How to Talk to Kids About Porn
If you think your kids aren’t getting any sex education, you’re wrong: they get a lot of it from pornography. Isn’t that awful?
In a cover article for New York Times Magazine, “What Teens Learn From Online Porn,” Maggie Jones writes that boys, on average, first watch pornography at age 13; girls are about 14 years old. (Author Peggy Orenstein refers to the first viewing at age 11 in this interview with Wired .) Most are not yet having sex, but the imagery and storylines have a profound impact on how boys and girls see their nascent sex lives. Jones quotes Kew, a 15-year-old boy, as saying, “Guys are built, dominant, have a big penis and live long lives.” Another boy named Drew added that if you don’t do it like the guys in porn, “you’re afraid she won’t like you.” Girls wonder if prolonged intercourse they don’t enjoy – like ejaculating a partner on their face or engaging in anal sex – is just the price you pay for a guy.
Fortunately, sex educators are doing this, and parents can take a page out of their book teaching kids about the ramifications of the ubiquity of porn. You can talk frankly about the expectations that porn creates – both what partners are willing to do and what they feel obligated to do, and what will give the partner pleasure (spoiler: a lot of what porn implies will help a woman herself it will not work ).
Start Strong, a peer-to-peer leadership program run by the Boston Public Health Agency, launched a course called The Truth About Pornography: A Pornography and Literacy Education Program for High School Students to Reduce Sexual and Dating Violence, which has a component known as Porn Literacy. “. Jones writes that he “aims to make [students] more savvy and critical pornography users by exploring how gender, sexuality, aggression, consent, race, homosexual sex, relationships, and body images (or, in the case of consent, No). portrayed) in porn. “
For parents who want to talk frankly with their child about sex and what they think they already know, porn literacy should be in the spotlight, and I highly recommend reading the entire story of New York Times Magazine . Below are a few tips from the article on how to have a productive conversation about porn.
Be realistic about whether they’ve already watched porn
Children watch pornography by accident (mistakenly entering a URL, a friend shows them a clip) or intentionally, even if parents think they are not: Jones cites a study from Indiana University that found that half of parents who have children are watching pornography. they think not. She writes: “Depending on the intercourse, the parents underestimated what their children saw by 10 times.”
Grind your teeth and ask them what kind of intercourse they’ve seen
It will likely be excruciating and make a covert parental desire for a good porn literacy program at your local high school. But children see things like aggressive “stabbing” images of intercourse; “Face masks” (when a man ejaculates on a woman’s face); group sex; BDSM; and double penetration. It is worth talking with your children about whether they think that future partners will definitely like such maneuvers in real life, and whether they feel obligated to pull porn moves on new partners, even if they themselves do not want to. In porn, men are often portrayed as over-aggressive, and women like it, which is not always the case in real life. The emphasis on constant communication is key.
Describe what “affirmative consent” looks like
When I was a teenager and a college student, the campus mantra was no means no. This has changed over the years, and the new rules are called “affirmative consent”, otherwise known as “yes then yes.” Despite what opponents say, affirmative consent means that you absolutely need to get verbal consent or, if you are especially paranoid, written consent – this concept simply refers to finding enthusiasm in a partner. (If you or your kids are not clear on what kind of enthusiasm looks like a sex partner, then yes, I suppose you should ask for verbal permission.) Now this can be tricky, because everyone in porn sure looks like enthusiastic, even with most incredible action, which brings us to our next topic, namely …
Discuss openly anatomy and sexual pleasure, especially female sexual pleasure
Jones reports that a pornography instructor once drew a picture of the vulva and gave students a short lesson in female anatomy, including the clitoris and its function as a female pleasure center. Now it was a bit of their cockpit – the instructors weren’t supposed to teach kids how to have sex or offer “advice”, but nonetheless, it is valuable information for students who have only seen female sexual pleasure in porn. Your boys should end the discussion realizing that much of what seems to turn women on to porn will not work with a real female partner; Your girls need to understand that they may well not enjoy what female porn actors like. This brings us to our next topic …
Talk About Labor Standards And Wage Rates In The Porn Industry
This is depressing and it should be. Porn Literacy instructors pinpoint how much performers are paid to perform degrading acts using information taken from the documentary The Price of Pleasure : $ 1,300 for a “gangbang”, eg $ 100 for each additional partner. Artists don’t have much protection, and long-term pornstar effects include PTSD .
Optional: Introduce the idea of ”ethical porn” and sexually explicit videos.
I’m not sure how old a child must be to be comfortable talking about it – I think, an adult, if they even tolerate a conversation on this topic at this moment. But it’s worth mentioning that women shoot porn according to fair labor standards and include a variety of body types, as well as adult education videos created by feminists that address how-to questions without any problem messages. goes along with mainstream porn. Erica Lust, a feminist porn producer, has launched a website called The Porn Conversation , which aims to help parents help their kids navigate the ugly messages that typical porn spreads.
Jones notes that no one thinks porn education is coming up in American high schools anytime soon – and yet, porn is everywhere. But there is also a lot of unhealthy information about relationships, body image, harmony, masculinity and femininity. As Orenstein says, “You should have already talked to your children about relationships, human behavior and sexuality. So when you get to talking about porn, you have the foundation. Porn doesn’t have to be where you start. “