Actress and former Playboy model Pamela Anderson is continuing to speak out against pornography. Anderson was recently a guest on the U.K. talk show This Morning, and faced criticism for a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed in which she called porn a “public hazard of unprecedented seriousness.”
She and her co-author Rabbi Shmuley Boteach wrote that the “experiment in mass debasement” is damaging culture, adding “we have often warned about pornography’s corrosive effects on a man’s soul and on his ability to function as husband and, by extension, as father.”
While appearing on the talk show, she responded to a viewer Tweet that said, “Pamela Anderson telling everyone to boycott porn? Yeah this is the same person that found fame and made money from it.” Another said she was being “hypocritical.”
Anderson responded,
Have you ever been treated like a porn star in bed? It’s no fun, at all. Slapped, hit, called names, spit on. That’s sex these days, and I have experienced that, and I never want that to happen again …
I know I’m part of the problem and I should probably disqualify myself from this whole situation because I was in Playboy and I had a tape stolen from my home and exploited all over the world but I didn’t think Playboy was pornographic … It was sexual objectification but it was on my terms.
I have some regrets in my life and I also feel great that I have this perspective because I’ve been the product of this and treated like an object. I have an authority on the subject.
Anderson’s comments come as more and more research show just how widespread porn viewership has become. From our piece “Porn Is Now Threatening an Entire Generation”:
Back in January, the Barna Group published the results of large study on this same pornography culture. The findings confirm and underscore what we’ve known for a while: Porn use is a massive and growing problem, even among Christians. In part, the Barna study reveals that a staggering 57 percent of younger Millennials (ages 18 to 24) are seeking out porn at least once or twice a month. Among older Millennials, the number is only slightly better at 43 percent. Gen-Xers and Boomers reported 41 percent and 17 percent respectively.
