Can anyone show that exposure to pornography somehow raises the teen pregnancy rate or incidence of STDs? If not, the point is moot.
No one else has mentioned this yet, so I guess I should - the OP referred to this as well. “Children” seems to be a pretty all encompassing term. Who’s to say when a child is ready for porn, or anything else they are restricted from (alcohol, driving, most contracts, etc)?
As a society we have decided that between 18 and 21 most people can start making these decisions / choices, but unfortunately, that’s pretty arbitary. In my job I deal with dozens of 17 to 24 year old women each week, and I can tell you that there are some highly developed and self-aware 17 year olds, and some utterly feckless and dumb 24 year olds. Plotted on a graph, I am not certain that my experience would match with the accepted canon.
Of course it’s a bell curve, and MOST people fall into the 18 to 21 bracket, but what about the people who do not? There are plenty of them, even tho they are not the majority.
I guess I don’t have a point, other than the age someone is in years, can only be partly correlated to how mature and self-aware they are - not wholly.
abby
I can only speak of my experience.
First off, I’m seventeen years old (two months from "“legal-in-the-eyes-of-the-law” age) and I’ve been exposed to porn since I was about ten or eleven. I wasn’t ashamed about anything I found underneath my parents’ bed or whatever, but that might have been a byproduct of said discoveries occuring post-puberty (which, as a side note, I went through in the ages 8-9). I always had a healthy attraction to women and used the internet for porn on a near weekly basis (or whenever I could get the house to myself). Just in case you’re curious, and I’m sure you’re not, I didn’t start the normal “male ritual” until I was fourteen. I just never felt the need to - looking at pictures was enough, there was never a requirement to do anything to myself to enhance that experience.
So, am I a pervert? In the societal sense, I guess. Perverts in American society are people who are open about watching pornorgraphy and freely talk about sex. I’m still a virgin, I’m a perfect gentleman (from the old school of male-female relationships where I believe that respect comes before anything else), and it’s not like I think about sex constantly. When I do, I’m sure it can be more easily attributed to normal teenage hormones rather than an (some would say) early exposure to sex.
I don’t think anyone is truly arguing that children as young as seven or eight should be exposed to pornography. That’s a period of time when kids are still discovering themselves and they need to get that straight first. Do I believe pornography should be banned for sixteen year olds? No. Fourteen? No. Twelve? That’s getting in to more of a grey area. Maybe just the cable stuff.
When it comes to my own children, who don’t exist yet, I will probably keep the porn hidden until I think they can discover it on their own. If I have a son, he’ll get it one way or another - perhaps thinking that his dad knows about his indiscretions will be embarassing, ultimately comforting, and deterring to the idea of underage sex. It’s better than him finding a way to get a pack of ciggeretes for a friend so he can trade it for Nasty Cock Sluts 4.
Think about the movie Clerks. There’s a scene where Randall is ordering a bunch of pornographic movies for the video store in front of a customer and a child that’s no older than six or seven. The comedy of that particular scene is supposed to be how embarassed the mother is to have her child hearing all these hardcore porn titles. Now, imagine the child is fourteen, a male, and without his mother. Would it seem that inappropriate?
– Shawn K.
It strikes me that the best way to determine whether porn creates troubled kids isn’t to take a sample of troubled kids and find out how many of them have viewed porn. It’s to take a sample of kids who have viewed porn and find out how many of them subsequently became troubled.
No, because it’s entirely reasonable to expect that exposing them to pornography at an age when they’re unable to understand its proper context would have such adverse effects. In contrast, there is absolutely no reason to believe that such exposure would magically confer unto them an understanding of how easily sexual intercourse can lead to pregnancy and STDs. All they would see from porn are men and women getting it on, and apparently enjoying themselves with no regard for the consequences.
In other words, if it turns out that there is no empirical evidence one way or another, there is still reason to regard one hypothesis (that porn would result in a failure to grasp the degree of risk involved in sex) as being more plausible. Additionally, since there is no particular reason why children must be exposed to this behavior, why take the risk? As Call me Frank said, what use do they have for it?
Finally, don’t forget chriscya’s own testimony as a professional psychotherapist. chriscya said,
In other words, there is good reason to believe that exposure to porn would be harmful, and no good reason to expose children to it.
Surely it depends on the context?
You pretty much can’t get more perverted than Japanese porn, and a significant number of them show rapes, gang rapes, S&M, and all sorts of rather deviant sexual behaviour. The worst part of all this is they show women enjoying whatever nasty stuff being done to them. S&M, possibly, but, eh, being raped, even repeatedly by a bunch of beastly men? :eek:
That aside, the most “normal” porn I have seen demeans women, strip them of their dignity by showing them as mere sexual objects.
I must expand on this.
I grew up in the post-“Joy of Sex” era, where questions like this were common, i.e., “Since we don’t expose our children to sex, how do we know it’s unhealthy for them to see?” I even recall an outside opinion piece from the mid-70’s, in TV Guide, of all places, that suggested a “healthy” society would have children begin sex at birth. A child myself at the time, I found this very disturbing. Still, over time, I internalized such untested ideas.
Boy was I ever wrong! Several years ago, I was having sex with my girlfriend of the time, a French-Canadian woman with very uninhibited attitudes about sex, when her two-year-old walked in. I think we both sensed this was uncharted territory, but, being modern adults, we did not pause, especially since we were not even being particularly active at that moment. Perhaps it would be good for the child to see this, as we had always been told.
The girl’s face blanched, and her hands shot up to cover her eyes. At the gentle urging of her mother, she left the room. Later we found her placing two stuffed animals I had given her in some very interesting positions. I can only hope she suffered no permanent trauma.
To me, now, there is definitely an age below which children should not see sexual content at all. Although given the variable age and graduality with which children emerge into adulthood, it’s hard to say where the hard line should be drawn.
JThunder, you said that in the absence of empircal evidence it was still “entirely reasonable” to expect youngsters to go have sex. Without empirical evidence to support a hypothesis, it cannot be judged more likely over another hypothesis.
Well said ruadh!
Yeah, but in Japan they have about 1/20th as many rapes per capita as we do here in the U.S. so there may nto be that linkage that you are suggesting.
And hey, most guys in porn have a hard time looking dignified too. It’s REALLY hard to look dignified having sex. Maybe it’s not really IMPORTANT to look dignified having sex. Maybe sex is only demeaning if you think there’s something wrong with it.
[Small caveat]
Reported rapes.
[/Small caveat]
There may be a substantially larger number of unreported rapes in Japan than in the U.S. but in the absence of any evidence for this your caveat is more like a nitpick.
True; at a quick Google all I was able to find was another discussion on the subject, albeit a reasonably informed one.
That being said, rape statistics alone are a pretty tenuous argument on which to hang any sort of defense (or condemnation, for that matter) of pornography.
That’s merely your opinion. Without evidence, it’s no better than any other opinion.
Of course not. In the same vein, Winnie the Pooh doesn’t confer an understanding of how dangerous tigers and bears really are. But just because something isn’t beneficial doesn’t mean it’s harmful, or that it should be kept away.
Again, you could say that about anything. Why allow your kids to listen to the radio or drink orange juice? There’s no reason that children must be exposed to either of those. That doesn’t mean, however, that you’ll gain any benefit by “protecting” them from the radio or orange juice.
With all due respect to chriscya, I think ruadh hit the nail on the head. Arguing that porn is bad because many kids who assault other kids were exposed to porn is pointless. You may as well argue that drinking milk and riding in cars are bad for the same reason.
Make that reported cases.
:rolleyes: Having and looking are two different things.
You are certainly welcome to have the opinion that there is nothing wrong with portraying women as mere sex objects.
You are going to have a hard time defending your position, however.
Not so. If there is good reason to suspect that Hypothesis
A is better than Hypothesis B, then in the absence of direct evidence either way, one can reasonably favor A over B.
Moreover, this is a situation in which we DO have evidence that pornography is damaging to young children. In this thread alone, we have seen several reports of how exposure to explicit sexual acts can scar young children.
Clearly, a double-standard is at play here. People are quick to demand hard evidence from those who believe that porn can be damaging to young children, without producing comparable evidence for their own claims. The playing field is hardly level.
What is your justification for believing that exposure to pornography is damaging to young-adolescents, JThunder?
For purposes of simplicity, let’s limit this to post-pubescent people here, I’ve already said once or twice that I don’t think young children should be exposed to pornography (not because I think it would be inherently damaging, but because they have no use for it and I don’t think they would understand it).
And like ruadh said, with all due respect to chriscya, it would be more accurate to determine the effects of porn on people by starting out with “non-troubled” individuals.
Furthermore, I still dispute your belief that you can call one hypothesis better than another without having anything substantial to support your opinion. I mean, certainly, you can have that opinion, but you cannot claim that your opinion is “more correct” than another’s unless you have some evidence proving that the other person’s opinion is inaccurate. As it stands (and as far as I can recall), chriscya was the only person to introduce anything factual to this, and her sample population was not the best for making a logical conclusion.
This debate seems to be around the premise “Is porn harmful to children.” I think a better discussion might be “What is the best way to help a young person develop a healthy attitude towards sex?” Now, that may not include a showing of Ass Masters 17 (No, I don’t know if that is a real title), but I can’t imagine that completely shielding children from sex is going to be much help, either.
Whether we like it or not, children are exposed to sex at a very early age. If not at school or with their friends then on TV or the radio.
While the ostrich defense may comfort parents from the realities of teenage sex, it does nothing to help their child to learn and develop a healthy understanding of their body and sexual behavior.
It seems, therefore, as with many things, that finding a proper balance is essential.
This is a side issue having to do with BDSM porn in particular, so it’s not central to the debate here. In any event, if you don’t like my stats, try challenging them with something more substantive than a discussion on another site whose major feature seems to have been hand-waving.
You got something better, post it. All I see is hands waving.
:rolleyes: Having and looking are two different things.
I’m not sure what you mean by this.
You are certainly welcome to have the opinion that there is nothing wrong with portraying women as mere sex objects.
thanks for all the words for my mouth, but I’ll refuse them, thank you very much.
**You are going to have a hard time defending your position, however. **
I think my position is easily defensible. It’s your idea of what my position is that probably needs defensing. For the record, my position is that I’m perfectly comfortable with the idea of restricting access to porn by minors out of respect for the wishes of those adults who wish to do so, whatever my personal opinions on the topic might be, so long as it’s clearly understood that adult access to sexual imagery and discussion should not be restricted. How this works out might be an issue for some, but I’m sure a reasonable approach by all could result in reasonable solutions.
I see no reason to provide pre-pubescent children with access to sexual materials. I think it might be healthy for post-pubescent children to have access to some sexual content, maybe something along the lines of Japanese content restrictions, which are more finely divided by age than ours are.
that said, I don’t see anything directly harmful in simple images of sexual activity or nudity, though I concede there might be under some circumstances. I think those circumstances would have to be carefully examined. I think it’s generally more harmful to repress sexual feelings than to allow them expression in a social context which allows people to develop safe, sane and consensual values for such expression.
ya got a problem with that, have at it.
Do you really doubt that rape in Japan is underreported? Look, I love Japan, I’ve lived in Japan (going back in a couple of weeks!), I have many Japanese friends, but sensitive treatment of rape victims is one area in which Japan lags far, far behind much of the West. Things are so bad that one cannot even get decent numbers on how underreported rape is, because to get such numbers victims have to be willing to speak to someone who’s keeping track.
Things do seem to be improving in that there are now more rape crisis centers in Japan, more compassionate police officers, and more victims willing to speak out and press charges, but when you look at what they’re up against I don’t think there can be much question that many victims must feel that it’s not worth it (some are even blackmailed into silence by their attackers). This AP article deals with the subject:
http://www.amanjordan.org/english/daily_news/wmview.php?ArtID=2639
Note the hilarious joke made by Parliament member and former Cabinet Minister Seiichi Ota: “At least gang rapists are still vigorous. Isn’t that at least a little closer to normal?”
Whether or to what extent such attitiudes can be blamed on Japanese porn is difficult to say, but the article closes with this warning issued to students by Tokyo’s Waseda University: “All sex without consent is considered rape, and it’s a serious crime. Don’t be fooled by stereotypical rape scenes in dramas, comic books and videos!”