What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Moreover, and moving on, now that I'm a new father with a two-year old daughter, I cannot even _look_ at pornography without feeling queasy. The full nastiness of the activities, production, what obviously goes on behind the scenes, etc, hits you in the guts and is truly sickening.
His thoughts on why the market is demanding more demeaning content has to do with the social acceptance of pornography - or at least of porno of the time you're talking about. One of the big allures of pornography is that it is "naughty" and deviant. As it becomes accepted the quest to find content that is not socially OK pushes pornographers to create it. A market gets created. To the point we are an asymptote of snuff films more or less.
So that although groups that would traditionally balk at porn and forced what we'd consider even mild porn into the underground are annoying, they may be providing a service in social health in limiting progression into a darker and darker realm of pure humiliation films, faux rape films, etc.
The article was titled "Big Red Son". Worth reading.
So you think 15-year-olds who never experienced sex know how to distinguish reality (sex with a real partner) from fantasy (porn). Where would they have the knowledge how real sex is from?
Moreover, the 15-year-old doesn't need to know what real sex is like in order to suspect that porn is fantasy. "Snakes on a Plane" is not treated as a documentary by people who have never travelled on a plane.
The site https://www.yourbrainonporn.com is what got me interested in trying to quit. Lots of good information there if you are interested.
1) Quit Porn 2) Stop Masturbation
Any ideas?
If you're anything like me, it's more or less impossible to quit one and have the other. Watching porn will eventually lead to masturbation and vice versa.
I've recently tried taking the half-measure of exclusively audio pornography (/r/gonewildaudio) - in an effort to see if I notice any changes in my perception of women or anything. Been on it exclusively for a few weeks now and I feel the same. If anything, I'm more tired since it takes much longer without the visual stimulation.
In the case of #2, you deprive yourself of a completely natural pleasure.
I would put my bets behind quitting porn over stopping masturbation if the goal is to develop a healthy outlook on sex. I'd love to hear someone on the other side's thoughts though.
I won't even point out all the reasons your argument doesn't make sense, because it's clear you haven't thought about what it would mean if what you said was true. It just doesn't match up to real human behavior.
She once pointed out to me that the way police work is portrayed on TV series is very different from what police officers do when investigating a homicide. And with good reason: If TV showed an accurate version of how murders are solved (or often enough not), it would be really, really boring to watch. On the other hand a real-life murder investigation can be quite harrowing because somebody actually died by the hand of another person. That element is very hard to reproduce, which is why death is portrayed so banally in crime programs.
The relation between porn and real-life sexuality is strikingly similar, is it not?
The best way I've seen that explained is car chases in movies. They are made to look exciting, but they are also very obviously unrealistic.
Once you understand this, you can look at porn as an entertainment product and nothing more, which I think is the healthy way to approach it.
There is, however, considerable evidence that compulsive pornography use and other compulsive sexual behaviors, at a minimum, have many addiction-like features, though there is considerable debate about both the criteria to consider non-substance-use compulsive behavior as addiction and how particular compulsions fit any proposed criteria. Portraying the state of the science as “no scientific evidence of pornography addiction” is both strictly false and substantively misleading.
The fact that the article itself and comments to the article talk about kids learning about such things from other kids and websites instead of their parents is pretty much case and point.
There is no downside to talking to your kid about sexuality and other things at, say, 10. Common rebuttals to such an idea is usually centered around the false notion that if the parent doesn't speak of it, then the child will never know. This couldn't be any more false.
I agree with your assessment that parents should talk to their kids more about difficult topics at all ages, in an age-appropriate way, of course.
But you can take this too far and end up with the idea that parents should be fine with their kids seeing any kind of sexual, violent, or other disturbing content no matter their age or maturity level.
Though there's the other common-sense side to this, which is recognizing that there are things your kid is going to be exposed to regardless of whether you think they're ready for it (in this case, hearing about sex from their agemates at school). At which point it becomes a choice between introducing it yourself and doing the best you can, or hoping it all works out when you're not involved.
I am tired of seeing issues framed this way: "Despite the objective evidence, my ideology drives the view that it must be making men brutal and compromising women's power"
> For years, Gallop has been a one-woman laboratory witnessing how easy-to-access mainstream porn influences sex. Now in her 50s, she has spent more than a decade dating 20-something men. She finds them through “cougar” dating sites — where older women connect with younger men — and her main criterion is that they are “nice.” Even so, she told me, during sex with these significantly younger nice men, she repeatedly encounters porn memes: facials, “jackhammering” intercourse, more frequent requests for anal sex and men who seem less focused on female orgasms than men were when she was younger. Gallop takes it upon herself to “re-educate,” as she half-jokingly puts it, men raised on porn.
This article seems more like activism than inquiry to me. The foot feels heavily on the scale. I believe the topic deserves better than this.
My favorite kind of reasoning!
"You might think that A would cause B, but the data doesn't show that. However, it's reasonable to ask if A does have any effects other than B."
"You might think that {something} would cause {the outcome that fits my, and the audience's agenda/preconceptions}, but the data doesn't show that. However, it's reasonable to ask if there's something going on, right? Also, feel free to quote the first sentence in clickbaity titles and social media posts! If you repeat it enough times, it will actually become truth :)"
Color me shocked!
That's because this is a critical theory analysis, not a critical thinking one.
The paragraph you quoted is literally saying "although evidence suggests porn does not increase assault, no matter what you believe about it it helps shape the views of people who watch it on sex and gender" which is the most obvious, tepid, noncontroversial statement that is devoid of any framing at all. You are literally complaining about an example the author uses of an opinion she does not have. The primary complaint you should have about this paragraph is how contentless it is, not some weird claim about how the statement that media effects culture is somehow malicious framing.
>Seriously, NYTimes? This is activism, not inquiry. I'm disappointed.
Yes, how dare someone who writes about a topic have actual experience with it that informs their opinions. I think it's actually far worse to have a "detached, impartial observer" (which of course does not exist) writing about a topic on which they have zero relevant experience. Which is pretty much standard operating procedure with NYT. How many articles are there in NYT from media elites pretending they understand the poor? Countless. This article is a refreshing positive change.
But the notion that media influences culture (for which there is overwhelming evidence not only scientific but in the form of every for-profit organization that has a marketing division, and which is even a truism - media IS culture) being stated in the New York Times in 2018 is like taking a paragraph in a Nature article to explain yes, the moon exists.
Once you recognize the pattern, you see it in articles everywhere.
Sorry but I guess I’m annoyed because I spent a lot of time working through this specific topic recently and had to wrestle with very some interesting questions:
What is real and what is fake? Why did we create these fantasies and what draws us to them? How much of our culture is fantasy? What if the fake is more “real” than the real? What does that imply for the future? How does pornography hold up a mirror that reflects us? Why is America so scared of reality?
But instead all the article gives us is: porn kills intimacy and reinforces gender roles, plus some weird obsession with facials.
As grownups, I think we start to ignore hoping that kids will be able to figure out on their own without realizing what lasting effect it will have on their future relationship
My math was simple: if you give 10 twelve-year-olds unfettered internet access, at least one of them will find porn, and that one will show it to their friends. If any of them have an older sibling, the odds just go up.
True as opened with “tend to be” but such a poor description of Pornhub in an article meant to help parents understand pornography. For example, the company behind Pornhub owns many production companies and paid sites. High production value clips promote those sites as do does the advertising.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek
Pornography isn't even close to what it was 30 years ago when you for the most part only saw it in nudie mags that your dad had (or friend had who stole it from his dad). Today, kids have easy access to a wealth of horrifying and bastardized hard-core pornography.
But not only that, the ads and search results and images that show up for the more innocent things will lead them to the more awful things, because they're just readily visible and accessible right there.
To be honest the only solution we have found is twofold: to change our wifi password to disable internet on all devices (he was sneaking his Nintendo 3DS into the bathroom for 2 months to look at porn on it) and to proactively start teaching them that life is more than a constant quest for more and more intense pleasure, and that if you allow yourself to give into that base mentality, you are throwing away a good portion of your future that could be filled with meaningful real relationships and legitimately joyful times, in exchange for maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain until you die.
The hormonal changes that tend to cause kids to become interested in porn can cause those other elements as well. It's not unusual for even a teenager with no interest in porn to be quick to anger, feel persecuted, be arrogant, etc.
"Won't participate in things that he doesn't personally see any value or benefit in" probably describes 98% of high school students.
Also, as to your previous point that it will lead to "harder" stuff, a recent study says no. Yes, there will be more opportunity and exploration of the topic, but that's something that will happen eventually to all individuals. It isn't studied very well, but at least this initial one says we don't naturally become more tolerant and require "harder" pornography over time. https://www.lehmiller.com/blog/2018/2/5/can-you-build-up-a-t...
There may be a correlation but you really have no idea what the cause is. You shouldn't assume it's this one thing. It may prevent you from being able to offer more meaningful help.
Teenagers are also famously self-absorbed, and this age is also marked with a shift from reliance on parents for guidance to outside sources like peers.
This was all the case before the internet, before video, before printed media. Porn isn't the cause.
I'd also be willing to bet that this family has no compunctions about letting the son watch extreme violent TV shows and movies. People being tortured, maimed, and killed is usually OK. Show a nipple, and people lose their shit.
EDIT: In the end, this article is flagged for what amounts to Christian Moralization vs Non-Christian Moralization. I need only read "traditional morality", "psalms chaper#:verse# one of", or citing netnanny as an authoritative source to understand what the real problem is here.
This is what would be classified as a straight up religious conflict, and "teenagers, online porn, sexuality" are one of the major battlegrounds in this culture war.
It's ugly indeed.
We also avoid movies like Saw not only for our older children but even ourselves. Why fill out bellies with filthy water when there's plenty of fresh water all around us, free for the taking? Only people who convince themselves that there's no fresh water, or that it's not good enough for their belly, will look for filthy polluted water and convince themselves it's their only hope.
But that's what I'm taking about. There's no (supernatural, physical, legal) law that states for everything fun and good, I have to suffer equal amounts. That's just moralization in the puritanical strain, which I reject.
And I would also like to call out the sentence: " Nothing is wrong with sex within a healthy relationship."
Nothing is wrong with consensual sex, period. I needen't be in a marriage or relationship with them. I don't care if it's vanilla, scat, bdsm, cuckolding, or whatever. We have more than enough science and technology that people can have sex with little fear. It's only when governments want to inflict their "morals" on people do people really start to hurt. They do this by keeping drugs, devices, and techniques away. Thankfully, The Satanic Temple has been challenging these "moral precepts" as the religious laws enshrined into to state laws. (Seriously, who'd have thought that TST would fight for peoples' rights?!)
And I also have no issue with prostitutes. I've never procured the services of any, but I see no shame in doing so either. It's no more a temporary feel-good similar to that of a roller coaster or a concert. It's just "bad" because of the puritanical beliefs that all sex is bad, outside a marriage (later turned to relationship).
And regarding SAW, the show was meh. It's a slasher for slasher's sake.
Is that entirely true? If I say "nothing is wrong with eating Big Macs, period" that's right in one sense. But you and I can see with our own eyes what an unrestrained diet of Big Macs might do, and it's bad, if not legally wrong.
You might say the problem with unrestrained eating is the desire or relationship with food, not the object (the Big Mac), but in that case traditional morality is also saying something about the focus of 'healthy' desire, not the sex act.
Even if you strip away the "wrong," the way people incorporate sex into their relationships and ethics will make lives better or worse.
There are a lot of assumptions rolled up in that sentence.
Rather than try and unpack them all here myself, I'd encourage you to talk to actual sex workers. Not people who engage the services of sex workers, but the people actually doing the sex work themselves. Ask them about the work they do, why they do it, what their customers are looking for, and what role they think they're playing in their customers' lives.
I think you'd be surprised by some of what you hear.
Yeah, to clarify, when I say "talk to actual sex workers", I'm not referring to reading comments posted on Hacker News.
the puritanical value is 'sex should be enjoyed in marriage, monogamously'
pornography is harmful to our brains, many studies have shown this.
plenty of studies also show that people who have fewer sexual partners are ultimately happier in their sex life.
and it doesnt take much thought to see that STDs would spread much more slowly if people were monogamous.
lots of good things come from that value. on the inverse, the 'have sex as much as you want' mentality leads to unplanned pregnancies/killing unborn babies, devaluation of the gift of sex, and spread of disease. but hey, you get to have 'lots of fun' so is it worth it?
sex and money are the greatest idols in our society, and the worship of either does not yield good things.
There are whole comminutes of people who are trying to recover from porn addiction because of the way it had negatively affected their lives. See /r/nofap and yourbrainonporn.com.
If you've never been negatively affected by it, good for you. I can see why you be skeptical that it could do harm to anyone. Most people rely on their own anecdotal experience to form their opinions. But keep an open mind, not everyone responds the same way to these things.
I don't blame parents for trying to look out for their children. They just need to make sure they're doing it in a sane, reasonable way.
http://yournewswire.com/this-is-how-pornography-addiction-is...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2642712/Does-...
https://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/porn-debate/
Pornography is a harmful drug and can have many of the same psychological and physiological effects as other addictive substances.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201601/ev...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101130111326.h...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-sunny-side-of...
Pornography is a useful tool to manage testosterone and other hormones in the adolescent and reduces sexual crimes across the board.
You watch an action movie because it's exciting, it's thrilling, and things explode. Basically, everything is carefully managed or faked to give you the feeling that everything is amazingly awesome.
Porn is just like an action movie, only it's about sex instead of guns and martial arts. It's fun, but it usually has very little to do with real sex.
Except in action movies, people don't take real ideas back to the bedroom and end up wanting to act them out. Porn modifies brain chemistry[0] to alter how we think about sex. Porn is a common thread in serial murderers[1].
In my own life, I've had to reprogram myself to get away from ideas that haunted me for 10+ years that hurt myself and others.
Pornography is a plague.
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/26/brain-...
[1]: https://www.netnanny.com/blog/what-serial-killers-and-murder...
So's oxygen and water intake.
Citing NetNanny on this is pretty silly. Serial killers existed long before pornography was around, and I suspect you're getting correlation and causation mixed up there. Your average porn consumer manages not to cut heads off.
You also assume that people lead relatively normal lives with porn, but what about the subtle effects?
Don't you think that the objectification of women as sexual objects or the demeaning of marriage to something that gets in the way of people's sexual pleasure has any sort of effect in a civilized society?
As with the NetNanny piece, I can't find any peer-reviewed research in that article. Just a bunch of anecdotes.
I'm not sure how porn "demeans marriage".
There have been, perhaps, a few hundred serial killers? Even if all of them had seen porn, that's a few billion people who saw porn, enjoyed it, and then didn't kill anyone else.
And your second link? "Do serial killers or murderers exhibit common behaviors? Based on the hundreds of crime dramas I've watched, I believe they do." Seriously?
for many, it's not. We are designed to seek pleasure, so many make that their highest goal.
But nothing in this world can provide true and lasting pleasure, only God can.
You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
psalm 16:11
That said, have you wondered why you find those things "horrifying"? I might be a bit concerned if it was rape porn, but besides that I am unconvinced that there'such harm to come from children seeing porn, either at an individual or social level.
As I've noted before, if a child is looking at porn, that means they have a desire for it, which I think is difficult for parents to come to terms with. I certainly wouldn't want porn foisted on children, but if they are seeking it out through their own volition, there really isn't much you can do about it; a parent's treatment of a child viewing porn probably has more potential for a negative outcome than the porn itself since it is ultimately blaming human beings for their innate instinct. As if there is something wrong with naked adults having consentual sex, or practicing paraphilias.
I discovered porn when I was 10 through AltaVista image search. Just type in a female name and presto! By this time, there wasn't a whole lot my parents could do because I was going to look at porn one way or another. As with violent video games, parents have no governance over what their kids have access to at their friends' houses. In that case, establishing trust with your children will go a lot further than making them fear something that they innately understand to be practically harmless.
By the way, parents could actually talk to their kids about sex and, yes, even porn. If you're a good parent, your words will likely have an impact even if your kids continue to get their hands on porn.
There's merit to what you're saying, yes, there's an unhealthy push for hardcore stuff in the modern porn landscape. Yes, in excess it's bad (as is everything else, by definition, but this more than many other things). But mostly I just feel bad for your kid. I get if he's like 13 or whatever you don't want him immersing himself in violent rape porn, but I feel like there's better ways to solve that than "no internet for you, and internet you do have is Being Watched".
Also unimportant, but does anyone develop a porn habit not in secret?
My position is that moderate and supervised technology use from a young age probably is the best path, but if the choice was between two extremes of “unrestricted access from 0-10 years old” and “no access from 0-10”, I think the latter is the choice that I’d make. I highly doubt my kids would be at a long-term disadvantage.
Mandating all levels of access to computer screens because of that desire is what's draconian, not the intent behind the mandate.
What are those ways?
Play a little good cop / bad cop: you know mom is sensitive to stuff like that, but guys can have a little fun. And it's better when you don't have to see the naked dude.
Maybe in a week reinforce healthy arousal: this one's my favorite, look at this curve.
Talk about how you'll "know what to do" when the time comes, but it's important to work on just noticing details, women like that, and to be in control of your emotions and the situation.
Childless millennial software developers (or otherwise generally technical) are in a better position to understand puberty in the modern internet driven landscape than someone who went through it 30 years ago, though. That's a relevant perspective here. . .no? The whole idea is to provide alternative perspectives, so that we can have the most information and thus (in theory) make the best choices, right?
I'm a millennial software developer who went through this exact thing 15 years ago. So we're in the same boat, the only difference being I have kids. And poker is a whole different game when you're not playing for keeps.
"we had to take stronger measures against this disease in his mind that led him to put his younger siblings in danger of seeing something far more confusing and graphic than they're ready to at their ages."
This is what leaves me unconvinced (and I don't have expectation of changing your mind either - you operate with the most information here so that's probably a good thing). Certainly, what he did was inappropriate, but. . .a boy in puberty looking for porn on the internet is not a "disease". Even offensive porn. There's not something wrong with your boy. He did a bad thing (or a few bad things). He's a teen. Doesn't mean he should be let off the hook, but. . .diseased? Nah.
It does sound like you're having some conversations about this (and importantly, providing the idea that there's something better out there), though, so that's good.
How can you be sure it was a girl commenting? An account with a girly name was commenting.
I read some where there was going to be a TLD for porn (.xxx I think). I wish they did that and all the porn content was only on that TLD. Then browsers can easily block all porn for underage viewers. I know I would do that for my children until they are adults and I believe they can make their own decisions. There is a level of maturity and education one needs before exposed to this type of content.
Personally I find it repulsive and I try my best to avoid it as best as possible. Sadly it creeps into TV shows and movies nowadays.
Source, explanation, anything to back this?
There is an organization called "Fight the new Drug" which is combatting porn addiction.
Here is a article with citations on research and articles on the issue:
Can you expound on this further? What exactly does it mean and what evidence is there to support it?
The chemicals released in your body and especially brain during orgasm build a closer connection and bond within you to the concepts and people you focused on during it. Pornography trains you to be selfish. Whereas having sex and both orgasming at the same time, focuses your mind on making your partner happy and that mutual self-giving becomes what you crave. Because it's based on love, that same mutual self-giving carries over into the rest of your life, and you find more happiness in giving gifts than receiving them, in doing more chores so they don't have to, etc. That's love.
[0]: People are rational and they wouldn't do things that don't result in more benefit to them than their cost.
"Love" in English wears too many hats. C.S. Lewis' Four Loves does a good job explaining how the highest and best use of eros (which can be selfish) is to encourage agape (selfless love).
"The promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love."
Conversely, consuming porn, even when it substitutes sex with a romantic partner, doesn't preclude having a loving relationship. As you point out, lust and love are different things. Although they are closely linked for most people, that is not the case e.g. for asexuals.
Unless you don't derive your entire life outlook from it. Plus, there is plenty pornography where both orgasm - if anything the porn actresses' seem unrealistically happy.
i actually used to live down the street from one of the "fight the new drug" offices in SLC. the problem in Utah, imo, is the seriously weak sex ed that they provide in schools here and the shit cultural attitudes towards sex.
the problem isn't porn, the problem is that parents are allowing porn to replace them as educators in this space. obviously that's going to lead to fucked up attitudes unless the young person happens upon some of the more healthy sexy spots on the internet.
if you want censorship, go ahead, but nobody has to make it easy for you. education is going to do a lot more for you tho. my parents tried to censor my access to porn when i was a teenager so i made an isolinux disk (ubuntu + tor) and used it to avoid their keylogging and filtering software.
i was/am mostly into erotic literature and sex positive forums vs other types of pornographic content, but that isn't thanks to my parents. i value intimacy, but finding sexual online places that share my values is difficult. i suppose the economics don't work out for that type of content. i know people who have had issues with porn interfering with their ability to be intimate, but it has never been a problem for me personally.
TL;DR don't be a fucking baby and talk to your kids about sex and physical intimacy. you can't "protect" anyone from pornography, but you can influence your children's attitudes towards these important topics.
This is about as practical as the evil bit[1].
> I know I would do that for my children until they are adults and I believe they can make their own decisions.
"and"?
This implies that you want to control the media consumption of your adult children if you don't believe that they "can make their own decisions." Is that what you intended to say?
There were ideas about that for years, maybe even in the late 1990s, and eventually about 5-10 years ago it was set up.
Ironically, many in the "porn industry" were strongly against it; I think more to do with the company running it, though, than the idea of being confined to an online ghetto.
Most porn still remains on .com or on country TLDs and few people have probably even heard of .xxx, let alone visited a .xxx site. Now there are hundreds of new general TLDs, several more are porn related (.sexy, .porn) that basically nobody uses.
> Sadly it creeps into TV shows and movies nowadays.
I'm not a fan of depictions of simulated sex on TV/movies, since it's often for shock/viewing figures and/or holds up the plot, but I think irresponsible gun usage, torture/violence and military propaganda, which occur far more often than sexual content in TV and movies, are much worse for kids in particular to be exposed to.
As for just how skewed porn is, and how much it influences tastes and posturing of its impressionable consumers, is something worthy of more study. While one must be careful to suggest that adult human societies are still shaped by primitive patterns descendant from ancient, hypercompetitive eras lest we erase many years of social progress, societies of adolescents -- especially captive environments like school, camp, and social networks -- show less nuance, and more base urges that are products of either nature or nurture.
Notably, school is a captive social environment in which social competition can develop, and the proliferation of social networks extends this captive environment outside of school hours and into the middle of the night. The youth experience largely consists of top-down busywork about school-selected abstract topics vaguely about adult life, while being exposed to a shifting social landscape in which real events happen with real impact on their immediate surroundings. Sex is one such event, and everyone's still figuring things out.
When you're not actually sure what you want, because lots of things appeal in theory, but you're not sure if that appeal will translate into practice, a confident partner is compelling in ways that go beyond their gratifying presence in porn. They can be your guide and encourage you to engage in the things you want to do, while easing around the ones you don't. Older, attractive, sociable people, who often have more sexual experience (by virtue of their attributes) can project this confidence and match younger partners, despite in many places laws against the contrary. If the relationship remains mutually beneficial, the resulting experiences will allow the bottom partner to gain confidence of their own to apply with future partners, and enables them to explore their preferences.
Meanwhile, adolescents seeking close-in-age partners are faced with a conundrum: project confidence, or admit that they're unsure? The latter, for many, is untenable. A tactic that has developed to project carefree nonchalance instead, to mask deeper conflicts with plausible deniability and a dose of youth-transcending nihilism. This has made "chill" a socially acceptable byword for winging it. This is the territory of mindgames, of unspoken consent (or lack thereof), and a lowkey desire to impress the other -- behaviors that many will retain into adulthood and create more problems then.
It's imperfect choices all around: either have real experience from prior encounters to project confidence, lean on porn and hearsay muster up artificial know-how, engage in a vague slow-motion game where one effectively becomes a recipient to a series of events and one-thing-led-to-anothers, or admit all of this is making your head swirl but watch as the person you like makes headway with someone who was sure a few weeks later?
It always boils down to information and communication. Porn is information where alternatives are not nearly as illustrative, and it enables a vocabulary of communication in a world where talk with adults is a both-ways taboo, talk with peers is a social risk, so most communication isn't verbal. Porn enables vernacular literacy in these matters, while other instruments don't. Of course, it's produced for a different audience, but porn and other artifacts of intimacy produced for (and by) a more relatable audience is illegal, so it's the next best thing.
If porn teaches kids about masculinity and femininity, should we not claim the same thing about romantic drama or comedies? What make porn so special that teenagers can't determine what is real or false, but a romantic drama where every character has exaggerated gender behavior and roles is perfectly clear that it is fake and where naturally no teenager will be effected?