Pamela Anderson has responded to fierce criticism drawn by her essay urging men to take a pledge not to watch porn.
In an op-ed co-written by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and published in the Wall Street Journal, the actress and Playboy model had warned of the “corrosive effects” of porn, claiming it was damaging relationships and becoming a “public hazard of unprecedented seriousness”.
The essay warned porn addiction is creating “the crack babies of porn” and concluded with the controversial line: “porn is for losers”.
Anderson’s conservative stance sparked a fierce backlash from adult performers, campaigners and filmmakers. Rabbi Biotech and Anderson defended their essay, insisting they were not trying to “moralise” porn consumers.
They told Fox News 11 their piece was an attempt to outline how porn is desensitising people when it comes to intimacy.
“When the impersonal nature of porn supplants the passion and intimacy of real lovemaking, then we've lost the ability to connect. And the growing addiction to porn is creating a level of sexual desensitisation that requires a national conversation. Porn is teaching men to view women as caricatures who are all cover and no book, all form and no substance."
Anderson said men and women “deserve better”.
Adult actors including Jessica Drake and Maria Riot criticised the essay for being reductive and blaming wider social issues on porn. Riot told the Independent: “Porn is for fun, for pleasure, for entertainment,“ she said. ”If people use porn for educating themselves or they become addicts to it, it is not because of porn, it is because of problems that society has, like poor sex education, for example.”
