# When did you run across your first pornography? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 18, 2008, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506 "2008-10-18T06:32:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Thing\_Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@Thing\_Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing_Fish)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/41 "2008-10-20T15:41:26Z")
When I was about 7, my family had a friend who had a lot of Playboys; I was only interested in the cartoons. About 11 or 12 all the guys became obsessed with hunting through recycling bins looking for porn, and amassed a large collection. Thank God we lived in an environmentally conscious area!! ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/42 "2008-10-20T15:45:30Z")
I saw my first Playboy-type magazine in 1966 when I was 4 years old. The first hardcore I remember seeing was around 1975 or 76; it was magazines belonging to a guy who was home on leave from the army. He brought them to hunting camp. When the adult men left to go out to a bar one evening, we youngsters pounced on the magazines. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/43 "2008-10-20T15:48:33Z")
Naked ladies, or generally unclothed ladies? My moms cosmo when I was 9. Proper porn, ah the internet. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/44 "2008-10-20T16:03:46Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Naked ladies, or generally unclothed ladies? My moms cosmo when I was 9. Proper porn, ah the internet. Oh, well if we’re talking generally unclothed, the underwear section of the Sears catalogue was an annual treat. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/45 "2008-10-20T16:56:53Z")
Another porn in the woods here. I must’ve been about 10 or 11. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/46 "2008-10-20T19:18:10Z")
Dad’s closet. Playboy, Penthouse, stuff like that. More in the attic. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/47 "2008-10-20T19:51:10Z")
With all of the time I spent in the woods as a kid, I feel like I should have found _something_ pornographic. I did find a lot of wood, though. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/48 "2008-10-21T04:12:24Z")
When I was about six or seven, back in the mid '80s. My cousins and I used to go through my Uncle Craig’s nudie Penthouses/Playboys, or whatever it was that he had. Mostly it was just to giggle at oh my god-NAKED PEOPLE!!! ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/49 "2008-10-21T04:15:34Z")
> [@Unsquare\_Dance](#): > > Actual pornography? The Internet, 1996. They’ve got porn on the Internet? ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/50 "2008-10-21T05:00:18Z")
> [@hotflungwok](#): > > and filled in and turfed over any holes they could find. Is that what the kids were calling it back then? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![E.Thorp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@E.Thorp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E.Thorp)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/51 "2008-10-21T05:18:04Z")
As far as I was concerned as a lad, nudity was porn, so I guess the first was a fragment of a magazine page (incl. boob!) found by someone on the grade-school playground when I was 8. Second was on my first trip to Germany at 12, where the _cover_ of Playboy featured boobs and every airport and train station boasted a “Dr. Müllers Sex Shop.” This was in 1980; haven’t seen them on more recent trips. At 13 in the back of the school bus I saw “Club” magazine for the first time and received quite the anatomy lesson (“there’s _hair_ there?”). Various Playboys and Penthouses thereafter, of course (thank you, Madonna), but first XXX porn? Not until 20, watching a video in the common room of a residence hall at a British university which shall remain nameless, while on study abroad. The residence hall had a semi-official “porn rep” who was responsible for the video rentals and to whom I remain grateful. ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/52 "2008-10-21T06:47:54Z")
I was a nosy kid. Found my dad’s hidden Playboy and Hustler stash when I was about nine, and just had to find out what was in the locked drawer in the video cabinet. (Did you know you can check out books on lock picking from the library?) Some vintage 60s stuff, 70s and 80s. One of my favorites was a Traci Lords tape. Yeah, probably one of the ones from when she was about fifteen or sixteen. Of course, I was only about eleven or twelve when I was watching them, so it’s okay 😉 To add to the porn found in the woods theme, I found an old Cheri under a park bench once, and on a trip to visit relatives in Canada some of my cousins and I found a bondage comic in the bushes next to a playground in the park. Lots of park whackin’ or at least viewing going on, it seems. ---
**Author:** ![Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hazle_Weatherfield)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/53 "2008-10-21T09:25:11Z")
Man, you guys are lucky! When I was four or five I found pix of my parents naked, committing various acts…I would give nearly anything to get those removed from my brain! ---
**Author:** ![jay-c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de053/32.png) [@jay-c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jay-c)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/54 "2008-10-21T15:42:01Z")
I found my father’s collection of _Penthouse_, _Hustler_ and _Cheri_ when I was 5. Probably one of the times when being a precocious kid who read at high-school level was not a good thing, as the letters to Penthouse gave a me a pretty skewed view of Vietnam War amputees. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Am\_The\_Lorax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19adc/32.png) [@I\_Am\_The\_Lorax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Am_The_Lorax)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/55 "2008-10-23T15:26:36Z")
I found my dad’s Hustlers when I was eight or so. I already knew about “the act”, so my mind wasn’t exactly blown, but I couldn’t figure out why he would want pictures of something so gross. [slight hijack] When my little sister was seven or eight, she asked me to explain how babies are made, because she didn’t believe what they were saying at school. I told her, dropped jaw and eyes as big as saucers follow, and she says “Mom did that twice!” [/slight hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Chef\_Troy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/85f322/32.png) [@Chef\_Troy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chef_Troy)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/56 "2008-10-23T15:59:13Z")
I started to write that my first one was an erotic paperback I found at around age ten in … yes, the woods… but then an earlier memory surfaced. I was visiting my grandparents. I was probably seven or eight. I used to like to play in my grandmother’s bedroom (my grandparents slept in separate bedrooms by then) because it was really huge and there was lots of space on the floor to roll matchbox cars, etc. around. I was in there, laying on the floor playing with the Lite-Brite (funny how details come back, isn’t it?), and I noticed a magazine under her dresser. I never would have seen it if I hadn’t been flopped flat on the floor. Even then, I loved to read anything and everything, so I pulled it out to have a look. It opened to a page with a closeup of a woman’s face; two guys were (to quote _Heathers_) having a swordfight in her mouth. I remember she looked scared. I got a weird creepy-tingly feeling all up my back and turned the page, to be rewarded with a medium shot of the same woman, kneeling, as the men collaborated on a pearl necklace (with a spirally “pendant,” no less). I flipped through it some more, _knowing_ on some level that this was not something I was supposed to see and not really liking it, but unable to stop myself. Then I heard someone coming up the stairs and hurriedly shoved it back under the dresser. I assume it was my grandfather’s, but what if it was my _grandmother’s_? :eek: I still remember the title of one of the articles in the magazine: **"Lesbians: are they really women?"** ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/57 "2008-10-23T16:02:40Z")
First porn? I can’t remember the exact incident, but it was one of the two: - A trip to Toronto with my parents when I was 12 – what would make it 1978 – when one of the cable channels in the hotel broadcast porn in the clear. - The occasional times when, on the local cable system, Showtime was accidentially broadcast unscrambled. Late at night, they’d air bad soft-core porn. FWIW, I actually did find a stash of porn magazines in the woods when I was 15 or 16. Not Playboy or Penthouse, but rather the cheesier porn-only mags one would only find at an adult bookstore. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506/58 "2008-10-23T18:10:44Z")
I’m told I was caught looking at a magazine my grandfather had left in the car when I was about four. By age nine, I’d found the rest of the stash and didn’t get caught anymore. I also found porn in the woods. It belonged to my brother and his friends, and my friends and I were raiding their clubhouse. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-run-across-your-first-pornography/468506.md?page=2)