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Comment by Workaccount2 | Hacker News Reader

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> I have a theory that the people who fall over themselves pushing "modesty" laws are ones who really just want to add a layer of "performing forbidden acts" to their own sexual perversions.

Maybe some. I have another theory that people pushing "modesty" laws want to enforce their values on a world that doesn't share those values.

100%, it is one of those things that I think feeds into itself.

At a young age you may have been told to repress certain desires, or that anything outside of sex to procreation was bad (I mean self pleasure is still seen as a negative even though it is very important to learning about yourself) and then you grow up get and when you have the power to do something about this you are filled with anger and so much self hatred that you push for laws like this.

Edit: I just realized I misread your first sentence. But I still stand by this.

> and the negative effects seem to be....nothing.

One of my colleagues has a 14-year old daughter, and she has TikTok. It’s not uncommon for girls of her age to post stuff like “the right place for a hand during kissing”, and it’ll be a (subtle) reference to the throat.

There’s nothing wrong with consuming porn at that age per sè, but without good parental / sex ed guidance it shapes kids their concept of what “normal” sex is before they are given the chance to figure that out on their own.

This is the argument that always bother me. It boils down to "Parents just need to parent heir kids." Look at the impossible task of raising a child who's brain isn't impacted by our pornified society today. Why do we think parents are on their own when it comes to keeping their kids from porn but are more than happy to help them keep their kids from cigarettes/alcohol?

> Why do we think parents are on their own when it comes to keeping their kids from porn but are more than happy to help them keep their kids from cigarettes/alcohol?

Because those are physical goods that require a point of sale.

Porn is available at a click’s notice, for free. You’ll never stop access to that, kids are much more clever than people give them credit for. So the logical step is to teach them how to manage that in a healthy way.

Like, you can lock down all home PCs, filter your router, apply parental controls to their mobile phone, and they’ll just have their buddies send them obfuscated porn, or sneakernet it to them.

Theres all sorts of statistics about the increasing amount of men that are virgins into their 20s and beyond, declining marriage rates, declining birth rates, "inceldom" etc. etc.

Its certainly plausible that at least for some subset of people becoming porn addicts when they enter puberty is disrupting their ability to form relationships as an adult.

Having said that its not really clear censorship is the answer. Probably over time phenotypes overly sensitive to porn addiction will just go extinct.

You really believe the negative effect has been nothing? I totally oppose this law, but I think claiming that widespread access to internet pornography has had no ill effect at all is denying your own lying eyes.

You're free to list these effects.

Obviously the "sex crazed delusional woman abusers" theory didn't play out, ironically domestic abuse fell off cliff as internet porn became widespread. Not saying they are necessarily related, but the prude hot heads of the early 00's were _completely_ wrong.

https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/ncvrw2018/...

Yes, and sexual assault also declined along with porn proliferation:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201601...

But this isn't a popular thing to raise because it contradicts the insane zero-evidence misandrist talking point we've had shouted for decades that rape is about "male power" or "controlling women". Turns out it's actually about "being horny with criminal intent".

You see no negative effects because your brain grew up on porn just like everyone else you interact with. If everyone is sick then it's going to look normal. To really see the effects of porn you need to ask what could porn affect? Possibly someone's understanding of sexual ethics? Could it push their sexual interests into more and more extreme positions? The generation before has better mental health, less divorce, higher birthrates, etc. Now virtually everything is seen through a sexual lens.

There's a growing problem of women damaging their anuses

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/11/rise-in-popu...

Here's an article talking about a teen girl's attempt to imitate porn:

>A 16-year-old girl’s bowel was so badly injured during group anal sex that she needs to use a colostomy bag for the rest of her life.

https://nypost.com/2019/01/16/teen-suffers-life-changing-inj...

You're making a lot of claims there without proving causes and ignoring a whole swath of socioeconomic factors in favour of your bugbear, but just to disprove one, divorce rates have been on a downward trend since online pornography became really ubiquitous. So it turns out porn saves marriages!

https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/lo...

Both of those issues sound less like problems with the porn itself but there being so much stigma around it that we can't openly talk about what is real and what isn't. (Or "Normal", for lack of a better term here. Basically what doesn't require training to do)

We have these discussions around R rated movies, Violent Video Games, and many other things. But if we could actually discuss porn and sex as naturally as we talk about these other things than people would actually properly understand what they are seeing.

But we don't, and that is a societal problem.

Anecdata.

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