
It Starts with the Eyes: Men are Visual
What does a women in a bikini have to do with buying a hamburger? A certain fast food chain seems to think there’s a connection because they made a commercial with a bikini clad model eating one their hamburgers. The marketers who made the commercial know how men are wired. How do you make your product stand out from the rest? What’s a guy going to remember more? A picture of a hamburger? Or a picture of a model in a bikini? Obviously, the model in the bikini. So let’s have the model in the bikini hold the hamburger. Guess what? Men now remember the hamburger because it’s being held by a model in a bikini! Unfortunately, sex sells. Marketers know this or they wouldn’t do it. Men are hard-wired to be visually stimulated. God created men this way and it was meant to be a good thing. But sin entered the picture, and what was intended for good has become a massive problem throughout history.
Your eyes and your heart
Jesus specifically addressed this dilemma when he said “but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Book of Matthew 5:28) Notice that there’s more going on there than just the eyes. The heart’s involved as well. If you want to change your heart about women, you have to start with your eyes.
Check out the national porn stats for these types of demographics:
Men
- 20% of men admitted to accessing pornography at work
- 47% of Christian men said pornography is a major problem in the home
- 40 Million U.S. adults regularly visit pornography websites
- $4.9 Billion in internet pornography sales
- 4.2 Million pornographic websites (12% of total websites)
- 420 Million pornographic web pages
- 68 Million daily pornographic search engine requests (25% of total requests)
- 2.5 Billion daily pornographic e-mails (8% of total e-mails)
- $89 per second is spent on porn
- 10% of adults admit to internet sexual addiction
- Breakdown of male/female visitors to porn sites: 72% male / 28% female
Women
- 70% of women keep their cyber activities secret
- 17% of all women struggle with pornography addiction
- 1 in 3 visitors to all adult websites are women
- 9.4 Million women access adult websites each month
- 13% of women admit to accessing pornography at work
- Breakdown of female/male visitors to porn sites: 28% female / 72% male
- Women, far more than men, are likely to act out their behaviors in real life, such as having multiple partners, casual sex, or affairs
- Today’s Christian Women’s online newsletter admitted to intentionally accessing internet porn. While many women wrote in to explain they accessed these sites to better understand what was luring their husbands
Spouses
- Dr. C.J. Manning’s 2006 study on sexual compulsion showed that learning of a spouses’ porn use typically has the same impact on an innocent spouse as learning of an affair and pornography is a significant factor leading to divorce
- Breakdown of male/female visitors to porn sites: 72% male / 28% female
- Two-thirds of the divorce lawyers attending a 2002 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers said excessive interest in online porn contributed to more than half of the divorces they handled that year. They also said pornography had an almost non-existent role in divorce just seven or eight years earlier.
Pastors
- 57% of Pastors call pornography the most sexually damaging issue for their congregation
- 53% of Christian men consume pornography
- 37% of Pastors say it’s currently a struggle
- 53% of Pastors have visited porn sites in the past year
- 30% of Pastors do not talk to anyone about their dirty little secret
- 4 out of 10 Pastors looked at porn today
- 18% of Pastors look at porn a couple times a month
- 51% of Pastors say Porn is a temptation
- 69% of Pastors started looking at porn out of curiosity
Parents & Teens
- American ages 13 to 18 spend more than 72 hours a week using electronic media – defined as the internet, cell phones, television, music, and video games
- 87% of all teens are online
- The average age of first internet exposure to pornography is 11 years old
- 90% of 8 – 16 year olds have viewed porn online (most while doing homework)
- 26 children’s character names are linked to thousands of porn links (including Pokemon and Action Man)
- 29% of 7 – 11 year olds would freely give out home addresses
- 1 in 7 youth receive sexual solicitation online
- 80% of 15 – 17 year olds have had multiple hard-core exposures
- 14% of 7 – 17 year old girls would freely give out e-mail addresses
If you think that your pornography use only impacts you, think again. In this powerful letter from a daughter to her dad, a young woman explains how her father’s wandering eyes and pornography use has shaped her views of herself and men.
Stats courtesy of XXXChurch.com and CovenantEyes.com