Why Can’t We Stop Talking About the Anti-Porn ‘Oppenheimer’ Lady?
“Any advice for my husband and I wanting to watch Oppenheimer but being fully afraid of the Florence Pugh scene everyone is talking about?”
Last weekend, creator Jourdan K. posted a TikTok about going to see the film Oppenheimer with her husband, answering the above question from a follower. She and her husband made a “game plan”: while watching it in theaters, her husband would lay his head on her shoulder and close his eyes during the sex scenes. When the video was posted on Twitter, it quickly went viral for the sheer number of questions people had about it. Why couldn’t this couple watch a sex scene without getting upset? Were they religious? Controlling? Puriteens? From her view, Jourdan is a wife protecting her husband from relapsing into his porn addiction. And she’s an anti-porn content creator — one who represents a version of the anti-porn movement tailored to a modern generation. Being anti-porn isn’t about shame anymore. Its advocates say it’s about trust.
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In 2022, Jourdan discovered that her husband of 10 years watched porn. While she tells Rolling Stone his habit wasn’t interfering with his life, job, or any day-to-day activities, it was the fact that it had happened more than once that made her think he was addicted. What was more difficult for her was how it made her feel.
“I was a mess,” Jourdan says. “I was crying every day. I wasn’t eating. And there was so little information that I could find. I thought, ‘Is this just my husband? Is this just me? Why am I having such a strong reaction to this?'”
After researching porn addiction online, Jourdan slowly became a vocal member of the anti-porn movement — identifying with the core belief that watching porn is not only addictive but an unethical infidelity in relationships that can cause trauma to both partners. To heal requires a recovery-like process, one that can be hindered by being triggered by similar content — in this case, nudity or simulated sex.
Anti-porn sentiments have been around for hundreds of years. But what’s interesting about this specific subgenre of the movement is how it has uniquely adapted to this era of the internet, tapping into the popularity of “therapy speak” and pre-existing language around porn addiction to draw people in. People “do porn,” husbands suffer from “porn addiction,” and wives suffer from trauma responses. Jourdan has 80,000 followers on TikTok at her account @thatsnotlove, where she posts daily videos about recovering from betrayal trauma — each clip receiving dozens of comments from supportive women. (On Tiktok, these creators use the word “corn” and corn emojis to denote porn, as to not have their videos taken down. At the time of our interview the account was public, but has since been set to private.) Jourdan is not a therapist or a life coach, but people who connect with her story can even call her and talk about their own experiences, for $50 per one-hour call.
For Jourdan, the anti-porn messaging resonated with her because of the condition ascribed to wives who discover their husband’s porn habits: “betrayal trauma.” It’s best described as having trauma responses (stress, anxiety, emotional outbursts) from having your trust broken by someone you relied on or had power over you. The term was introduced by interpersonal theorist and licensed psychologist Jennifer Joy Freyd, but is usually referring to mistreatment from an authority figure or person of power, like sexual harassment in the workplace, or spousal rape. For the anti-porn movement, the use of the phrase betrayal trauma takes porn from a personal decision to one of active mistreatment. For Jourdan and other wives who believe their husbands have porn addictions, remembering the first day they found out, or seeing women objectified on screen, can “trigger” a strong emotional response.
“References to just-sex affairs, women’s bodies objectification, things like that, that would trigger a very strong emotional response in me, and then it would ruin my experience,” Jourdan says, describing how she had to stop watching her favorite show Six Feet Under. “When you’re betrayed in an intimate relationship, it’s such a deep and indescribable amount of pain. And you just unless you’ve gone through it, you just can’t really understand what it’s like. I wanted to fill in that gap and I wanted to be some sort of a voice for women, for awareness.”
But the biggest problem that the anti-porn movement is fighting is that sex addiction isn’t recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And there’s little widely accepted research to suggest watching porn affects your brain the same way addictive drugs do, sex therapist and psychologist Ian Kerner tells Rolling Stone. While Kerner doesn’t believe porn can produce a clinical addiction, he does think the societal stigma around porn can make it a scapegoat for both personal issues and problems in monogamous relationships.
“There isn’t any real data to show that a porn addiction is an addiction in the way of, say an addiction to cocaine or amphetamines,” Kener tells Rolling Stone. “So I think to call it addiction, is maybe using the wrong language, is alarmist, and really devalues people who are really struggling with substance addiction. That said, I’m not saying that somebody can’t have a problematic relationship with porn, or that it can’t be a problem in a relationship. But I think that this is less a case of labeling someone as having an addiction and more about having an honest conversation. Porn tends to present relational conflicts. So it requires relational conversations.”
However, the lack of backing from psychological experts hasn’t stopped wives from diagnosing their husbands with porn addictions. In fact, the use of the legitimate, if less well-known phenomenon of betrayal trauma recenters anti-porn content away from its murky scientific backing towards a much more tangible offering: people’s feelings. Messaging from anti-porn influencers like Jourdan also taps into a growing online sentiment that new generations are being exposed to graphic material far earlier than is healthy — which can appeal to younger members of Gen-Z who aren’t religious but agree that kids are overexposed to sex online. But most attractive of all, is that the anti-porn and betrayal trauma angle can appeal to people whose partner hasn’t actually cheated — but still feels hurt.
But while the anti-porn movement has branded itself about trust and safety, it’s not uncommon for religious or far-right-leaning organizations to conceal harmful legislative goals in modern and scientific language. The same legislation anti-porn influencers often support, like 18+ requirements and I.D verification for porn sites, have been derided by critics as having a potential silencing effect on all sexual content, including education and LGBTQ+ resources. Even new non-profits like Fight The New Drug, which raises funds to educate on the “harmful effects of porn and exploitation,” operates on the belief that porn, even user-generated content like on Only Fans, only leads to sexual violence, abuse, and exploitation. It’s also been heavily promoted by The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, an organization that used to be called “Morality in Media,” and has a history of supporting anti-LGBTQ legislation.
While Jourdan acknowledges that there are anti-porn organizations that do active harm against communities, she says her time in the anti-porn community has changed her beliefs on sex work to recenter around keeping women safe.
“Prior to diving into all of this this whole world. I was more on the side of prostitution should be legal,” Jourdan says. “Now, I think that normalizing the objectification and the dehumanization of women, as a tool that can be used by men for sexual gratification is and can only ever damage women as a whole. I think it’s inherently dangerous to convey a message to young boys and men and women and girls that I can pay for consent.”
And even though Jourdan recognizes that porn addiction is not officially recognized by the scientific community, she says she’s still committed to her content because of how support in groups can aid healing. For her, it’s about telling women they can take their power back. And sometimes that power looks like covering your eyes when Florence Pugh’s boobs are on the screen.
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