# How much should we parents worry about our kids seeing internet porn? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 4, 2006, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374 "2006-06-04T13:27:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Digital\_Stimulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Digital\_Stimulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_Stimulus)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/61 "2006-06-09T12:46:21Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > So, should parents worry? **Hell, YES!** There’s genuine harm involved in many, if not most, cases. The general dismissal of the likelihood of this possibility in this thread strikes me as **entirely** unjustified. As I said above, I find this a difficult question to answer. But I also think you’re taking a rather extreme view. The question is about “seeing internet porn”. Not about children being _forced_ to see it. Not about viewing scat, snuff, or whatever images _exclusively_. Sure, that stuff is out there; but try answering the question from a more moderate stance: assume every child has open access to an older brother’s playboy / penthouse / hustler / etc. collection. Would you still proclaim “Hell, YES!”? Perhaps you would; that’s fine. My recollection of my own formative years leads me to say “no, it’s not really a worry”, assuming the parent(s) are actually parenting. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/62 "2006-06-09T15:38:01Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > Here are some of the actual damages that can be caused by porn: > – Habituation, leading to marked loss of desire or need for ever-more extreme images over time. > > – Distortion of reality. > > – Absurd expectations. > > – Distortion of schemas, which strongly influence perception, memory, and interpretation, which are particularly vulnerable in children and adolescents. > > – Perception of women as objects of sexual violence and the tendency to inculcate the belief that rape is a relatively minor, even excusable crime. > > – Perception of women (and perhaps men) as objects to be subjugated (other than by violence). > > – Cognitive dissonance > > – Desensitization > > – Conversion of beliefs based on false or misleading visual (or other) evidence, including such ideas as the belief that sexual extremes such as sadomasochism and bestiality are much more common than they really are and that all kids are routinely having sex and that unsafe sex is “safe enough” (witness, for example, the _extreme_ promotion and availability of “bareback” porn). Discarding, for a moment, the fact that many of your assertions are not backed up by solid evidence, I could make many of the same accusations about movies or TV programming in general. “Distortion of reality…Absurd expectations…Distortion of schemas…etc.” pretty much defines movies/TV as we know them, yet only the most extreme radicals want to prohibit exposure to it. Desensitization? What do you think repeated exposure to violence (cartoon and Ahnold) does to tolerance of extreme violence, if anything? And a similar case might be made for most _books,_ especially romance novels and most fiction. _DaVinci Code,_ anyone? Is “distortion of reality” a good reason to keep them away from kids? What do you think Dr. Seuss books about wisecracking, weirdo mythical characters do to a child’s perception of “reality”? ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2006, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/63 "2006-06-12T06:28:39Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > **ambushed** , your point about the fairly well documented effects of repeated exposure to violence is well made… Sexual explicitness, in all forms, we have more of a problem with, despite the relative lack of direct evidence. Yes, but you may have lost the point I was trying to make, which is multi-fold: (1) that images can effect us negatively; (2) that images can indeed damage us in ways we do not recognize, whether our parents did/do or not; and (3) we have **no other choice** but to rely on the scientific data from either children viewing violent imagery or young adults viewing hard-core porn (which is where I got those points of damage I raised in my earlier post) to guide us in deciding these issues since there simply is no directly on-point research. And that given these facts, **we have no other rational decision than to predict and assume that hard-core porn – even more or less conventional hard-core porn – is damaging to children and adolescents.** > [@DSeid](#): > > And while I am sure that **Alex** can defend himself, it does seem to me that you misunderstand his POV. With respect, I don’t think I did. How can anyone have misunderstood his repeated harping on “cultural relativism” to allegedly normalize extreme imagery? That “cultural relativism” can make pornographic images of intercourse with live human organs or the dead blasé or normal? **Alex\_Dubinsky** ’s (and **Lissa’s** , to a lesser extent) claims fly in the face of modern knowledge about the extremely narrow limits of human nature. > [@DSeid](#): > > He acknowledges the possiblity of harm of some porn from the position that an individual must exist within a particular society. I certainly didn’t see any such acknowledgement in his reply to my response to **Argent Towers** extreme and extremely ridiculous post (I mean, speaking of Towers, turning to R. Crumb as an authority in philosophy, psychology, and ethics? WTF?) > [@DSeid](#): > > Even with an extreme moral relativist position, the values that are useful to have, that are “right” (in that intentional small “r” sense) are those of the society that one exists in. If goat anus licking is abnormal in a society then one had better learn that, if kissing your wife’s cheek in public is forbidden in a particular society and that is the one you must exist in, then you had better learn that. Therefore it does not _practically_ matter if those behaviors are “Right” in any absolute sense or not. You are harmed in function by learning values discordant to the world in which you live. It is an open question if exposure to porn is sufficient to do that however in the context of recieving adequate primary socialization by family and immediate society. And if **Alex\_Dubinsky** had said _that_, I would not have disagreed with him so profoundly! Or perhaps at all! But the fact is that human nature is far too narrow and concordant for such extreme cultural relativism. The mind doesn’t work that way, which is my point in that regard. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2006, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/64 "2006-06-12T06:48:47Z")
> [@Digital Stimulus](#): > > As I said above, I find this a difficult question to answer. But I also think you’re taking a rather extreme view. The question is about “seeing internet porn”. I’m afraid you are mistaken. This thread is about “how much should parents worry about our kids seeing internet porn.” And since once the door is open they can see _ **anything** _, we must consider that as part of the context of the question, surely. > [@Digital Stimulus](#): > > Not about children being _forced_ to see it. Not about viewing scat, snuff, or whatever images _exclusively_. In that comment, you are apparently replying to a deliberately exaggerated, sarcastic reply I wrote to **Argent Towers** , not to my actual position as given in [Post 58](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7471715&postcount=58). Please read that and ask again if you have more questions or problems with what I wrote. > [@Digital Stimulus](#): > > Sure, that stuff is out there; but try answering the question from a more moderate stance: assume every child has open access to an older brother’s playboy / penthouse / hustler / etc. collection. Would you still proclaim “Hell, YES!”? First, you are changing the question to fit your preferred answer. But I’ll let that pass for just a moment… I would have no problems with even a child (let alone an adolescent) “seeing” the images in a Playboy or even a Penthouse from the sixties or seventies. Nudity, even nudity in suggestive poses, is in no way a problem for me. Hustler was always out, primarily because I can’t help thinking that all those hideously lit, “slashed open” beaver shots made a lot of potentially straight boys into homosexuals 😃 It certainly had an influence on me! I can’t think of an uglier, more hellaciously disgusting thing in the entire universe than a picture of an open pussy. Autopsy photos are tremendously more soothing and attractive! But we return again to the **fact** that anything and everything goes on the Internet. If you open the door just a crack, it’s opened wide (as wide as those beaver shots in Hustler!) And allowing that is simply something that no responsible parent can allow. Hell, I’m a middle-aged man and I sometimes wish my parents would put a filter on my browser! :eek: Don’t you? ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2006, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/65 "2006-06-12T07:03:05Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Discarding, for a moment, the fact that many of your assertions are not backed up by solid evidence, I could make many of the same accusations about movies or TV programming in general. You _could_, but you would be quite mistaken to do so. You do not see those elements on my list from general TV and movies. You see them, especially together, only from porn and primarily from porn to young people (these results were seen in direct experiments with hard-core porn viewing by college-age students; they certainly cannot be better with Internet-age child and adolescent viewers). > [@Musicat](#): > > “Distortion of reality…Absurd expectations…Distortion of schemas…etc.” pretty much defines movies/TV as we know them… No, they don’t. Perhaps you don’t fully understand what the terms mean. Furthermore, these results are _on top_ of what kids already experience, and if it can be damaging to college-age adults, it can be damaging to children and adolescents. > [@Musicat](#): > > Desensitization? What do you think repeated exposure to violence (cartoon and Ahnold) does to tolerance of extreme violence, if anything? Just what I said it can in post 58, to which you are replying. It can be quite devastating, again, just as I already said. > [@Musicat](#): > > And a similar case might be made for most _books,_ especially romance novels and most fiction. _DaVinci Code,_ anyone? Is “distortion of reality” a good reason to keep them away from kids? What do you think Dr. Seuss books about wisecracking, weirdo mythical characters do to a child’s perception of “reality”? I see you mean to be ridiculous by pulling out one element from an entire set and focusing on it as if it’s the only thing I wrote. That’s your prerogative, of course, but do you think you’re bringing anything valuable into the debate? ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2006, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/66 "2006-06-12T07:07:02Z")
**ambushed** , real life is a naughty thing. Sooner or later we all find this out. I found it out at a very young age. As soon as I was old enough to understand the world around me, I read and looked at everything I could find, from R. Crumb comics to books about the Holocaust to anatomical dissection photographs. I saw this shit as early as five years old. When I was eight, I read a book belonging to my father (a political science professor) called “The Politics of Cruelty,” which was about government-scantioned rape, murder and torture. Did it scare me? Yeah. But I got a healthy respect for the fragility of human life from it. I never, NEVER, went through the teenage “I am invincible” 90-mile-an-hour-joyride bullshit. I also saw a great deal of graphic sex as a child. Growing up, my mother was a freelance writer who wrote for women’s magazines, and therefore had a great deal of sexual literature. She had so many books about sex, and I read so many of them, that I was bored during my elementary school sex ed class instead of secretly excited like all the other kiddies. These books about sex ranged from scholarly and technical discussions of arousal and orgasm to what amounts to masturbation manuals and pornographic material. And I read it all. And I’m not a sexual pervert. I’m thankful that I wasn’t shielded as a child. Oh, and about R. Crumb - go read his entire body of work, plus the writings of his brothers Charles and Maxon, and actually read it, as I have, don’t just look at the pictures, and then tell me there’s not real philosophy and intelligence there. Sorry if he grosses you out, but the man is a genius. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2006, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/67 "2006-06-12T09:24:25Z")
First let me say that I appreciate your more reflective tone in this post. It is noted and appreciated. > [@Argent Towers](#): > > **ambushed** , real life is a naughty thing. Sooner or later we all find this out. I found it out at a very young age. I’m genuinely _extremely_ sad for you. The adult world impinges far too early as it is to force it into children’s mouths even earlier. Sex with my peers when I was a child wouldn’t have bothered me (but they were very different times, particularly health-wise). However, if I had been exposed to hard-core porn at that age it would have doomed me utterly. **It would have _destroyed_ the fun and simple naughtiness of it all!** To have the extreme ugliness of the world thrust upon a child (and I don’t mean literally _forced_, I mean having access to it, since that is enough) is perhaps the saddest, most poignantly unsettling thing I can think of. That kind of “education” can wait. > [@Argent Towers](#): > > As soon as I was old enough to understand the world around me, I read and looked at everything I could find, from R. Crumb comics to books about the Holocaust to anatomical dissection photographs. I saw this shit as early as five years old. Fortunately for your psyche, your comments make it clear it affected you badly, else why call it “shit”? I, myself, would have abandoned parents like that as soon as I was psychologically and financially able! And sued them for good measure if I could have. > [@Argent Towers](#): > > I also saw a great deal of graphic sex as a child. Growing up, my mother was a freelance writer who wrote for women’s magazines, and therefore had a great deal of sexual literature. She had so many books about sex, and I read so many of them, that I was bored during my elementary school sex ed class instead of secretly excited like all the other kiddies. Again, I’m afraid that my genuine emotional reaction is pity. I don’t by any means want to insult, but that’s my honest reaction. What’s wrong with titillation and naughtiness, especially when you’re an adolescent? It strikes me as extremely healthy! Why kill it so early? Why stamp out such wonders prematurely? **Don’t we get jaded early _enough_ as we age?** > [@Argent Towers](#): > > I’m thankful that I wasn’t shielded as a child. Then we’re back to my initial, sarcastic reply to your earlier post. If you’re glad you weren’t shielded, how much more depraved and ugly would’ve been just fine to expose you to? Baby-fucking? Sexual evisceration? What?? And once you open the door to the Internet, how do you allow some porn but not the worst porn imaginable? > [@Argent Towers](#): > > Oh, and about R. Crumb - go read his entire body of work, plus the writings of his brothers Charles and Maxon, and actually read it, as I have, don’t just look at the pictures, and then tell me there’s not real philosophy and intelligence there. Sorry if he grosses you out, but the man is a genius. R. Crumb is an extremely fucked-up man who led an extremely fucked-up life who happened to have produced some interesting and somewhat worthwhile – but decidedly _extremely_ low-rent – art. I could say the exact same thing about William S. Burroughs and Charles Bukowski (which I’ve also read), but philosophers? Intelligence? _Genius?_ No fucking way. Compare them to, say, Nietzsche or even Douglas Adams, _then_ we’ll talk! ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2006, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/68 "2006-06-12T12:19:35Z")
> [@Alex\_Dubinsky](#): > > …I argue that we still have a lot of flexibility, and that the environment may override our natural attitudes toward most things. In particular, it will override our attitudes regarding things against which we react with shock and disgust, and which we accept as normal. I think most psychologists would agree. I’m a psychologist, and I gotta agree with the way **Alex\_Dubinsky** formulates here. Let me give an example outside the realm of sex. Although most kids like the taste of meat, many kids are deeply shocked when they first realize some doe-eyed little calf has got to be killed for their hamburger. That shock is the kids natural attitude, right? Yet most parents will override this attitude. Because they want the kid to eat healthy, or because they don’t want to cook double meals for years, or because they don’t want to be outmoralled by the kid… ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2006, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/69 "2006-06-12T12:37:30Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > R. Crumb is an extremely fucked-up man who led an extremely fucked-up life who happened to have produced some interesting and somewhat worthwhile – but decidedly _extremely_ low-rent – art. I could say the exact same thing about William S. Burroughs and Charles Bukowski (which I’ve also read), but philosophers? Intelligence? _Genius?_ No fucking way. Compare them to, say, Nietzsche or even Douglas Adams, _then_ we’ll talk! **ambushed** , you picked the wrong example. Nietsche never married, although he wanted to; he was severely ill most of his life; and his philosophy paved the way for Hitlers Untermensch -theories. Crumb, on the other hand, was married with a family, and had some great success in his lifetime, and his biggest fans weren’t among the depraved and lowbrow, but with folks who see the irony in his work. I thought Crumb was depraved too, but that was when I was 18 and at the height of my fierce and unfounded feminism phase. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2006, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/70 "2006-06-12T19:31:38Z")
Whatever, **ambushed,** I’m who I am and I am fine (colloquial use of the word “shit” does not prove something wrong with my “psyche”) and you’re just going to have to accept that it’s possible for someone to turn out okay after all this. ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_Stimulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Digital\_Stimulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_Stimulus)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/71 "2006-06-13T01:06:46Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > I’m afraid you are mistaken. This thread is about “how much should parents worry about our kids seeing internet porn.” And since once the door is open they can see _ **anything** _, we must consider that as part of the context of the question, surely. And I recognize that context, which is why I acknowledge that it’s a difficult question. Surely you’ll concede that the extreme is, by definition, not the norm. Hence, my comment about kids being “forced” to see it. To which you replied: > [@](#): > > In that comment, you are apparently replying to a deliberately exaggerated, sarcastic reply I wrote to **Argent Towers** , not to my actual position as given in [Post 58](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7471715&postcount=58). Please read that and ask again if you have more questions or problems with what I wrote. In that post, you make the jump from pointing out the error of assuming porn categorically “cannot” cause harm; you point out that it “can”. As in, “it’s possible”. You then jump from “it’s possible” to “There’s genuine harm involved in many, if not most, cases.” That’s where I call bullshit. And exactly why I said to try adopting a more moderate stance. To which you replied: > [@](#): > > First, you are changing the question to fit your preferred answer. But I’ll let that pass for just a moment… > > I would have no problems with even a child (let alone an adolescent) “seeing” the images in a Playboy or even a Penthouse from the sixties or seventies. Nudity, even nudity in suggestive poses, is in no way a problem for me. Hustler was always out, primarily because I can’t help thinking that all those hideously lit, “slashed open” beaver shots made a lot of potentially straight boys into homosexuals 😃 It certainly had an influence on me! I can’t think of an uglier, more hellaciously disgusting thing in the entire universe than a picture of an open pussy. Autopsy photos are tremendously more soothing and attractive! > > But we return again to the **fact** that anything and everything goes on the Internet. If you open the door just a crack, it’s opened wide (as wide as those beaver shots in Hustler!) And allowing that is simply something that no responsible parent can allow. Hell, I’m a middle-aged man and I sometimes wish my parents would put a filter on my browser! :eek: Don’t you? First, I did no such thing as to change the question; rather, I expressed my point quite well, thank you. And your last paragraph illustrates that point; you refuse to recognize the vast difference between the possibility that a kid may view some extreme images and that they’ll go batshit insane and become a drooling, uncontrollable, psychopath. Beyond this one brief comment, I’ll not even mention your deeply troubling opinion of the female body. Autopsy photos, indeed. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/72 "2006-06-13T03:43:53Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > And if **Alex\_Dubinsky** had said _that_, I would not have disagreed with him so profoundly! Or perhaps at all! But the fact is that human nature is far too narrow and concordant for such extreme cultural relativism. The mind doesn’t work that way, which is my point in that regard. I suggest that you read the posts made before you joined the debate, in particular post #40, in which **Alex** _defends_ the need for cultural standards. Certainly I agree with you that there are limits to how far culture can push human predispositions and how far culture itself would go, given that it is made of humans with predispositions. But that is another thread: [Nature vs. Nurture.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=374556) ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/73 "2006-06-13T04:31:16Z")
> [@Maastricht](#): > > **ambushed** , you picked the wrong example. If yuo say so; I certainly don’t agree. Note that I was giving an example of _genius_, and no one who has read Nietzsche or modern philosophy could possibly deny he was a genius of the first water. In my view, he is unequalled since the days of the ancient Greeks. > [@Maastricht](#): > > Nietsche never married, although he wanted to… Huh? So what??? What the hell does _that_ have to do with anything? Are you telling us that the tiny little insect R. Crumb is greater than Nietzsche because Crumb got married??? > [@Maastricht](#): > > … he was severely ill most of his life… And that’s one of the things that helped to make him so great; his ability to overcome that. It taught him many things and he, in turn, taught them to us, his readers. > [@Maastricht](#): > > … and his philosophy paved the way for Hitlers Untermensch-theories. **THE HELL YOU SAY!!** What vicious and ugly slander you’re repeating! Nietzsche _ **hated** _ Germany (he wanted to be known as a Pole), he _ **hated** _ nationalism, he _ **hated** _ anti-Semitism, he would have burned Hitler’s world to the ground if his mind had survived long enough! It was his evil, poisonous sister who contemptibly re-wrote and re-cast Nietzsche’s great and noble ideas and words into grist for Hitler’s mill! To paraphrase, if Nietzsche had lived into those days, he would have never stopped puking. It’s clear that you’ve either never actually read Nietzsche and/or are going on the ugly smears about him dispensed by the ignorant and those who do not know how to read him. His was perhaps the greatest mind in modern history. Alas, he knew he _would_ be misunderstood; in fact, he did not _want_ to be too readily understood, especially by baboons like his sister and Adolf Hitler. > [@Maastricht](#): > > Crumb, on the other hand, was married with a family bfd > [@Maastricht](#): > > … and had some great success in his lifetime… bfd > [@Maastricht](#): > > …and his biggest fans weren’t among the depraved and lowbrow, but with folks who see the irony in his work. I thought Crumb was depraved too, but that was when I was 18 and at the height of my fierce and unfounded feminism phase. I never said Crumb was depraved, I said he was a tiny, tiny, low-rent figure who made some minimally interesting art. And he’s no Nietzsche. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/74 "2006-06-13T04:45:26Z")
> [@Maastricht](#): > > I’m a psychologist, and I gotta agree with the way **Alex\_Dubinsky** formulates here. IANAP, but his description just doesn’t mesh at all with what I know about evolutionary psychology. Nothing in human nature is _ever_ over-ridden, as Alex claims. We simply dress universal human nature in different clothing. Culture is but a thin gloss civilizations apply on top of human nature; the underlying nature always comes through. Take, for example, marriage. Culture applies the gloss of all the various different types of ceremonies, but it is **human nature** to marry or formalize pair-bonds in the first place. And porn directly affects human nature, not just the cultural gloss! The list of damages from porn I listed earlier represents the damaging effects of porn on _ **nervous systems** _, not the mere products of culture! No, Mr. Dubinsky is mistaken on every possible ground in his discussion of porn. > [@Maastricht](#): > > Let me give an example outside the realm of sex. > > Although most kids like the taste of meat, many kids are deeply shocked when they first realize some doe-eyed little calf has got to be killed for their hamburger. That shock is the kids natural attitude, right? Yet most parents will override this attitude. Because they want the kid to eat healthy, or because they don’t want to cook double meals for years, or because they don’t want to be outmoralled by the kid… My parents had nothing whatsoever to do with any of that. Why do you think they do in the majority of cases? It seems to me that kids are so incredibly far removed from seeing cattle butchered that there’s absolutely no real, emotional connection between those events and what they’re eating. It’s far, far too abstract and distant. So I’m afraid your point just doesn’t seem to apply. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/75 "2006-06-13T04:58:31Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > I never said Crumb was depraved, I said he was a tiny, tiny, low-rent figure who made some minimally interesting art. Crumb is as much a writer as an artist. He is a philosopher and a social critic who captures the gritty soul of America. Your dismissal of him reveals only your lack of understanding of his work. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/76 "2006-06-13T07:29:02Z")
**Digital Stimulus** , you’ve made so many, **many** errors in comprehension of my words that I’ve concluded it’s pointless trying to correct them all. But why not try to address at least a few of them? I don’t mind typing, which is all it will be I expect because you don’t seem to be interested in an honest debate. > [@Digital Stimulus](#): > > And I recognize that context, which is why I acknowledge that it’s a difficult question. Surely you’ll concede that the extreme is, by definition, not the norm. On the Internet, there is no such thing as the “norm” except, perhaps, to say it’s nothing at all like your _ludicrous_ example of Playboy etc. as a model for Internet porn. I’ve seldom seen _anything_ so mild on the net! So the presumed data set you’re working from simply does not reflect reality in the slightest. You’re just making shit up to suit your own, fundamentally off-base arguments. You’re just whistling past the graveyard. > [@Digital Stimulus](#): > > Hence, my comment about kids being “forced” to see it. Yes, and don’t you wish you never made it? Aren’t you embarrassed by it? Didn’t you see where I explicitly repudiated that as deliberately exaggerated sarcasm? > [@Digital Stimulus](#): > > In that post, you make the jump from pointing out the error of assuming porn categorically “cannot” cause harm; you point out that it “can”. As in, “it’s possible”. You then jump from “it’s possible” to “There’s genuine harm involved in many, if not most, cases.” That’s where I call bullshit. Perhaps you’re not as familiar with writing as you could be. The phrases meaning the inverse of cannot, equals “can”. “Can” equals “it’s possible”. “it’s possible” is the inverse of “it’s impossible”. Repeating the same words over and over again is boring to the reader. Repeating the same words over and over again is boring to the reader. Repeating the same words over and over again is boring to the reader. There is no shift in the logic as you falsely imply. That’s what _I_ call bullshit. As for stating the scientific fact that exposure to hard-core porn **does** cause harm, that’s a scientific fact and it’s a fact brought out later in the post and expanded in subsequent posts. You have no basis for your silly complaint. > [@Digital Stimulus](#): > > And exactly why I said to try adopting a more moderate stance. My stance _is_ moderate, far more so than _yours_. Your position is extreme, as well as extremely naive, unrealistic, and under-informed. > [@Digital Stimulus](#): > > First, I did no such thing as to change the question; rather, I expressed my point quite well, thank you. I call bullshit again! You most emphatically _did_ change the question, sir, and to deny it is to deny reality. The question is whether or not parents should be worried about kids being exposed to Internet porn, whereas _you_ asked if _I_ (not parents of a child or adolescent) Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler were ok. That, sir, is an **ENTIRELY DIFFERENT FUCKING QUESTION!** Out of courtesy, I answered it anyway, and you attacked me for it. You expressed your “point” (as silly as it was) quite poorly, thank you. > [@Digital Stimulus](#): > > And your last paragraph illustrates that point; you refuse to recognize the vast difference between the possibility that a kid may view some extreme images and that they’ll go batshit insane and become a drooling, uncontrollable, psychopath. _That_, sir, is fucking batshit insane and strikes me as something I would expect from a drooling, uncontrollable, psychopath. What I wrote was: > [@ambushed](#): > > But we return again to the **fact** that anything and everything goes on the Internet. If you open the door just a crack, it’s opened wide (as wide as those beaver shots in Hustler!) And allowing that is simply something that no responsible parent can allow. Hell, I’m a middle-aged man and I sometimes wish my parents would put a filter on my browser! :eek: Don’t you? Why does that somewhat ironic-leaning paragraph merit such strutting, prancing, drama-queen huffing and puffing from you? Get a hold of yourself already! > [@Digital Stimulus](#): > > Beyond this one brief comment, I’ll not even mention your deeply troubling opinion of the female body. Autopsy photos, indeed. More drama-queen bullshit from you. How pathetic. I made it clear that I have no problem with nudity and Playboy/Penthouse, but when I remark (with a goddamn _smiley_ in the same paragraph for Bob’s sake!) that the hideous, garish lighting of forced-open pussy shots in Hustler are nauseating, all of a sudden I have a “deeply troubling opinion of the female body”! As if your slavering over them shows how deeply you respect women and the female body!! Jesus! :smack: ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/77 "2006-06-13T07:35:37Z")
> [@Argent Towers](#): > > Crumb is as much a writer as an artist. He is a philosopher and a social critic who captures the gritty soul of America. Your dismissal of him reveals only your lack of understanding of his work. Your definitions of the words “philosopher”, “social critic”, and “capture” need a lot of brushing up, I’m afraid. They do not mean what you seem to think they mean. I did read some of his work, and I regret (but not too deeply) the time I wasted on him. I’m sorry I don’t agree with your opinion of him, but that’s hardly _my_ fault. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/78 "2006-06-13T07:39:03Z")
> [@Argent Towers](#): > > Whatever, **ambushed,** I’m who I am and I am fine (colloquial use of the word “shit” does not prove something wrong with my “psyche”) You misunderstood me completely. Whoosh. May I suggest you re-read my posts? What I _actually_ said was that your use of the word “shit” in that context actually helps demonstrate that you _are_ healthy! ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/79 "2006-06-13T08:35:21Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > Your definitions of the words “philosopher”, “social critic”, and “capture” need a lot of brushing up, I’m afraid. They do not mean what you seem to think they mean. Then what the hell do you think they mean? Have you read Crumb’s _America?_ Have you read his writings on the human attraction to power, his insightful analysis of the 60s hippie culture and its shortcomings, his astute commentary on the pitfalls of fame and the dangers of egotism? You clearly don’t know anything about Robert Crumb or his body of work. If you “wasted your time” on him, then that’s your fault, not his. ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_Stimulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Digital\_Stimulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_Stimulus)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/80 "2006-06-13T12:09:15Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > **Digital Stimulus** , you’ve made so many, **many** errors in comprehension of my words that I’ve concluded it’s pointless trying to correct them all. Perhaps. I’m willing to concede that; a message board isn’t the best vehicle for sarcasm / absurdity / etc. > [@](#): > > I don’t mind typing, which is all it will be I expect because you don’t seem to be interested in an honest debate. Whoops. Looks like I might’ve hit a nerve. Ruh-roh, Raggy. Let’s see how this goes; I’m not hopeful it’ll go well… > [@](#): > > On the Internet, there is no such thing as the “norm” except, perhaps, to say it’s nothing at all like your _ludicrous_ example of Playboy etc. as a model for Internet porn. Well, of course I was referring to the “norm” as a social construct. But nevertheless, of course there is a “norm” concerning porn on the internet. I’d suggest picking some random sample of what’s available, classifying it according to broad criteria (e.g., hetero, gay, S&M, etc.), and then saying the category with the largest percentage is the “norm”. And you’ll notice that I said “playboy, penthouse, hustler, etc.”; they go from the most mild to more pornographic. The “etc.” was meant to indicate that there’s a scale (of sorts). If you’d like to criticize the inclusion of playboy, OK. Some people would call it pornography and I was trying to be inclusive. > [@](#): > > I’ve seldom seen _anything_ so mild on the net! So the presumed data set you’re working from simply does not reflect reality in the slightest. You’re just making shit up to suit your own, fundamentally off-base arguments. You’re just whistling past the graveyard. I can’t comment on your porn-surfing habits. For all I know, you only look at images of men shitting on other men. > [@](#): > > Yes, and don’t you wish you never made it? Aren’t you embarrassed by it? Didn’t you see where I explicitly repudiated that as deliberately exaggerated sarcasm? Embarrassed? Why? Even if your post was exaggerated sarcasm, I’m still making a point. Which is that the availability of porn doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily be viewed. For instance, as a teen, I’d have had no desire to view extreme forms of porn. It doesn’t matter if it’s out there, nor how much of it is out there, I’d not have pursued it. > [@](#): > > Perhaps you’re not as familiar with writing as you could be. The phrases meaning the inverse of cannot, equals “can”. “Can” equals “it’s possible”. “it’s possible” is the inverse of “it’s impossible”. Repeating the same words over and over again is boring to the reader. Repeating the same words over and over again is boring to the reader. Repeating the same words over and over again is boring to the reader. There is no shift in the logic as you falsely imply. That’s what _I_ call bullshit. As for stating the scientific fact that exposure to hard-core porn **does** cause harm, that’s a scientific fact and it’s a fact brought out later in the post and expanded in subsequent posts. You have no basis for your silly complaint. Perhaps you should look into an elementary logic course. Particularly the notion of universals, possibility, necessity, and quantification. > [@](#): > > My stance _is_ moderate, far more so than _yours_. Your position is extreme, as well as extremely naive, unrealistic, and under-informed. Hmm. I’m not even sure what you think my stance is. > [@](#): > > I call bullshit again! You most emphatically _did_ change the question, sir, and to deny it is to deny reality. The question is whether or not parents should be worried about kids being exposed to Internet porn, whereas _you_ asked if _I_ (not parents of a child or adolescent) Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler were ok. That, sir, is an **ENTIRELY DIFFERENT FUCKING QUESTION!** Out of courtesy, I answered it anyway, and you attacked me for it. You expressed your “point” (as silly as it was) quite poorly, thank you. Hoo, boy. The unravelling is getting worse. That’s what you consider “attacking you”? I didn’t realize you were quite so tightly wrapped. As an aside, for someone who complains about my perceived repetition of words, you sure seem to regurgitate a broad swath of mine. > [@](#): > > _That_, sir, is fucking batshit insane and strikes me as something I would expect from a drooling, uncontrollable, psychopath. What I wrote was: Why does that somewhat ironic-leaning paragraph merit such strutting, prancing, drama-queen huffing and puffing from you? Get a hold of yourself already! Yow. And on that note, I think I’m just about done. > [@](#): > > More drama-queen bullshit from you. How pathetic. I made it clear that I have no problem with nudity and Playboy/Penthouse, but when I remark (with a goddamn _smiley_ in the same paragraph for Bob’s sake!) that the hideous, garish lighting of forced-open pussy shots in Hustler are nauseating, all of a sudden I have a “deeply troubling opinion of the female body”! As if your slavering over them shows how deeply you respect women and the female body!! Jesus! :smack: It seems to me that a smiley doesn’t excuse making the comparison between images of female genitalia and autopsy photos. The idea never would’ve occurred to me; I can’t conceive of the mindset necessary to find an image of a pussy nauseating, under any lighting conditions. I mean, holy crap–you said, “I can’t think of an uglier, more hellaciously disgusting thing in the entire universe than a picture of an open pussy.” That implies something about your view of women. And it’s not good. 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