Around the age of 8 I found a playboy my father had. When my parents saw me with it they said I could look at the photos but wasn’t allowed the read the articles.
I answered 11 but I don’t really remember. I was hanging out with my friend, my sister, and my friend’s sister (who was friends with my sister). My sister retrieved one or two of my dad’s old Playboy magazines that she found in our garage. This was the very early 70s, and the magazines were probably late 60s. So there was T&A, but no twat shots.
Define pornography. In my household, nudie pics in general were forbidden, so that’s the worst I ever did. Plus, frankly, pictures of people having sex aren’t that great, and the Internet was too slow for video. And there was on way I was going to be able to buy any.
When I was sixteen, I discovered that my VCR apparently descrambled one of the cable channels, and wound up watching a rather sexual movie. But, still, no genitals. And, apparently, by most people’s standards, that means it’s not porn.
If you mean nudie pics, it was around 14, and I saw that movie at 16. If you include cartoons, it would have been around 11, when I found my uncle’s dirty cartoon magazine. And, no, I don’t mean anime. It was a bunch of dirty cartoons, kept with a book that his parents gave him about the birds and the bees. The stories were more raunchy than any of the illustrations, which looked like if today’s comic strip artists drew them.
It was never that appealing. It took getting broadband to start finding material that I’d actually use. And I still don’t get the appeal of watching other people’s genitals up close.
Found my dad’s stash of Playboys when I was 10, but I wouldn’t count that as pornography (though I did use them extensively as a young adolescent.)
Saw first porn probably at 12 or 13. First reaction: “Oh, so that’s what a woman’s parts look like!” (Playboy never used to show details, just pubic hair.)
Like others have said, “define porn”.
If it’s reference books like “The Joy of Sex”, then definitely under 10.
If it’s Harold Robbins novels like “The Lonely Lady”, then around 10-11.
If it’s pictures like Playboy or Penthouse… probably 12 before I got to spend any quality time with the magazine(s), though I’m positive I saw some when I was younger.
If it’s erotica, around 11-13 I discovered that Waldenbooks had a series of books by some writer named “Anonymous” who wrote such classics as “A Man With a Maid” and “The Romance of Lust”. Lots of new words in that one, like “quim” and “gamahuche.” Still not 100% clear on how to say that last…
For video… probably when I was 14-15. I had a TV in my room with a cable converter box that scrambled The Playboy Channel… but only as long as you kept the physical dial on the TV to channel “3”. If you moved it down to channel “2”, then for whatever reason, the scrambling stopped.
Porn! Streamed into my bedroom past my unsuspecting father!
I grew up in a sexually repressed, strict Mormon household where my RN mother would hide *nursing *magazines which she felt were inappropriate for unmarried minors. Of course, my father was molesting my sisters and my older brother was raping me and my younger brother, so you get the typical mess from that.
I was 11 or so and my old brother’s friend showed me a copy of Playboy. This would be in the early 70s. I was sure that I would be going to hell.
I didn’t stop being a practicing Mormon until my 20s, so it would be after that when I saw my first porn video. Oh, now I remember. I was working night security on campus and one of the other guys discovered that there was porn in the office of a professor of human sexuality. I was no longer a believing Mormon, but that reaction of sexual interest and guilt was still there.
I learned that I could gain access to the scrambled channels by playing with the horizontal sync. You would often lose color and the picture would be off center (because it’s now syncing to the color burst–I think) but it was porn!
Not sure how old, but certainly younger than 10. I was nosy, and my dad put 50% effort into hiding his porn. And he worked in a very stereotypical blue-collar environment - a delivery company warehouse. So when I’d go to work with him out of necessity, I’d often see porn here and there. I once ran into a centerfold from Cheri or something, stuck to the soda machine in the break area.
By the time I was 12 or 13, I had a nice stash of things I’d collected, including Victoria’s Secret Catalogs and stuff.
About 7. My cousins and I were looking at my uncle’s Playboys or whatever. (We mostly just giggled – oh my god, naked people!)
Oh, hell, I guess I misinterpreted the question when I answered over 16, since everyone’s talking about Playboy as pornography. Really, people?
Nudes in art history books as early as I can remember, probably. Boobs in National Geographic very early, too. (I brought my own crayon drawings of nude cave people to show the class in fourth grade.) Playboy before age 13. Hustler with girl/guy softcore photo sets and actual hardcore magazines before age 20. Hardcore movies in a theater at about 22. (I grew up before it was common to have VCRs). Renting hardcore video tapes by age 25.
We had a debate/poll about that once - ~2/3 voted for it being porn.
Myself I saw my first Playboy( also Penthouse and Hustler, in the age before they featured actual sex shoots ) around age 11, full on VHS porn around 15 or 16.
back in the early '80’s we got one of those HUGE satellite dishes. American triple Xtasy was completely unscrambled and available to the neighborhood boys and me 24/7. Kinda like the internet today…
If Page 3 is porn then I would have been less than ten.
I do remember “Tijuana Bibles” on the playground when I was in the 6th or 7th grade, but they were so poorly drawn that it didn’t appeal to my puriant nature at the time…or ever. Not that I don’t enjoy a tasteful naked lady picture…
The OP asked about pornography, not erotica, two different things. Playboy is hardly pornography, at least when I was reading it.
Reading comprehension error? The OP says to define porn by your own standards. And considering Playboy to be porn is well within the standards of a good portion of the population.
Especially when you’re a horny young lad.