Comments on: Pornography and Adolescents

By: C4bl3Fl4m3

C4bl3Fl4m3 — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:37:00 +0000

I don’t remember any interest or interaction with actual porn as a teen, even though I came of sexual interest during the beginning of the internet age. I never looked at porn on people’s computers. I never had any interest.

I also don’t think I ever tried to look at nudie mags in the store. Perhaps because I would have had no way of acquiring one (we lived in the woods and I couldn’t drive), but perhaps also because the images therein weren’t ones that would interest me, whether they were of women (I was not bisexual at the time) or of men (I wasn’t really attracted by buff men or men that society considers “handsome”. I think part of that had to do with being a social reject and knowing I had no chance with a man like that, so I tailored my interests into geeky guys instead.)

However, I had a very vivid sexual imagination, which included sexuality, romance, and BDSM. I don’t know if I preferred my own imagination to anything that was out there, but I think I already knew that most of what was out there was trash and I’d rather just do it myself.

That being said, I can remember reading sexual parts of books, of reading Song of Solomon, and of reading sex advice in women’s mags.

I can remember having cybersex with random people online (but I never went farther with people online than I was willing to go IRL) and I can remember having quite a bit of romanticized BDSM cybersex with the guy I ended up losing my virginity to. I also remember drawing up plans for (what I know now to be) a dungeon in MS Paint when I was 17. (Heck, I think I still have the chat logs and that image around somewhere on a HD.)

By: pornstudent

pornstudent — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:42:00 +0000

The first porn I saw was when I was about nine years old and a classmate brought in a magazine. I thought the women’s huge tits looked weird. When I was 11 another friend showed me porn mags at a grocery store. It didn’t mean anything to me. When I was about 13 I found my Dad’s porn. I was excited and fascinated.

I didn’t see any hardcore porn until I was seventeen. It was a slick magazine with pictures from Deep Throat. I thought it fascinating. Started going to the Pussy Cat Theater soon after that.

I still like porn.

I don’t know what goes on in adolescents’ minds after seeing porn. But I didn’t assume the women I met would do what Linda Lovelace did.

I would explain to a son or to a sex ed class that nothing should be done that the partner doesn’t want to do and that most women don’t like the kind of sex (I would be more descriptive) shown in pornography.

By: Dorian

Dorian — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 09:25:00 +0000

I found a book (while snooping in my mother’s dresser drawer) when I was about 11 years old. It was a soft porn book about a beautiful young girl (an older teen) and her trip to Paris from the US and all the improbably, rediculous (in retrospect) ways she had sex with multiple partners, all at her instigation, while on her trip. I mean, jumping onto someone’s hardon from a higher level on top of the Eifel Tower? Give me a break! That was my first exposure to porn. As an older teen myself, I worked in massage parlours before they were quite considered kosher and many of the clients expected I would dispense with other services as well as massages. I didn’t, but I knew lots of the other girls did. We wore hot pants and bra tops as required by management. I also frequented porn shops at that time. I was uncomfortable with them, but I wanted to find a way to get comfortable with sexuality and it seemed a possible avenue. It did not help. Then, I took a weekend encounter type program called “Sexual Attitude Reassessment” and they opened the weekend with several hours of hard core porn. This was the first time I’d ever seen such a thing and they used it as an opener because it gets much easier to talk about penises and beaver and vulvas and cunt when you’ve seen 40 of them in the past few hours. I would recommend that workshop (we then spent a lot of time going back and forth from small groups to large groups having discussions of all types of sexual attitudes and beliefs) for ALL adolescents - I feel that it immunized me from any further interest in porn and answered a huge number of my questions and helped me realize that comfort with sexuality is different for so many different people, that whatever I come to is fine for me. I really support sexual education - thanks for the work you are doing!

By: Alice

Alice — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 18:13:00 +0000

I was intensely curious about all things sexual, and especially when we were 9-14 my friends and I would do things like look in Playgirl and gawk at all the penises. Fortunately, I was never exposed to anything hardcore before I was old enough to know it wasn’t real. I think that garden variety “man calls woman a slut, ejaculates on her face, and leaves” hardcore porn is harmful because it is degrading and stereotypical. And as an adult, I have seen much, much, much, much, much more harmful things than that on the Internet. I can only hope that the ease of finding extraordinarily disturbing porn on the Internet is not damaging the children and young adolescents of today.

I realize that young people are constantly exposed to mildly or moderately harmful things that do not do permanent damage–case in point, I loved The Little Mermaid when I was 11 and now I think it’s a sexist piece of tripe–but I think hardcore porn is, well, more potentially damaging than a Disney movie. I don’t want kids to grow up thinking that sex is degrading and nasty, or, even worse, violent. Or that they themselves are bad for having sexual feelings.

For adults, I think that regular Hustler type porn is harmful in the same way that McDonald’s hamburgers are harmful–you’re better off avoiding it entirely, looking at it once in a while probably won’t hurt you, looking at it all the time will make you sick. But adults know the difference between what’s real and what isn’t, and can choose not to look. Kids are curious and want to see stuff they’re not supposed to, and don’t know that it’s not real and that they don’t have to look at it.

The only solution I can think of is to let kids look at pictures of naked people, even sexual pictures, that aren’t degrading to anyone, in hopes of satisfying their curiosity so they’ll be less likely to turn to Google.