May I ask why this was downvoted? He's absolutely correct. I suppose that's what you get for living in a society that demonizes sex.
This isn't to say that porn is inherently a bad thing[1]. The issue is that if the teens aren't getting good information elsewhere (other than the base 'here are some anatomical diagrams of sex organs' teaching), porn becomes a learning tool, which isn't necessarily a good thing.
[1] I realize that the production sucks in a lot of people that suffered from abuse, and it's debatable whether or not large 'porn houses' are just exploiting these people.
Being exposed to a variety of options and ways to have sex isn't bad. Anal sex can be quite fun, and if someone doesn't like it they're quickly going to say no. Rimming has its risks (like everything else) and isn't for everyone (like everything else), but it's pretty common and not horrendously unsafe. If you try to have sex without lube, you're quickly going to discover the problem. I can't speak for straight porn, but most porn that involves penetrative sex features condoms; if you're watching porn that was made in the last 10-20 years, it's really difficult not to see condoms in action.
Just about everybody reading this grew up with porn as teens (and possibly before) and we're not broken or messed up. Before the internet, teens got their hands on magazines and those generations aren't damaged by it either. If anything, I'd suspect teens today are better educated (and having better sex) than any generation before. Porn, together with improved sex education, has had a large role to play.
Saying that porn is bad because it teaches people different ways to have sex doesn't make sense. However, I will concede that the key here is sex education. If someone isn't receiving sex education they're not going to know about safe sex anyway, and restricting access to porn isn't going to make the situation any better. Porn should be supplemented by a decent sex education, and thankfully an adequate sex education is provided in the vast majority of the developed world.
If anything I'm grateful for all the porn I watched as a teen, and I think my sex life today is significantly better because of it. It taught me more than my prudish religious parents would (or could) and combined with my school's sex education classes, I was good to go have fun, figure out what was right for me, and do it without getting diseases along the way!
| Saying that porn is bad because it teaches
| people different ways to have sex doesn't
| make sense.
1. I am against censorship.
2. I don't think that porn by itself dangerous to humans in some sort of Puritanical way of thinking.
3. My thinking is that a lot of porn out there is all about the male dominating the female, and basically just using her. Allowing young children to have access to this shapes their views on sex. The older the child, the more prepared they are to deal with this. Taken with a healthy dose of discussion from parents that aren't afraid to talk sex with their kids this might not be so bad, but a lot of parents are averse to these discussions, so the child is only left with porn as a teacher.
4. Porn is all about fantasy, so if you are using porn as a guide (e.g.) for anal sex, you're not seeing the prep that is needed for the scene. There are videos out there of unprotected anal sex, unprotected ass-to-mouth, anal sex where the guy just jams it right in, etc. None of these show the behind-the-scenes work that goes into making those scenes safe (anal douching, warming up rather than instance penetration, etc), or are just showing people being unsafe without any context for learning. It's not meant to be a how-to guide.
5. I keep focusing on anal sex because it's so prevalent in porn now vs. the past. There are many other things that could also be bad[1] (e.g. skat), but it's less likely that kids/teens will come across them.
6. Many women are against anal sex because of bad experiences. If teenagers start engaging in more anal sex, it could just as easily have the opposite affect on 'uptake' of anal sex: inexperienced, uninformed teenage boys attempting painful anal sex with teenage girls that then grow up with a bad view of anal sex. Or teenage girls getting painful UTIs due to unsafe practice of anal sex, and writing it off.
7. I'm also envisioning teenage boys demanding anal sex, and teenage girls going along with it even though it is uncomfortable and/or painful as some sort of bid for acceptance or because they like the boy (possibly not even telling the boys that they don't enjoy it because this might be viewed as a bad thing; i.e. peer pressure to grin and bear it). I'll admit that this is not really based on any evidence and I (hopefully) wouldn't legislate based on just my unfounded opinions.
8. I'm often found to be a contrarian. If someone puts forth an idea, sometimes all I can see are edge cases.
9. Most of the porn that I found as a child was relatively tame, and there wasn't such free access to video porn as there is today with the 'tubes.
10. I realize that a lot of this isn't at some 'sky is falling' level like many anti-porn conservatives would have people believe.
| Before the internet, teens got their hands on
| magazines and those generations aren't damaged
| by it either
1. In a picture, you don't pick up on the manner-isms and general body language that you would see if you were watching the same thing in video form. E.g. you see an even starker picture of 'the woman is an object' when you watch a video of a guy berating a woman while dominating her vs. just seeing a few snapshots of the same act.
2. Going back to the anal sex example (yeah, yeah, beating a dead horse), seeing a couple of pictures of anal sex, you know that you're missing out on the full act and just seeing a snapshot. If you watch a video of anal sex from start to end, you could easily not realize all of the steps involved (before, after, in the middle, but cut out in post-production), and think that you now have a complete picture of what is involved and how it happens.
[1] Bad as in for health reasons in this case.
I have a feeling that in spite of all this teens google (or back in the day, AltaVista'd) how-to guides about what they're seeing. There are tons of resources online and, perhaps I may have been in the minority, but I was Lycosing all kinds of guides about anal sex, safe sex, different kinds of kinky sex, etc if I saw something that piqued my interest. Porn showed me what was possible and written articles gave me more details about what I was seeing. I tried all kinds of stuff because of the porn I watched and I believe I'm better off for it. I had a lot of fun because of it.
It seems that what you're really arguing for is not a restriction on adult content, but more of it in the form of better and broader sex education. If that is the case, I couldn't agree more. If half of these [1] books were available to teens as part of sex ed I think they'd be getting a better sex education because it's mixing naughty pics with good information.
I have almost no exposure to straight porn so I can't speak for that side, but I don't see this kind of degrading behavior in gay porn that you're talking about. Maybe there's some kind of difference here that's coloring my opinion but I really don't think I have a clue what you're talking about in regards to men dominating women in porn. (If you want to link to some examples, this might be the only time NSFW content is appropriate in a HN comment!)
What kind of porn did you watch as a teen, and how has it affected you as an adult? I'm willing to wager you watched a lot of stuff and haven't been negatively affected as an adult.
You really are looking for the edge cases and disregarding the general benefits of porn. It's hard to imagine that society is being horrifically damaged by porn, and in fact I'd argue that society shapes porn to a greater extent than porn shapes society. If women are degraded in porn (as you say they are), it's likely because that's a reflection of society.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1/175-4932095-5801103...
I wouldn't be so concerned with children stumbling across certain types of porn if the realities around the porn were explained to them via their parents and/or sex education classes. To use the anal sex example, if the sex ed classes addressed not just the 'pros and cons' of anal sex, but explained that the anal sex they might encounter in porn excludes a lot of things that happen off-screen (lest teens hear something in sex ed, but see something different in a porn, and think that sex ed class is just a 'bunch of bull' or fearmongering).
Note: When I say children I'm talking maybe 12+ or 13+ here, though I would probably prefer that they didn't get into porn until they were at least 15 or 16.