Rabbi Friedman: Pornography emasculates men. It robs them of their manhood. The nature of a man is to be a giver, to be a provider. The psyche of the male is “Show me a need and let me fix it. Let me provide. Then I feel like a giver. I feel like a provider. I feel like a man.”
But you have to give something significant, and you have to give what is really lacking and missing, not just something you want to provide. You have to provide the need, the real need, the preexisting need. That’s a giving and a receiving that is satisfying, healthy, productive. A real giver knows what is needed and gives that, and then there’s great appreciation.
Now what happens when a man is stimulated by what he sees. What are you providing when you see something stimulating? You can’t. You can’t provide. That frustrates the masculine instinct in a man. That’s why pornography is so destructive of men, because you get excited about something you see. You’re feeling rather masculine, but there’s no one else involved. It’s just the things you’re seeing.
So the danger with pornography and what it does to society is that the men stop being men. And that’s why what’s happening in marriages today where people have brought pornography into bedrooms, and they’re acting out all those pornographic fantasies. What they’re doing is relating to things about their spouse, not their spouse.
So we need to clean up. Leave pornography for the pornographers. Don’t bring it home. It’s not healthy, particularly for men. It’s frustrating everybody ’cause if the man is not a man then the woman is frustrated, and it all falls apart. So don’t get excited about what you see. It’s not the real thing.
Get excited about real people, significant people, in-your-life people. Take them seriously. Be a provider in real time, in real life, in real need. You’ll feel like a mentch [a good person], and everybody will be happy.
