Finding your kid’s porn-A dad's letter to his smut-surfing son goes viral, raising the question of how to deal with a pubescent pornophile

rapeculturerealities:

becauseiamawoman:

I though this article was incredibly interesting and did a wonderful job of presenting both sides to the arguement. My question for all of you is simply -where do you fall on this debate?

I’m gonna start this off by saying that I lump “erotica” in with all other pornography.  I think it’s a seriously false and completely artificial classification.  There’s this idea that “erotica” is better than porn because x,y,z reasons when in reality the same problematic elements that exist in porn can and do exist in various forms of “erotica” and the problematic elements that exist in the majority of mainstream porn don’t exist in all porn everywhere.  Changing the medium (writing vs video or photos) doesn’t somehow create a whole new world where problematic elements can’t or don’t exist and I think it’s really damaging to create that false dichotomy because it helps sweep problems under the rug.  I’d much rather have a conversation about the problematic issues and how we can fix them across ALL mediums of pornography than create some sort of fake ideal that when it’s written it’s all ok - I mean, just look at 50 Shades of Grey, that shit is all kinds of terrible and it technically fits the definition for “erotica.”

I personally see no problem with adolescents using pornography provided they’re a) using pornography that isn’t problematic and b) are using it with adult supervision, the kind of supervision in which the complex issues and problems with porn and an ongoing conversation of healthy sexuality is taking place.  None of us are born knowing how to recognize when something is damaging or unhealthy and part of a parent’s job is to help kids learn how to discern such things.  Media literacy is just as important in sex stuff as it is in anything else and passing up that opportunity for teaching is neglectful on the part of the parents.  I don’t think age of consent concept should really be an issue here.  Kids who are interested in and curious about sex should have a right to explore that interest/curiosity in a safe space where they’re able to learn about how healthy sexuality functions in the adult world and there are plenty of kids well below the age of consent who are interested and curious.  Denying them that right would absolutely be damaging and I don’t support anything that would cause that kind of harm.  

So having a conversation about how a lot of mainstream porn commodifies, objectifies, and fetishizes women and why that’s a problem is important.  Having a conversation about how mainstream pron portrays an incredibly unrealistic version of sex and sexuality (and what a more realistic version of sex and sexuality is) is important.  Having a conversation about how mainstream porn creates a concept that violence and aggression toward women is something that is desirable and why that’s a serious problem is important.  Having a conversation about economic coercion, sex trafficking, and how the majority of people in the porn industry (especially women) aren’t freely consenting to it and are being actively exploited by the industry and those who control the lion’s share of the power within the industry and that by supporting the mainstream porn industry people are supporting that exploitation and coercion is important.  Having a conversation about what fantasies really are, about the difference between fantasy and reality, about what consent really is and why consent is so important, about things like intimacy and body image and all the stereotypes and myths about there about sexuality that mainstream porn reinforces is important.  And, above all, teaching kids how to recognize problematic porn and choose not to interact with it and how to find porn that isn’t problematic that they can interact with is incredibly important.   And it’s definitely out there, not all porn is created equally, it’s not all the same.  There is pornography out there, written, in video, and in still photos that is completely free of the problematic elements I just listed.  And maybe if people were to support and consume that kind of stuff while choosing not to support and consume problematic mainstream porn things in the world might be a little different, I don’t know…

What I do know, though, is that for most people these kinds of conversations aren’t possible and that right there is the biggest problem with adolescent porn use - because it will be done without adequate supervision if these conversations can’t take place.  Most adults themselves are either blithely unaware of the problems with mainstream porn or they are aware and don’t give a shit, don’t take it seriously.  They are unwilling or unable to admit that their own porn usage is problematic and are thus unable to communicate such ideas to their own children which only helps perpetuate the problems.  As always, education is going to be the key here, and maybe if parents aren’t capable of all this we could one day have truly comprehensive sex education in this world that actually covers all these topics… wouldn’t that be nice…

This sums up how I feel pretty well.