There was an article where a very young Japanese boy (I’ll say 6) who watched pornography regularly with his uncle/guardian turned into a rather mischievous pervert, regularly peeping at a female relative of his in the shower, and fondling his mother while she slept. I’m too lazy to dig for it but if someone knows what I’m referring to, good on you and good luck finding it.
I have no problem with teenagers viewing porn (it’s not a big deal) but I believe it would only confuse and possibly damage prepubescent children. On that note, I would say that is probably why it’s taboo for young teenagers. Parents or other authority figures probably find there is no set age when a child starts being an adolescent, so it remains taboo until they reach an adult age.
Sorry, I must admit I was thinking more allong the lines of the PORN in R rated films, than in anything you might take home in a brown paper bag
I still havn’t heard any evidence that graphic acts of simulated sexual intercorse are of harm to a post pubescent child.
And I see you weren’t meaning that the sex in films was real (because of the nudity) Owlofcreamcheese so don’t please feel upset about my calling strawman (I wanted to allude to the “Wicker Man” film, which had quite a lot of sex but little violence, and which I saw in my tender early teens).
Porn can be “addictive” – not cocaine addictive, but videogame addictive or weed addictive (ie you can stop if you really want to, but you don’t stop because it’s fun) – and maybe some people think teenagers aren’t able to handle that.
Of course, the reality is that the teenage years are the best time for people to learn those kind of life skills, and you only learn them from experience, so I personally think that the age should be lowered. Regardless, most teenage boys learn those skills whether the government wants them to or not, so it’s probably a moot point.
One non-morality aspect would be that allowing kids to view porn prior to (age limit here) interferes with the right of the parent to educate their kids about sex and morality as they see fit. Think about it – Mom is trying to teach Susie that women don’t like or want sex of any kind unless certain documents get signed and it isn’t very much fun anyway, and Dad is trying to teach Junior that four inches is a very large dick – then the kids get ahold of a copy of the DVD “Wild Women of Giant Black Cock Island” and … cat’s outta the bag, people.
I don’t have a factual answer, but since I see many replies without many facts, I’ll chime in. These are my own personal reasons for not “allowing” my own personal children to watch porn.
I didn’t want my extremely young children to see sexual images because I felt that they were too young to understand the context in which the images were presented. I didn’t want them introduced to graphic images of adult sexual activity before they’d even had much chance to explore their own undeveloped bodies.
I don’t want my prepubescent child to see graphic images of adult sexual activity because she is in the process of asking questions about sex and sexuality and I’d like her to get a more realistic (and, I dare say, healthier) idea of what sex is about than is presented in porn.
I don’t really want my young teen to view pornography because I would prefer she not be subjected to some of the uglier images of sex while she’s forming her own ideas of what is and is not sexually attractive. I don’t want her to compare her own barely developed body to that of silcone-enhanced porn stars, and I really don’t want her to think that the average male porn star is like the average guy she’s going to be dating, in appearance or behavior.
I have no problem with nudity or with the frank presentation of information about sex. I just don’t think that porn is at all a realistic portrayal of the kind of healthy, joyful sex life I hope my children have when they are mature, and I don’t want those images imprinted on their psyches at an early age.
In a more general sense, young children who are exposed to pornography may be more easily exploited by sexual predators because they’ve gotten the idea that the behavior they’re being coerced into is normal. This may very well be more the effect of pedophiles “grooming” their victims with porn than the effect of the porn by itself, however.
I produce porn for a living, and I can tell you that a large majority of porn is real. It made me giggle when you suggested anyone might think it otherwise, which goes to show you how out of touch I am.
There is simulated sex stuff out there (due to models preferances or ratings issues), but a very small minority. Why bother to fake it when it’s easy and cheap to do the real thing?
That’s not quite true - there’s a grey line between porn and art, and it’s mostly down to context. Obviously there’s plenty of stuff that most people would agree is art, and another bunch of Stuff that most people would call porn, but there’s a significant (and ever-growing) area that… no one really knows.
Actually, pretty much all Western and most other countries have legislated against this now. In first world countries, it is well policed. The spam and popups I presume you are referring to, are for sites that are hosted in various Eastern Bloc countries, and Russia. They are lax in enforcing their laws, which is a shame.
Thanks, InternetLegend, you raise some excellent points. I found it extremely enlightening to hear from you. Thanks for being rational, unlike some.
You have given me much to ponder. As I mentioned earlier, I produce porn. We go to some lengths to ensure our material does not fall into the hands of kids, but it’s not possible to police completely. I have long been an advocate for parents to share / oversee kids internet experience (ie, by having the computer in a public room, not a kids bedroom). I get really pissed off when parents expect the internet to be a “babysitter” to kids, and have Someone Else do the filtering - or just hope for the best.
**
It’s a nitpick, but it’s something I am passionate about: There are websites (and publications, videos, etc) out there that are on a mission to make good porn. Porn that IS healthy and joyful, but also entertaining. Porn that respects the performers, and not a male-dominant, “cum soaked sluts” mentality.
We are a minority, but we’re getting bigger as more people realise what Hustler etc churn out day after day is not the only alternative.
Thanks for listening to my rant, and for being so damn sensible.
Maybe the answer is simply because they’ll develop an unrealistic idea of what sex (and, for that matter, what relationships between men and women in general) are really like. If you’re a boy who spends a lot of time at age 8 or 10 or 13 looking at porn in which pretty much every woman is “gagging for it”, odds are your overall concept of women is going to be influenced somewhat by it, and you might feel some cognitive dissonance (not to mention frustration) over the gap between fantasy and reality, especially during puberty when hormones have hijacked your reasoning skills.
Once you’re getting towards the end of puberty, you’re old enough and have enough experience interacting with the opposite sex (in the sexually-charged atmosphere that is junior high school) that you’re better able to put such things in perspective.
And that’s not even mentioning the whole “Hey! Why isn’t my penis 12” long?" thing.
Good question, and anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that children exposed to violent images earlier on have an unreal perception of violence and its effects.
Admittedly, I’ve only read most of the previous posts. I think that the main reason that children aren’t exposed to porn is that, children should not have children.
Enough unwanted children are produced in the world already, why should there be more? Kids have sex when they want to, why encourage them to have it sooner? We are not a species that needs to reproduce as fast as possible, why should we act that way?
I think the real reasons have to do with the moral foundations of most civilized societies. Sex is venerated, treated as a special act, to be performed only under certain preconditions. I think this has occured, mostly due to the possible procreational results of sex and the lack of knowledge on how to prevent conception (I’m talking in the grand historical context, not even the last few centuries).
In a hypothetical society where rigid personal boundaries with regards to sex don’t exist as they do today, I believe children wouldn’t grow up with an ‘abnormal’ attitude to sex since sex wouldn’t be all that special. So, in a way, the current coy attitudes about sex only reinforce that attitude further down and thus early exposure of a taboo subject to a naive child might not produce what contemporary society considers “healthy” attitudes.
So far, I have so far found that talking to my kids (two girls, 7 and 5 years old) about puberty, sex, etc. has been a lot less embarrassing and/or nerve-wracking than I thought it would be (i.e., it’s been a lot less embarrassing than it was when my parents talked about it with me). I probably wouldn’t have a problem with showing them scientific diagrams or maybe even pictures or movies about reproduction and babies (like that movie I watched in school that showed sperm swimming around looking for the egg, the fetus in various stages of development, a woman giving birth, etc.) if they wanted to know more, though I might prefer to wait until they were a little older. Heck, I might not even have a problem with showing them illustrations of people having sex when they were a bit older, although that might be stretching it a bit.
But pornography? I wouldn’t want my daughters to be exposed to that at such a young age. The vast majority of porn caters to what they think the ideal male fantasy is – as abby and Gyrate so succinctly put it, the “cum soaked sluts gagging on it” mentality. I want my daughters to develop a healthy attitude toward sex, for sure – to see it as a good and healthy thing, not something dirty and wrong. I don’t want them to feel guilty about having sexual desires. And I don’t want them to feel like the women in porn do (well, like they act like they feel, anyway) where it’s all about getting the guy off. That’s really irritates me about porn – the way there’s hardly ever any consideration for the woman. And I wouldn’t want to expose my daughters (or sons, if I had any) to that kind of mentality. At all, really, but especially not at such a young age when they might think that’s the way sex is really supposed to work.
I’m curious about what happens in this more woman-friendly porn that you describe, abby. How does it differ from the traditional stuff? How it actually works out, that is – I mean, I get it in a general sense, that it isn’t so male-oriented, but how does that translate into actual practice? Unless the answer is too graphic for the forum…
Jocular as my post was, I think I have the right of it – kids are forbidden porn in the interests of those parents who wish to restrict their kids access to commercial sexual products. I’m OK with that, so long as it’s clearly understood that under no circumstances should adults be restricted access to whatever commercial sexual products may interest them.
My own personal sense is that the right way to raise a kid wrt sex is to try to pass on good moral values and then let them develop as naturally as possible. While I don’t have any problem with the raw sexual content of porn, it’s lack of story and characterization does tend to make it dull IMHO. In short, commercial porn tends to make sex seem less exciting and interesting than it really is. Don’t want the kids getting that idea.
Japanese hentai is the closest I’ve seen to good porn – they integrate story, chracterization and explicit sex quite well in many instances.
