Now, before everyone freaks out on me, one way or the other, I want to make one thing very clear: I am neither “for” or “against” porn. It’s far too situational and nuanced a topic for me to take clear sides like that.
Nevertheless, it is a big problem when children or teenagers run across a pornographic image or site they did not want to see.
It’s an even bigger problem when teenagers masquerade as someone else online, particularly someone they know in real life and then pretend to be this person while sending sexual innuendo and porn to someone else they know in real life.
My colleague Dr. Kris writes about this phenomenon on her blog – and it’s called cyber-bullying.
I’ve spoken with several parents recently whose preteen-age children were sent video porn by a third party claiming to be one of their friends. The parents felt deeply violated – I have not talked with any of their children personally, so I’m not going to comment on how they felt. Computers and laptops have been confiscated, the Internet has been turned off, e-mail accounts have been closed down.
I understand and can empathize with the decision to take each of these actions. I am encouraging the parents to also talk with their children – in some specific depth – about the porn they saw. I think they are taking me up on my suggestion, and taking steps to deepen their relationships with their children and expand their children’s skills in communication and understanding about sex and sexuality. I think they’re all doing the right thing.
I was talking with my husband about Internet porn as a result of all of these conversations. I pointed out to him that a video clip of a masturbation ejaculation is relatively minor compared to what else is available online these days. I said that, given the options, an e-mailed video could be much, much worse.
He was shocked. He did, of course, agree with me. But nevertheless, the realization that a “cum shot” could be considered relatively tame was a deeply different perspective than the one he had grown up with.
Generationally speaking, I fall somewhere between the people who’s only adolescent experience of porn was Playboy and the extremely gross NEWS store outside the city limits and the people who are continuously bombarded with extreme and highly varied stills, websites, and movies. My husband falls firmly in the generation who smuggled Playboys out of their father’s closets.
And I wonder how deeply this difference in experience of pornography between the generations will play out in parenting our very digitally-enabled children? My husband and I are pretty much on the same page, and work well together as parents, so it’s not so much us or our particular children I wonder about – but about parents and children generally.
How will parents who had access to copious amounts of digital porn, sought after or not, treat their own children’s interest in porn differently than parents who did not have access to it? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter in a comment.
If you will allow me to split hairs, I’m against porn, but not always erotica.
Things are indescribably different now then 30 years ago when I was a teenager. The pervasiveness of degrading pornography is stunning. One downside of the internets.
I’m against anything that degrades a human being, which is like 99% of porn, but not all of it. Or maybe that’s the difference between porn and erotica?
I was grown before I saw a video of a cum shot, so I’m definitely in an older generation. But I think that what you say about talking to children in specific depth is the main thing.
I find myself worrying a bit more about preschoolers finding porn and the effects on them than middle schoolers.
Karen,
An economist has done a study that shows a correlation between increased availability of pornography and reduction in rape:
http://www.toddkendall.net/internetcrime.pdf
Clemson University professor Todd Kendall has found that a 10 percent increase in Internet access yielded around a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes.
The states that had greater Internet access had the largest and fastest declines.
How the Web Prevents Rape
http://www.slate.com/id/2152487
Three cheers for Internet porn
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2006/11/03/internet/
My 13 year old son is understandably curious about sex and it turns out he and a friend were looking at some online porn the other day.
He admits that he’s just interested in it–the porn he was looking at was standard issue–nothing too weird, but, you know, it’s porn.
I would like to be able to show him a film or even a book that portrays people with REAL bodies having REAL, tender, funny, loving, sex–so he could satisfy his curiosity about sex and see that it can be fun and meaningful and not just pumping away in that weird, impersonal, porn-type manner.
Are there any movies that show positive sexual episodes? Happy people (who aren’t necessarily incredibly beautiful) who have a loving relationship and fairly graphic sex? This might be asking too much of Hollywood, but maybe a foreign film? It would be great if kids had somewhere else to turn when they’re curious, other than to porn, right?
It would be *fabulous* if kids had something else besides porn to turn to for an honest look at sex! Because let’s be honest, we’re all interested in finding out what sex is like if we haven’t had had it yet – and to find out if we’re relatively normal if we have had sex! But there is very, very little out there.
If your son is interested in looking at naked people not having sex, I highly recommend Greg Friedler’s Naked series. I bring these books to my sex ed classes, and the middle school students are always absolutely riveted. These books are really a must-have for any home with young people curious about the human body. (For a preview, go to Greg’s website: http://www.gregfriedler.com and click on “fine art” and then one of the categories starting with “naked.”)
For still art of sexual encounters, I am absolutely certain that the Unitarian Universalist and United Church of Christ slide series that they use in their Middle School sexuality program Our Whole Lives is the best there is. See if there is a local congregation of either of these denominations that will be presenting Our Whole Lives any time soon and get your son signed up for it.
As for actual sex scenes, realistic ones are very hard to come by. In general, movies where the sex is first-time sex are more realistic – both Juno and 40 Year Old Virgin were recommended to me by friends for this purpose. I also recently watched the movie 100 Girls (I was sick and it was the first thing to come up on Netflix, don’t judge me!) which actually had a decently realistic sex scene.
If you find other realistic sex scenes online or in movies, I’d love to hear from you!