Comment by squidbeak
5 days ago
> Many young boys now think it’s normal to ask girls for sexual acts before having ever kissed a girl.
This is a common media talking point, but are there any hard figures for this 'many'? The type you're describing existed when I was young, long before the internet. My impression of boys and young men today is that they are generally just as decent, cautious, respectful and idealistic as they ever were - but that a small crude and unpleasant minority taints the reputation of the whole generation.
I don't think it's a "reputation" issue, more of a what they're being exposed to and what it's normalizing. From studies I've seen it's a significant percentage (from a random Google search [1]):
The review talked to young people aged 13 to 19 and surveyed 1,000 young people aged 16 to 21. Over 6 in 10 (64%) said they had seen online pornography. Of these:
1: https://www.fpa.org.uk/rshe-for-teachers/uk-online-child-sex...
It definitely is a reputation issue: unless I'm misunderstanding something, you are using this data to suggest a greater incidence of violent sexual behavior among young men as a result to their exposure to ugly types of pornography.
You don't seem to have any data putting your figures into any context over time: run the same study in the 80s and I would wager you'd see similar even worse results. Wank mags and grainy VHS were passed around schools from the moment they appeared, including BDSM and torture porn - often in the form of sleazy B-movies. Sure, pornography is far easier to access today. But the material is the same, and this notion that somehow, today's boys and young men are worse for this exposure than their predecessors is insidious and deeply ignorant.
It is significantly more difficult to find young men today who think it's acceptable for husbands to beat their wives - or that rape is never rape in marriage. Or who think they can get a woman drunk to seduce her. Campaigners had to work damn hard to raise public consciousness out of the traditionalist inertia around these blights. Frankly, to anyone like me, old enough to compare several different eras and their male representatives, comments like yours and the inferences you'd have people draw from them, are utterly ridiculous - and yes, hugely unjust to the overwhelming majority of young men who flinch from the idea of hurting a woman in bed or out of it, regardless of what type of pornography they've been exposed to.
> But the material is the same, and this notion that somehow, today's boys and young men are worse for this exposure than their predecessors is insidious and deeply ignorant.
No what's ignorant is ignoring the prevalence and nature of modern online pornography. Hopefully you realize that having the worst of what previous generations might've been exposed occassionally to by copying grainy VHS videos is literally a few clicks away now.
Much like social media it's pushed constantly onto them (well all us men). It's a giant predatory industry with a very addictive product.
It's not a reputation thing because it's about how destructive it is to society as a whole to both men and women. It's a very different sort of destructive behavior than previous generations might've had.
> hugely unjust to the overwhelming majority of young men who flinch from the idea of hurting a woman in bed or out of it
There's lots of great young guys out there. How about we not regress due by allowing new rampant destructive influences. That's my perspective.
We're seeing huge upticks in "incels" and "red-pilled" young men now. IMHO that's largely influenced by pervasive (mysoginist) pornography.
Even then, apparently young women don't agree with you as recent polls show young women don't view men favorably anymore [1]. So apparently something, or many things, are going wrong.
1: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/women-men-fe...