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Comment by danbruc | Hacker News Reader

Why is this discussion always about nudity and sexuality? Would it not be much better if children see people having fun fucking each other than seeing people murder each other in countless ways? Why is it more acceptable to show Wile E. Coyote trying to murder Road Runner by dropping anvils onto him than showing Bugs Bunny and Lola Bunny fuck each other? Ignoring for the moment that children probably find the former much more funny than the later.

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Graphic violence generally is considered adult content. Let’s not pretend slapstick comedy is the same as graphic violence. Furthermore, you/kids definitely see cartoons where one character is enamored with another (heart eyes jumping out of sockets) and pursues that character for the entirety of the episode.

I am not even talking about really graphic violence, just your run of the mill crime story, shooting your husband to get the life insurance.

Well that’s not considered adult in any jurisdiction I know of. Maybe PG-13 at most.

I mean that is the point. What happens to the rating if the women does not shoot at her husband but opens her bathrobe and starts undressing him?

Nothing. In the US that’d be PG-13 too.

Really? From a quick search I would have assumed it becomes R rated pretty quickly because of sexually oriented nudity.

Violence is normalised due to gun culture in America. Hollywood plays a part in this too. School shootings which is basically a daily event and a unique bug/feature of American life is a symptom of this.

Sex and procreation which is arguably the complete opposite to murder is ostrasized because of it.

Let's take Star Wars. Not "graphic," but a lot of killing going on. Some would argue that making the killing less "graphic" actually desensitizes children to the violence.

"Graphic violence" meant "violence in images" in my lifetime.

Because so many people "learn" words by guessing their meaning from context, it now means what Anthony Burgess called "ultraviolence" in A Clockwork Orange.

Cartoons have already had several re-thinking of what's appropriate as norms have changed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censored_Eleven

> "Graphic violence" meant "violence in images" in my lifetime.

I doubt that

> graphic (adj.) "vivid, describing accurately ," 1660s (graphically "vividly" is from 1570s) [...] Meaning "pertaining to drawing" is from 1756.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/graphic

I’m sure you’ve seen sexual content you wouldn’t want your children to see. A lot of pornography is also for lonely horny men and gives children false and even unhealthy impressions of human sexual experience.

And killing/hitting/maiming another human being is a healthy impression of the human experience compared to it?

There’s violence I don’t want my kids to see either, a “gotcha” involving cartoon violence isn’t approaching the topic in good faith imo. Not really worth discussing further.

It’s more nuanced than sex = good, violence = bad.

There is of course sexual content that is inappropriate for children but I did not advocate for letting children see any sexual content out there instead of an anvil onto the head of a cartoon character. But I think it would be better if the husband comes home and has sex with his wife instead of shooting her in the back.

>but I did not advocate for letting children see any sexual content out there

No, you did.

>Would it not be much better if children see people having fun fucking each other

I believe if we took that path (children see people having fun fucking each other), we will see more 9yo pregnant girls going to school. Are you ready as a parent?

Is there any evidence for that? Why would it not be the opposite, why would a less tabooed treatment of sexuality not lead to better informed children with a lower risk of accidentally getting pregnant?

Why would this be the case? I understand that intuitively it makes sense, but does it actually? What evidence do we have that girls are just like... predisposed to be "sluts"?

In cultures where sex is more taboo, they have bigger problems with teen pregnancy and early marriage. In the US, as access to porn has increased teen pregnancy has plummeted.

Making sex shameful doesn't just magically make people not do it. Tell kids "be abstinent, mmkay" doesnt lower teen pregnancy - it increases it.

Pornography has never been easier to access and teen birth rates have been falling for decades.

Once puberty hormones kick in, teenagers are going to start figuring out that there’s something going on. We’re far better off educating them about the risks involved rather than letting them blindly experiment.

Pornography is probably the worst way to accomplish this goal, of course. Comprehensive sexual health education is vastly preferred. But pretending sex doesn’t exist is how you end up with pregnant kids.

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