RAISED ON PORN Director: ‘We Have To Stem The Tide of Pornography’
By Cooper Dowd, Senior Writer
Exodus Cry founder and CEO Benjamin Nolot is on the front lines of the fight to protect children from pornography and sexual exploitation.
In the past, Nolot and his team at Exodus Cry have shed light on human trafficking through movies like NEFARIOUS and LIBERATED.
RAISED ON PORN is Nolot’s newest project, produced through Exodus Cry’s Magic Lantern Pictures studio. The 36-minute documentary is set to premiere on YouTube on Sept. 30.
In 2008, Nolot launched Exodus Cry, a Christian nonprofit advocacy organization that seeks to abolish the legal, commercial sex industry. As their website points out, the worldwide sex industry is financially supported through pornography, strip clubs, sex work, and illegal sex trafficking.
Nolot spoke to Movieguide® and discussed how culture has normalized the sexual exploitation and abuse of children.
“Yeah, so when we did NEFARIOUS, we were basically uncovering the reality of global sex trafficking. After finishing that film, we wanted to dig deeper into the ‘why’ behind the ‘what.’ Why all this was going on, to better understand what’s fueling it and perpetuating it,” Nolot told Movieguide®. “So we set out to make another film that would look more at the underpinnings of sex trafficking, and that’s how we ended up doing LIBERATED.
“So, RAISED ON PORN, really is kind of the next evolution of our journey down the rabbit hole, and sort of looking at where it all begins.”
“RAISED ON PORN really sounds an alarm about the public health crisis of childhood exposure to pornography and our pornographic internet age, media-saturated world,” he added. “It provokes people to want to take action to protect children. That’s where our campaign comes in, ‘Protect Children, Not Porn,’ which demands that age verification walls be put in place for every website that is hosting or distributing pornographic content that would include Twitter, big tech, big porn, Google.”
Read Also: After Pornhub’s Takedown, Is There a Renewed Hope for Redeeming Media?
Nolot notes that pornography’s effect on children is worldwide and targets younger and younger demographics.
“As we began to discover these things, we started to see that the widespread proliferation of pornography in our world today has created a massive public health crisis in which most children are exposed to porn before they’re 13-years-old,” Nolot said. “For many of them, that does lifelong damage in terms of hijacking their mental, emotional, and sexual development and indoctrinating them with all kinds of toxic beliefs.”
According to Nolot, RAISED ON PORN highlights how culture has redefined sex through pornographic content.
“What we discovered is that pornography is playing a huge role in the socialization of both boys and girls growing up in our culture today. For boys, it is socializing them into internalizing all kinds of toxic and destructive stories about what it means to be a man, what sex is, what it’s for, who women are, [and] relationships,” Nolot explained.
After Nolot interviewed many sex buyers who said that pornography was a central part of their childhood, that theme held true.
“We set out talking to a lot of sex buyers to get at the root of the demand of sex trafficking, and virtually all of them had a history of porn consumption since childhood,” he said. “We don’t come away from stories unchanged, especially ones that are so potent and knit directly to sexual arousal. It’s a potent cocktail.”
Despite those in the mainstream media, government, and even the sex industry itself who would defend pornography as a source of income, Nolot makes plain the danger it poses to children in our world today.
“If we want to reclaim what it means to be a man, a woman, a sexual being, in a healthy sense, we have to stem the tide of pornography,” he said. “There’s nothing healthy depicted in pornography. It is objectifying, dehumanizing sex that is meant to subjugate one person for the gratification of another.”
“If that’s the sex education in our world, what do we expect?” he questioned. “So you look at the numbers of sexual abuse, you look at the attitudes towards sex in our culture, you look at what’s going on around us every day in the news it’s a complete train wreck. We’re seeing the widespread, collective sexual traumatization of the entire planet.
“We hope that this film and this campaign can be a significant step in the right direction to stem the tide of this,” he said.
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Now more than ever we’re bombarded by darkness in media, movies, and TV. Movieguide® has fought back for almost 40 years, working within Hollywood to propel uplifting and positive content. We’re proud to say we’ve collaborated with some of the top industry players to influence and redeem entertainment for Jesus. Still, the most influential person in Hollywood is you. The viewer.
What you listen to, watch, and read has power. Movieguide® wants to give you the resources to empower the good and the beautiful. But we can’t do it alone. We need your support.
You can make a difference with as little as $7. It takes only a moment. If you can, consider supporting our ministry with a monthly gift. Thank you.
Movieguide® is a 501c3 and all donations are tax deductible.
