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!

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?

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/

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.

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.