I suppose you do not have children. I am open-minded, mid 40's. The level of violence in porn you can get access to with just one click, has no comparison with what I could get access to as a kid (basically nothing).
With the net, you get access in one click to the worse and the best. It is a lot of work as a parent to educate the kids about that.
As kids, teenager and even as 20 something, if we wanted to do some experience, we had to physically access the media or be physically present. This was not on-demand over a screen.
So, I filter the access at home while also trying my best to educate. This is not easy and I can understand that non tech savvy people request more laws, even so I am personally against.
The article is pretty well balanced, we have no silver bullet here.
Sure, but if the goal is to minimise access to violence, why did the GP say "they can access porn" instead of "they can access violence"? I doubt the two are synonymous.
They're not synonymous but a vast amount of pornography available online constitutes violence against women.
The commercial sex trade, including both porn and prostitution, is a multi-billion dollar industry that seeks to normalize extreme acts and promotes the dehumanisation of women and girls.
I keep hearing this argument, but I don’t come across any violent porn unless I explicitly look for it. What are the search terms you people are using?
My girl discovered self-pleasure at the age of 5, ironically during an exam from her doctor (she doesn't think it was intentional). I had an ex discover masturbation around the same age. I personally discovered it around 11 or 12. All of the above discovered porn accidentally as kids. I don't know about them but after that I intentionally sought it out.
Guess what! Both of us are perfectly fine!! (Well the ex is a bit psychotic but that's unrelated...)
This obsession with protecting kids from the realities of life is just fucking stupid. We as a species have the stupidest, most ridiculous views about something that is required to keep us alive!
The problem is that most porn depicts sex as somewhat violent and sets unreasonable expectations of what sex is like.
Not every woman is capable of deep-throating or going straight from vaginal to anal without adding some extra lube. Most women don't want their man to put his hands around her throat during sex. Almost none of them are okay with going from ass to mouth.
Porn also sets an unrealistic standard for penis size. When the average is 5.2 inches with a standard deviation of about an inch, it becomes clear that the 7+ inch penises used in porn are like the top 5%.
I don't think parents are having these conversations with their kids about this.
I would be interested in a discussion here about what sex acts people find demeaning to women. You cherry-picked from a narrow band of agreeable examples. Are blow jobs themselves demeaning to women? I suspect that many (perhaps here but certainly elsewhere) would say so.
I would also welcome a discussion about how porn might be disadvantageous to boys (and the very medicated male performers) and how all this contrasts with tolerance towards non-sexual violence depicted on screen.
> Jesus, how does your society still function when underage people can see videos of people having sex?!
It kind of isn't anymore. But not just because of porn, obviously.
Early porn exposure goes hand in hand with the problems we see typified in the recent Netflix movie Adolescence. Seen women constantly railed and treated like meat when that young probably does do something.
"Videos of people having sex" is deliberately misleading, modern porn is not dry educational science videos. It's clear you'd rather be snide than correct.
> Early porn exposure goes hand in hand with the problems we see typified in the recent Netflix movie Adolescence
There's really no evidence of this. I find it much more plausible that the boom in misogynistic radicalism is caused by the flourishing of radically far-right niche content online. Our society has become more politically extreme in a number of ways over the past couple decades, and there's no porn equivalent for anti-immigrant or anti-trans sentiment. Andrew Tate, however, is very much of a kind with figures like Nick Fuentes and Alex Jones.
That's not to say porn viewership doesn't have an effect on kids, but I expect it would be much more modest. Unrealistic ideas about sex, anxieties about penis size. I'm in my mid-20s; internet porn was highly accessible to me & my peers when we were young, and while it did have an effect on youth culture, it was quite modest—nothing like the hard pivot to misogyny which I've heard teachers describe when their students become interested in (again) Andrew Tate.
> "Videos of people having sex" is deliberately misleading, modern porn is not dry educational science videos.
Implying the opposite is deliberately misleading too. "Modern porn" is not entirely 1 thing or another. Much of it's sensible, a lot of it is extreme. Much like any area in life, I think, the real solution is to teach our children what's wrong with the more extreme stuff.
People are scared of porn causing their children to "objectify women"? Then teach them to respect women from a young age and when they see the extreme side of things they'll be like "That's wrong"
It's probably easier to blame the Internet though and to try to neuter it instead - rather than teach your kid the values you want them to have, just make sure they're never faced with values other than those!
> "Videos of people having sex" is deliberately misleading
it literally isn't. porn is mostly people having normal sex or just nude images of a woman. the existence of fringe fetish stuff doesn't affect that in any practical way. but your confusion seems to be thinking this discussion was about feminism or something when it's really just a decrepit boomer who is against sex being even legal lying through his teeth to justify completely pointless and harmful legislation (see 2 posts up)
You can map the availability of pornography to a rise in risky sex practices like choking. This isn't a problem inherent to pornography itself—rather, it's a factor of inadequate sex ed combined with the commonplace irresponsible presentation of certain sex acts in porn. Still, it'd be misleading to present porn as an entirely neutral depiction of sex. Mainstream pornography demonstrably does spread some harmful ideas. This is also true of Hollywood cinema, though; all media works this way, to a greater or lesser extent.
I suppose you do not have children. I am open-minded, mid 40's. The level of violence in porn you can get access to with just one click, has no comparison with what I could get access to as a kid (basically nothing).
With the net, you get access in one click to the worse and the best. It is a lot of work as a parent to educate the kids about that.
As kids, teenager and even as 20 something, if we wanted to do some experience, we had to physically access the media or be physically present. This was not on-demand over a screen.
So, I filter the access at home while also trying my best to educate. This is not easy and I can understand that non tech savvy people request more laws, even so I am personally against.
The article is pretty well balanced, we have no silver bullet here.
Sure, but if the goal is to minimise access to violence, why did the GP say "they can access porn" instead of "they can access violence"? I doubt the two are synonymous.
They're not synonymous but a vast amount of pornography available online constitutes violence against women.
The commercial sex trade, including both porn and prostitution, is a multi-billion dollar industry that seeks to normalize extreme acts and promotes the dehumanisation of women and girls.
23 replies →
I keep hearing this argument, but I don’t come across any violent porn unless I explicitly look for it. What are the search terms you people are using?
My girl discovered self-pleasure at the age of 5, ironically during an exam from her doctor (she doesn't think it was intentional). I had an ex discover masturbation around the same age. I personally discovered it around 11 or 12. All of the above discovered porn accidentally as kids. I don't know about them but after that I intentionally sought it out.
Guess what! Both of us are perfectly fine!! (Well the ex is a bit psychotic but that's unrelated...)
This obsession with protecting kids from the realities of life is just fucking stupid. We as a species have the stupidest, most ridiculous views about something that is required to keep us alive!
The problem is that most porn depicts sex as somewhat violent and sets unreasonable expectations of what sex is like.
Not every woman is capable of deep-throating or going straight from vaginal to anal without adding some extra lube. Most women don't want their man to put his hands around her throat during sex. Almost none of them are okay with going from ass to mouth.
Porn also sets an unrealistic standard for penis size. When the average is 5.2 inches with a standard deviation of about an inch, it becomes clear that the 7+ inch penises used in porn are like the top 5%.
I don't think parents are having these conversations with their kids about this.
I would be interested in a discussion here about what sex acts people find demeaning to women. You cherry-picked from a narrow band of agreeable examples. Are blow jobs themselves demeaning to women? I suspect that many (perhaps here but certainly elsewhere) would say so.
I would also welcome a discussion about how porn might be disadvantageous to boys (and the very medicated male performers) and how all this contrasts with tolerance towards non-sexual violence depicted on screen.
it is recommended not to employ sarcasm when counterpoints are easily available
Unfortunately, when counterpoints are easily available, I expect the person to have already thought of them, hence the sarcasm.
Edited to delete my comment. I was mistaken about who was replying to who. As such my comment was entirely wrong.
6 replies →
> Jesus, how does your society still function when underage people can see videos of people having sex?!
It kind of isn't anymore. But not just because of porn, obviously.
Early porn exposure goes hand in hand with the problems we see typified in the recent Netflix movie Adolescence. Seen women constantly railed and treated like meat when that young probably does do something.
"Videos of people having sex" is deliberately misleading, modern porn is not dry educational science videos. It's clear you'd rather be snide than correct.
> Early porn exposure goes hand in hand with the problems we see typified in the recent Netflix movie Adolescence
There's really no evidence of this. I find it much more plausible that the boom in misogynistic radicalism is caused by the flourishing of radically far-right niche content online. Our society has become more politically extreme in a number of ways over the past couple decades, and there's no porn equivalent for anti-immigrant or anti-trans sentiment. Andrew Tate, however, is very much of a kind with figures like Nick Fuentes and Alex Jones.
That's not to say porn viewership doesn't have an effect on kids, but I expect it would be much more modest. Unrealistic ideas about sex, anxieties about penis size. I'm in my mid-20s; internet porn was highly accessible to me & my peers when we were young, and while it did have an effect on youth culture, it was quite modest—nothing like the hard pivot to misogyny which I've heard teachers describe when their students become interested in (again) Andrew Tate.
> "Videos of people having sex" is deliberately misleading, modern porn is not dry educational science videos.
Implying the opposite is deliberately misleading too. "Modern porn" is not entirely 1 thing or another. Much of it's sensible, a lot of it is extreme. Much like any area in life, I think, the real solution is to teach our children what's wrong with the more extreme stuff.
People are scared of porn causing their children to "objectify women"? Then teach them to respect women from a young age and when they see the extreme side of things they'll be like "That's wrong"
It's probably easier to blame the Internet though and to try to neuter it instead - rather than teach your kid the values you want them to have, just make sure they're never faced with values other than those!
> "Videos of people having sex" is deliberately misleading
it literally isn't. porn is mostly people having normal sex or just nude images of a woman. the existence of fringe fetish stuff doesn't affect that in any practical way. but your confusion seems to be thinking this discussion was about feminism or something when it's really just a decrepit boomer who is against sex being even legal lying through his teeth to justify completely pointless and harmful legislation (see 2 posts up)
You can map the availability of pornography to a rise in risky sex practices like choking. This isn't a problem inherent to pornography itself—rather, it's a factor of inadequate sex ed combined with the commonplace irresponsible presentation of certain sex acts in porn. Still, it'd be misleading to present porn as an entirely neutral depiction of sex. Mainstream pornography demonstrably does spread some harmful ideas. This is also true of Hollywood cinema, though; all media works this way, to a greater or lesser extent.