Imagine Being Forced Into Becoming a Perverted Conservative's "Porn Accountability" Buddy

Help me spread the truths Republicans want to burn—There are other discount codes at the end of this articleI've always been skeptical of the idea of religious confession. While I appreciate the importance of being able to confide in somebody you trust, I'd never tell my secrets to a priest.Priests get all their power from cultivating shame. Walking into a confession booth feels like feeding an addict. I think they're titillated by the stories they hear. The worst part is that they commonly renounce modern academic and scientific advancements in our understanding of basic humanity.Whenever anyone makes a breakthrough about how to best help a child navigate the completely normal questions of their adolescence, priests tend to reject it out of hand.“Everything I need to know is in this book from the bronze age.”Think of how cruel and irresponsible that attitude is.Even in grade school I knew that there were some kids that you couldn't trust with your secrets. The moment you revealed anything important, they'd leverage your embarrassment for all that it was worth.“You don't want me telling the world your secret now, do you?”I expect when the collection plate goes around, the priest is calling to mind all the embarrassing secrets he knows as he scowls at the members of his congregation.“You feel guilty. Give me money.”All kinds of abuses stem out of the need to avoid humiliation. It's heartbreaking to consider that most of what we're made to feel humiliated about is a complete social construct created by evil men for the purpose of consolidating their power.The guiltier you feel, the more money goes to the church.It's not about salvation, it's about profit.We're made to feel ashamed about completely normal and commonplace human behavior. Never mind that some innocent children end up dying for it.Can you think of anything more manipulative or conniving than this?A couple years ago I watched an interview with a prominent politician who began to brag about how he and his son were “accountability buddies” when it came to moderating their porn viewing. He said this with a smug, self-satisfied smirk as if this strategy should be enough to get him considered for parent of the year.Every now and then somebody makes a statement that has so many glaring problems that you don't immediately know how to react. You're left sputtering and flailing about in an attempt to recuperate your footing.Meanwhile, the speaker mistakes your stunned confusion for awe and launches into a lewd tirade of unwanted details.“We have this app. When he goes on a page, I get an alert. The same is true for him.”“Stop! Stop! Stop!”There's nothing wrong with masturbation, but there are a lot of parents who are poorly equipped to discuss human sexuality with their kids. I believe that particularly applies to conservative parents who see the world through the lens of shame.There are potentially a lot of issues with pornography, but if an empowered person genuinely enjoys making erotic videos then that should be seen as a form of artistic expression. There's nothing inherently shameful about nudity. There's nothing inherently shameful about sex.The shame comes from the abuses, and the abuses are often normalized by the various sadistic power structures that have been tormenting humanity throughout all of history. We are in dire need of a psychological reset.These days there are intimacy coaches for major films who make sure all the participants are comfortable and feel safe. Human sexuality is a theme that must be explored with great care and responsibility. Without question, there are people within the world of pornography that are exploited and that is a serious social issue. But we don't fix that issue by ostracizing anyone on the basis of “sin.”Sometimes I get the impression that our privileged classes cultivate poverty with the objective of having a group of people they can exploit sexually. This is why I become enraged by individuals who insist on solving social issues with charity rather than by embracing humanitarian political policies.Charity allows rich people to choose who lives and who dies. When you recognize that the only reason some people are rich and some people are poor is because of deliberate injustices woven into our economic system, the concept of charity becomes disgusting.If every man, woman, and child had their needs met in a society, would there still be sex workers? Would there still be a pornography industry? Those are important questions to consider. I expect there would, but it would be done with a lot more care for basic humanity and a lot less shame.Now consider what the church is doing when it spends so much energy battling concepts like universal healthcare, universal basic income, and universal education. They oppose the means of ending exploitation, even as they cultivate the shame of the exploited.You end up with weird men who approach their teen boys and force them to install masturbation accountability apps onto their phones. Nothing about that is healthy.There's value in the concept of confession. The problem comes when you're forced to confess to some weird man who hasn't cultivated any empathy, but who covets the power, authority, and respect afforded to most priests.Sadly, there are a lot of parents out there who are not qualified to be parents. My heart goes out to their kids.Children have to navigate many confusing developmental moments. The people out there who have been indoctrinated with shame ideology, are poorly equipped to help their own children. They tend to see concepts like basic human sexuality as an opportunity to establish their dominance.That's abuse.They get so caught up in their skewed reverence for “the lord” that they torture their poor children with shame and self-loathing.Consider all the awful conservative politicians that are out there making our lives miserable every day. They stand behind podiums and smirk and judge and lie without hesitation. These are all odious people, but at least we can turn off the television when we see them. At least we are adults and we've had the time to come to our own conclusions about life.Now, consider that most of these sanctimonious jerks have kids. Think of what happens when those poor kids reach a completely normal developmental stage and find that they're under the authority of a cruel individual who cultivates shame so they can seize onto the illusion of power.Imagine one of those jerks coming into your room to say, “The day has come for me to install a masturbation app on your phone.”“What?”These are people who have been so brainwashed by their hate ideology that they are completely incapable of guiding their own children through the natural stages of development.It would be nice if our society could evolve to the point where young people could have some reasonable guidance on what constitutes normal human behavior. But these days any depiction of a same sex relationship has the church burning books.“You're representing human beings as worthy of respect and dignity? We can't have that! Absolutely not!”They're too embarrassed to talk about human sexuality openly. They make it an issue of shame. They brush it under the rug. Then these weird, smirking, self-righteous parents knock at their children's door, completely unprepared, and decide to have a forceful conversation about the need to repress basic human feelings?“I'm going to handle this thing I don't want to talk about by installing an app. Then you'll have to live in constant fear about any page you visit because I'll know.”The kids end up learning to hide because they can't take being at the center of the harsh light of judgment all the time. This is perhaps worse than getting caught because it makes them believe, on a fundamental level, that their completely normal behavior is somehow wrong.Meanwhile, they keep having to see their parent on television smirking as he discusses his tactic of “masturbation accountability.”If anybody should feel ashamed, it's the awful conservatives who think the quest for power justifies everything. These are people who are more offended by the idea of treating human beings with dignity than they are with the concept of child abuse.Perhaps we all need to have an “anti-shame” accountability buddy. Every time you're made to feel guilty or worthless by some perverse, power hungry conservative, you are comforted by a decent human being who reaffirms your value.The church has endured so long because it's always easier to break people down than it is to build them up. But what they're doing is fundamentally against human nature. We have a deeply rooted need to support each other. All we have to do in order to change the world is reject our shame and learn how to embrace our humanitarian impulses.It’s hardest to reject the things abuse conditioned you to believe. But those are the most important assumptions to reevaluate in order to break the cycle of misery.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! 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