Resolved: Children should be allowed to see anal sex, S&M, cum shots, etc. on the Web

Great Debates
1

OK, I’m being facetious as hell. But facetious with a point. (Did you expect any less from me? ;))

The vast majority of posters on this board are against any form of Internet censorship. Being against censorship sounds very fine and noble. Now let’s talk about what that has meant, and what that means now.

Let’s assume there’s a strip club in your town. (Unless you live in a really small town, there probably is one.) It doesn’t admit children under 18. There are probably laws requiring that. Nobody thinks of that as censorship.

At the convenience store, they won’t sell sexually-oriented magazines to kids under 18. I don’t see the libertarian citizens of the Net rising up against this abuse of free-speech rights, nor do I see the ACLU getting into a hissy fit over it.

(And, FWIW, nobody says, “it’s the parents’ responsibility to keep the kids from reading Hustler”. We’ve long assumed a societal responsibility to keep some things out of the hands of children. Have we been wrong?)

But take away the right of a 6-year-old to see a photo of a facial on the Web, and everybody gets up in arms. Why the different standards?

I’m no prude; I’ve seen plenty of dirty pictures on the Internet because I enjoy them. But one can see photos of almost anything on the Web without providing any verification of age: genital, oral, and anal sex (or any two, or even all three, with the same woman simultaneously); group sex; lesbian sex; gay male sex (I assume); bondage from tame to extreme; S&M; and the aforementioned cum shots - men ejaculating on women’s faces, breasts, hair, etc. (I assume And what little one can’t see photos of, one can certainly read erotic/pornographic stories about. At present, all this is freely available to children of any age.

So, fellow Dopers:
[list=1]
[li]What should kids be able to see on the Web, and what shouldn’t they, when they can elude parental supervision long enough to do so, or if the parents just don’t care?[/li][li]And if no line should be drawn, what makes the Internet a special case?[/li][li]Or do you think kids should have free access to strip joints and pornographic magazines, and XXX movie houses, if their parents aren’t there to prevent them?[/li][/list=1]

2

WHAT, NO LINKS?? Damn! And it is so hard to find porn on-line! :frowning:

Pretty soon a google search on child porn will pop up the first page of Great Debates :stuck_out_tongue:

3

should read

That’s what I get for not previewing. :wink:

4

Sorry, jmullaney, I think this board has a policy against links to pornographic sites. (Too bad, huh? :D)

5

Actually, being the insane guy that I am, I think 3.

Sex is awesome, I don’t think we should do much of anything to stop people from having it, talking about it, taking pictures of it, watching it, whatever. I mean, we all know poor eating habits guarantee poor health, but it ain’t illegal for kids to get fat, look at fat people, etc etc.

Now, that said, I suppose in the interests of self-policing I should make some clarifications. Anything which portrays an illegal activity should be subject to some set of restrictive laws in regards to age. That is, movies which deal with murder, pornos which depict infidelity (not just one-night stands which ain’t illegal ;)), and so on.

As well, I don’t think prepubescent teens should really get into watching pornos (though I sure loved sneaking peeks at playboy when I was in third grade!) but I don’t see a real point to outlawing it.

As some have seen in other threads, though, I also think post-pubescent and during-puberty kids should be allowed to partcipate in sexual acts of their choice, and I am not against incest either, so admittedly I think pretty liberally of the whole “sex” thing. Let’s hear the rest of ya’.

6

They will accept censorship on the straight dope, by moderators. Apparently for some people, there are acceptable limits to free speech in this forum, but anything is fair game for society in general.

7

What makes the internet a special case is that there’s no bouncer to say, “Hey, get outta here, kid!” and no store clerk to ask for ID. No one has thusfar proposed an effective mechanism (other than rigorous adult supervision of computer use) to keep kids out of inappropriate sites without restricting their access legitimate sites or restricting the rights of people to post what they want on their own websites. If you have any new suggestions, I’d be interested to hear them.

8

Whose kids? Yours, or mine?

Seriously, though, I think you’re misrepresenting the argument terribly, RT. Most people aren’t in favor of giving this material to children. What they are opposed to is keeping it away from children in a manner that also keeps it away from adults who want it.

If the government tells public libraries (for example) that they have to block this material, they’re going to have to block it for everyone, not just children. And most devices that block this material also block material that contains sexual but nonpornographic or nonerotic references. Some of that material might have legitimate research uses (which shouldn’t be the factor, anyway). Children can walk into a library and pick up something by Henry Miller or Anais Nin, or a copy of The Joy of Sex–do we remove those from the library, too?

In both of the cases you mention – strip clubs and skin mags – children can be excluded without excluding adults. How do you propose we do this on the 'Net? That’s the argument at hand.

aynrandlover:

Please tell me you don’t think infidelity is illegal.

9

Why are children allowed unrestricted access to the Web? However, I still do not uderstand why the idea of the .XXX domain has not gained more support.

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I seriously doubt it. I had to bring my mom to the library so I could check out The Exorcist when I was 12.

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I was wondering about the .xxx domain as well, Daniel.

From what I hear, it would require that the owners of porn sites go along with this plan - and register their porn site with a .xxx domain. I guess that would be tricky, since many of them have already paid for .com sites. (MAybe Network Solutions could transfer it over at no charge?) And, there are those people who have put sites up on domains that are not their own. (Some people sneak a porn site on geocities, or whatever.)

I think the .xxx thing is just an excellent idea, though. So much easier to filter it out. Maybe it still has a chance…

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goboy, that must have something to do with where you lived at the time. I never once had a problem checking anything out of my local library as a child, even though 90% of what I was checking out was from the “adult” (meaning, not juvenile) section.

As far as the OP, I’m torn. Part of me wants to agree with aynrandlover, since I think some of the problems we have with sexuality in this country stem from the lingering puritanism that insists that “sex is bad - save it for someone you love”*. However, I’m also sure that I’ve stumbled across things so extreme on the web that I felt the needed to wash my eyeballs afterward. No, I won’t post any links. :rolleyes:

Personally, I think this is one place that the parents do need to step in, and not expect the libraries and schools to do their policing for them.

And, Daniel, I think the reason the .xxx thing isn’t taking off is because the porn purveyors on the net don’t want to be limited to those addresses only. Why should they sell their established names (which are making them lots of money) which people stumble across all the time. Not to mention that they would be a lot easier for “Net Nanny” type software to catch if they all had the same final extension…

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**
Adultery is illegal in Michigan. It’s on the books, just never enforced.

But we won’t go there. :wink:

One common-sense thing I’ve heard proposed that I like: All pornographic sites’ web addresses should end with ‘.xxx’ instead of .com, .net, .org

Then make it an extra step to search for .xxx sites on search engines, so that they don’t come up on a search of the other categories.

This would help prevent kids from accidentally coming across pornography. As for ways to keep it from them when they’re seeking it out, that’s a sticky one (in more ways than one). :smiley:

pl - A common-sense line can be drawn at a certain point when it comes to libraries. I don’t think drooling guys with one hand in their pockets taking up the local library Internet stations looking at a spread shot of the south side of some Hustler reject’s diaphragm is necessarily a good thing.

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*disclaimer: I am not suggesting anyone on this thread holds these views. I don’t know any of you well enough to guess.

Yo’babe, interesting almost-simulpost.

15

accursed semi-simulpost on the .xxx thing.

16

I really don’t think I am, Phil. I’m waiting for the ACLU, PFAW, or any other civil-liberties organization that’s manned the barricades on this issue to say, “In principle, we’re in favor of laws that ban kids from accessing porn on the Web, as long as they don’t prevent adults from doing so. We just haven’t seen any practicable methods for restricting access to one age group but not the other.”

I think there are practicable methods for doing so, but I would like to keep that as a separate debate.

I’d like to keep this thread focused on where the line should be drawn, and how that relates to where we draw the line in related situations, not on what is possible. My feeling is that I’d first like to talk about the way things ought to be, then we can talk - in another thread - about how close we can get to that in the real world.

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of this stuff, I am who you want to control. RT.

.xxx is great as far as it goes, but you can’t force all objectionable sites to use it. You’d get some screaming and hollering from ME, that’s for sure. My site address is entrenched after nearly 4 years, and I ain’t givin’ it up without a really big fight, thank you.

Beyond that, I think that the reasons it is different have been given here…the most obvious one being the fact that there is no “bouncer”, per se. So the controls have to be on the parents. And I don’t understand why that is such a problem. If i was a parent, and I did not want my kid cruising the net without supervision, I’d make sure they were supervised: no internet connections when I’m not home, and you don’t get a computer in your bedroom. (Kids having computers in their bedrooms is a bad idea for a host of reasons.)

Most LITTLE kids have NO desire to look at porn or gore or any of that stuff, and they really are not very likely to stumble upon it. By the time a kid does have an interest in such things, well, you aren’t going to be able to stop them if they are are determined, and if they are determined, then they probably can handle it.

Stoid

PS: I’m really sick of people making SEX out to be some goddamn boogeyman when it comes to kids. It drives me nuts. If I had a kid, I would not be worried about them seeing sex, any kind of sex, I’d be worried about them seeing GORE and VIOLENCE… you know, pictures of people with their heads blown off? There’s LOTS of that around, and I can’t understand why everyone gets in a tizzy over kids seeing some girl get screwed in the ass, but they don’t even mention kids looking at pictures of Nicole and Ron, or aborted fetuses, or people cut in half, or airplane crash victims, and on and on. A woman’s face beaten to a pulp is no big deal, but cum all over it is cause for hysteria? WTF??

18

Wow, I had never heard of .xxx domain. Is there one already that has little support or is it just one of those ideas tossed around?
Yep yosemite, I agree that nothing will stop people from posting porn on any old web-page. As well, search engines are pretty much run by “spiders” so its hard to keep porn out of their engines without, like parental controls, excluding some legitimite informational sites.

Penis.com, for example (or maybe it is thepenis.com? anyway…) is pretty informational without being scholarly, has a pretty objective view, and addresses many issues most people wouldn’t touch. Like smegma. :smiley: And you can take that literally or figuratively, however it suits you. But I’m SURE this one would be blocked quicker than flies on shit by any spider-modifications or parental controls.

However, I wouldn’t find an objection to making a US Law which requires porn sites to have a .xxx name within, say, five years (to allow any current .com registrations to run out). But I see no way to enforce the posting of regular old porn on the regular domains.

But for those of us who sample porn regularly, .xxx domains would rule. You know what you’re going to get!!

Still, though, kids not seeing sex really bothers me. If I ever have a kid I want to be sure s/he learns from me and my (then hopefully)wife about sex. I wish my mom had said something sooner. Not that I ever had a hard time dealing with it when it came time for me to perform, but its tough to learn about sex strictly from magazines and pornos without any practical explanation.

am I even on topic anymore? Sheesh…
[sub]run[/sub]

19

I think that’s effectively what they do say, RT. If you read the [url=“http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/box.html#ExecutiveSum”]ACLU’s position on Internet blocking software[/url, you’ll see that their argument boils down to:

–The software cannot distinguish between protected and unprotected content;
–It often blocks content which is neither pornographic nor obscene; for example, the American Family Association;
–Government (i.e., school and library) censorship of the Internet is an unnecessarily burdensome method of accomplishing the goal at hand.

Actually, it looks as if they aren’t in favor of new laws at all–it’s already illegal for minors to buy or possess pornography; they’re in favor of he tools for filtering being wielded by the parents rather than the government.

Milo:

Well, sure, but how about if it’s a drooling guy with one hand in his pocket sitting at a table reading the Kama Sutra? Or a book on the history of adult films? (There were some pretty explicit ones in the film section of the Cleveland Public Library.) He’d likely be thrown out of the library either way, so what does it matter what the medium is?

20

Stoidela, while I agree with it, those are dangerous things to say. I can just hear it now… “fine, we’ll ban all porn AND all violence…are ya happy now?” :wink:

The only way to please everybody is to not please anybody…