in March, the attendance was reportedly 55 percent female.
Piety, who spoke to XBIZ from Soulfest, a Christian music festival held in New Hampshire, said he had just conducted a seminar for women dealing with issues stemming from pornography that morning.
“More and more, we are doing all-girl sessions. The days of it being just all guys are over. Girls want to talk about it, too,” Piety said. “The statistic we like to work on is that 30 percent of the people that view online pornography are women.”
Since there is no clinical diagnosis for porn addiction, Piety explained the ministry’s definition.
“Our definition of an addiction is when they can’t stop. So, basically, you allow an amount of time, depending on the individual — say a month, and if you have to go out of your way to look at it, if you can’t go without it for a week, then you’re addicted,” he said.
“A lot of it is dependent on the person, but a lot of them are addicted to porn and then, they’re addicted to masturbation, which leads to more addiction to porn, so it’s a circular kind of addiction. You end up in a cycle and the cycle becomes hard to break.”
At the Thursday morning workshop, Piety said there were 40 women in attendance, ranging in age from 12 to 40 years old and, of those, one-third were struggling with pornography issues of their own, while the rest were dealing with a partner’s porn viewing habits.
“Everyone has different stories. Even just today, after the session, a girl came up to me and said, ‘Hey, this is a very big issue in my life.’ It started when she was abused by a family member and then she got into a lot of pornography and it’s never stopped. It’s just a way for her to deal with another issue,” Piety said.
Piety noted that many women he has talked to, in the Christian and mainstream life, feel shamed into a sense of isolation when dealing with the “issue” of pornography.
“In the Christian community, I think they’re immediately put in a category,” he said. “Even people that don’t have any religious following at all — women that are into pornography, they definitely do feel shamed, no matter what system they find themselves in. When you think about it, it’s just taboo for women to be involved in pornography.”
