Thread by @mikestabile

Exodus Cry has released a trailer for Benjamin Nolot's new film "Raised on Porn," which comes out on Thursday. It argues that porn has destroyed a generation, calling it "the greatest unregulated social experiment in history." 1/

The claim? That for the past 10-20 years, the availability of free online porn has warped a generation's brain, causing them to become addicted to sex, and thus objectify and attack women. The only problem? The actual evidence. 2/

This is claim is one that I hear with thuddening regularity. But the facts don't bear out, especially with the generations — Gen Z ! Millenials! — that has supposedly been destroyed.

Gen Z is, by all accounts, the most consent-oriented, gender-conscious in history. 3/

And over the past 20 years — the period in which porn access exploded — rates of assault have steadily fallen, even as reporting and awareness of what constitutes assault has risen. It's hard to see square the #metoo generation with this fever-dream of mass rapists. 4/

But fundamentalism is remarkably fact averse!

Their real fear is not assault or objectification, which this "porn damaged generation" is tackling with more unparalleled vigor, but that it's hurting heteronormative relationships and gender roles. 5/

This is why they hate porn, sex workers, sex educators, and the kinky, queer and gender non-conforming. It's a threat to an established, Christian order in which men protect women in order to procreate.

And it's been this way for millennia. Don't be fooled.