Neon Trees drummer Elaine Bradley is yet another celebrity who is openly and candidly speaking out against pornography, as she recently penned an op-ed alongside her husband, Sebastian, that explains how the couple has navigated the complex issue.
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Bradley, who once wore a shirt while performing on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” that read, “Porn Kills Love,” offered up a no-nonesense assessment of smut in a piece for anti-porn group Fight the New Drug, but also explained where she feels she went wrong in addressing the issue with her husband.
“I get the allure of porn. I do. It’s thrilling. It’s inappropriate, mostly unrealistic, and totally tantalizing,” Bradley wrote. “That being said, I hate it. I hate the concept. I hate that it’s so accessible, and desirable. I hate that men and women want to view it, even the ‘good ones.'”
The performer admitted that her expectations and open chastisement of porn made it difficult for her husband to be honest after they married about his experiences and feelings on the issue.
Rather than lead with her own disgust, she said she could have done some things quite differently.
“I should have talked to him about porn with no preconceived notions about what I wanted his answers to be,” Bradley wrote. “I should have asked specific questions such as, ‘When was your first exposure to porn?’ ‘What are your feelings about porn?’ ‘Do you feel you have struggled with it?’ ‘When did you realize it was a problem/struggle?’ ‘How long did this last/is it still going on?’ ‘What can I do to support you, and what can we do together to continue to guard against porn consumption?’ and so on.”
In the end, she said that she had an unhelpful tone, one that was a bit judgmental and that rhetorically asked “how could anyone be okay with looking at porn?” It was an approach that she said was unhelpful to getting Sebastian to really open up about his struggles.
Now, she’s encouraging others to have more honest conversations about the issue.
“Everybody needs their eyes wide open about the pervasiveness of porn, and the damage it can do,” Bradley wrote. “At the same time, we need to somehow de-stigmatize the conversation so that people feel more comfortable asking others for help.”
For his part, Sebastian admitted that he is still tempted by porn. And he offered up his own op-ed as well, proclaiming something that he had to come to terms with himself: “Porn is selfish.” Read the couple’s thoughts in full here.