The Damage of Pornography

Art by the wonderful @lem00001

There's been several different side plots going on about people who just don't get Malfoid, but one that sticks out to me is the insinuation that Malfoid is simply the result of decades of pornography destroying men's (and women's) brains.

And they're right, but not for the reasons they state.

We've been inundated with the allure of virtual skin and sex for many years now. It became slightly more attractive with the onset of MeToo in late 2017 (earlier than that, if you were like me and were in college). Relationships came with more risks. "Will he take advantage of me?" and "Will she falsely accuse me?" echoed in the minds of young men and women who would otherwise have made a happy couple, if they were willing to take on the additional perils of proving these questions wrong.

So instead, they turned to porn. At this point, it was mainly consuming. Porn was safe. No one there to judge, no one there to take advantage of you, no one there to falsely accuse you. You could get your release you wanted for your desires without struggle. It was a small but growing practice.

Then came 2020 and the whole world went to shit.

The entire response to Covid was a shitshow. My feelings on it will not be posted here, as I would like to not get permanently banned and have law enforcement show up shortly at my door. But it was indeed a shitshow. The lockdowns, the curfews, the ridiculous and pointless social distancing, those fucking useless and dehumanizing rags called masks on people's faces... Sorry, I'm getting angry again just writing this.

Anyways, all those measures pulled us away from each other. Romance went from struggling to being forced onto life support. Can't go out, the usual places you go to meet people and maybe spark a romance as well are shut down, and you're stuck indoors. On top of that, you can barely make ends meet due to losing your job and the Federal Reserve printing billions upon billions of dollars.

You're alone, you're broke, and you're desperate for human contact.

In comes the amateur porn sites, where that girl you knew from high school a few years back, the accountant in the office across from your desk (or was, before you started working from home), and the unreasonably beautiful girl working in the drive-thru lane at your local burger joint all are selling pictures of their butthole for a monthly subscription that costs no more than a pre-Covid cheeseburger.

"It's fine", they tell themselves. "I need the cash and it's just pictures and maybe a video or two." Of course, it also costs them their dignity, but they can ignore that for now because now they can pay rent. Now they get the attention they naturally crave as women, but through the sick and twisted lens of lust.

Men see that and despair. They grow disgusted and move further away from the woman who, in another life or another time, may have been their wife. Those women are doing the things they've been striving to do for years before society pulled the rug out from under them, merely by selling out and giving in to the debasing themselves.

So the men debase themselves in return.

"If I can't get a wife, why bother trying?" they tell themselves. "I have needs. Since I can't channel them through holy matrimony, I might as well embrace the degeneracy." Of course, it also costs them their dignity, but they can ignore that for now because now they can get a cheap imitation of love through a screen with a personal video. Now they get the attention they naturally crave as men, but through the sick and twisted lens of lust.

Women see that and despair. They grow disgusted and move further away from the men who, in another life or another time, may have been their husband. Those men who would have been great leaders and pillars of their community have given up and focused on the temporary release of porn, which they achieved by debasing themselves with just one more picture and one more video.

And the cycle continued.

More porn begetting more lust begetting more porn, over and over again with no end in sight.

Until Malfoid.

Certainly, there were other attempts but they barely held a candle to Malfoid. Suddenly, there was this massive outpouring of support and love and yearning for a woman who could fire a hex into your face without breaking a sweat but instead decided to Accio your heart in revenge for you already doing that to her.

Malfoid, in every canon, is a woman who is worth fighting for. She is sophisticated, dignified, smart, fiercely loyal to her family, forgiving, and challenging you to be more than you are today because she believes in you.

She is a woman. A self-actualized woman who choose to be with Harry not out of being conquered or out of fear, but out of love for who he is and who he can be.

That kind of woman has lit our souls on fire. We make art, we compose music, we write fanfics and extended think pieces on the nature of love and how to properly act in a relationship. I've seen an incredible amount of honest attempts at creativity in all forms from this simple idea, and some are already starting to write their own unique stories thanks to what they've learned.

There's also an explicit and outright rejection of sexualization of Malfoid. Women, trapped by their own lust, trying to dress as a risqué form of Malfoid get call "whorecrux" and "slutblood". Art debasing Malfoid is soundly rejected and called out. Stories about Malfoid being "realistic" and therefore lower than who she is at her core are called out as trash and terrible. Malfoid is a proper lady and she will be treated as such, no matter the medium of her depiction.

More than that, there is this higher expectation, not only for Malfoid, but of women in general. "You can be like Malfoid, you should be like Malfoid, and we will help you be like Malfoid, so long as you help us be like Harry." It's a collective cry into the void, praying that when men do what is necessary to be a good husband and father, the women we meet have already prepared themselves to be good wives and mothers. It's a joyous call, celebrating that forgoing the modern world and returning to older, more aristocratic values is a good thing for both men and women, and will make everyone happier in the long run.

Most importantly, there's the yearning. Oh, the yearning. Men everywhere feel that deep, longing sadness for a woman like Malfoid. Some claim they're never find her and continue to despair, yearning with a heavy heart. Others are reinvigorated by the thought and act upon it, yearning with a smile on their face and their eyes on the horizon. All men see her as an abstract ideal of what a woman should be.

Even some women are getting in on the yearning. They want their knight in shining armor to come and rescue them, whether or not they cheapened themselves and aren't exactly a princess any more. They tire of the lives they live today, sold to them by people who didn't care about them, and want more from life, just like the men. They see Harry and want that dashing rogue, their own low-born prince, to come to them and push them to do the right thing, to stand beside them, and to fight for them.

It is an ideal romance. We want that childhood enemies-to-lovers perfect story and we all know that we can't have it. It is something, however, that we can perhaps have a small slice of in our own lives, if we put the damaged parts of our souls down and try to forgive ourselves and others.

Your Malfoid won't be Malfoid. Your Harry won't be Harry. They will have their own scars and troubles, all carried over from their past. Our relationships won't be as perfect as our parents' (or grandparents', if you prefer), but they also won't be as perfect as our children's.

It won't be that easy, of course. It's easy to write an award-winning book series about how the power of love conquers all. It's absolutely laborious to untie this Gordian knot of problems that we face today. Rampant and widespread pornography is just one of dozens, if not hundreds. All the others are just as, if not more, complex than this one. No single person can fix it all.

What we can do is fix ourselves. Not completely, but enough that when your Malfoid or your Harry comes along, you've reconciled enough of your internal issues to spark a lifelong romance with them. That will blossom and ripple out, helping others fix themselves and find their own relationships. Bit by bit, piece by piece, we can start to heal and live in peace again. It won't be fast and there will be setbacks, but it will be better. Not much, but better nonetheless.

The result of all these years of pornography is just that: yearning.

Yearning and striving to put this era of mutual debasement in the past and work together to build a better future.

Yearning to face the dark and insufficient parts of ourselves and work on them with the hope and unproven foreknowledge that it will pay off in the future with someone to love.

Yearning to have higher expectations for ourselves and for our Malfoids or Harrys and forgiving them when they fall short, helping them back up with an outstretched hand and raising them up to clear that bar and then turn around and help you up in return.

Malfoid is, actually, the perfect example of how much damage pornography can do to men. It's also the much-needed catalyst for us to heal that damage.