Has pron become de facto sex education?

[Keroin]

OK, I watched it. Thanks MWY.

First of all, the sound of her earring banging against her mic made me want to strangle her. Honestly. It was like nails on a chalkboard - why didn't the sound department pick up on this??!!

She's trying to sell her website so she has to make a convincing argument, that's what I got out of it. That doesn't mean that she doesn't have some interesting points to make, I'm just not sure how effective her idea is going to be in the real world.

The hand raising bit made me laugh.

I'd be curious to hear the POV of more young people on this subject.

 

[00Syd]

As a certified young person, I would be much more willing to give my views on this subject if I wasn't so fucking tired of this entire conversation.


/contributing nothing

 

[MisterSir]

As a certified young person, I would be much more willing to give my views on this subject if I wasn't so fucking tired of this entire conversation.

Second. Talk to me in ten years.

 

[kaycee217]

...
I'm just not buying the notion that young guys today A) automatically want to treat every female like a pornwhore, and ONLY like a pornwhore, and B) automatically assume that all females want to be treated that way right off the bat.

I agree.

...
I don't know. On the one hand, I can't imagine why a self-confident, sexually curious guy with personal access would use porn as a substitute for actual exploration. On the other hand, I am repeatedly stunned by the number of guys who show up here and ask something like, "My girlfriend wants me to tie her up and use her, so NOW what should I do?" I'm also stunned by the number of people who respond to that type of thing by saying, "It's great to read the library!"

So maybe porn is to general sex as online BDSM info is to kink? People now have this notion that there's a standard to follow. Or something. Again, I don't know.

Why does that stun you? Because there are so many videos and stories out there to "explain" what one does next?

 

[DeepGreenEyes]

As a certified young person, I would be much more willing to give my views on this subject if I wasn't so fucking tired of this entire conversation.

/contributing nothing

Second. Talk to me in ten years.

Okay. Fine. How about prawns, then? Have prawns become de facto sex education?

http://www.thesydneytraveler.com/files/2008/06/prawn.jpg

 

[kaycee217]

...
What do you think? Is she right? Have you experienced this influence in your own life or in your partners?
...?

I think Cindy has a point. There are so many women out there that think being some skinny model is the only way they can be sexy and/or beautiful. Given that, it wouldn't surprise me that many men think commercial pornography is how one should have sex. But as mentioned before, I don't think all young men take commercial, hardcore pornography as the absolute truth.

I do wonder what exactly Cindy's experiences are like. Are they like:

Him: "Let me come on your face; you know you want it"
Cindy: "Ummm, no thanks"
Him: "Why not? Why wouldn't you want it?"
Cindy: "Because it just doesn't do it for me."
Him: "What's wrong with you?"

Or

Him: "Where do you want me to come? Would you like it on your face?"
Cindy: "Ummm, no thanks"
Him: "Well...ok. Shall I just come inside you then?"


My point is that it's understandable that young men would use commercial hardcore porn as a guide to sex and honestly, I see nothing wrong with this, AS LONG AS, he keeps his mind open to the fact that all women are different and commercial hardcore porn is often not what women want.

 

[midwestyankee]

As a certified young person, I would be much more willing to give my views on this subject if I wasn't so fucking tired of this entire conversation.


/contributing nothing

Now I'm curious what it is about this this one and one-half page thread that has made you"so fucking tired of this entire conversation."

I can only infer by this that you mean a larger conversation, of which this little bit of chit chat is only one small part. Am I right?

 

[00Syd]

Okay. Fine. How about prawns, then? Have prawns become de facto sex education?

http://www.thesydneytraveler.com/files/2008/06/prawn.jpg

We'll need to set up a committee in congress to investigate this terrifying new trend of prawn-based sex-ed right away! The country needs to know about this terrible new epidemic that could be harming our precious children!

To the batmobile!

 

[00Syd]

Now I'm curious what it is about this this one and one-half page thread that has made you"so fucking tired of this entire conversation."

I can only infer by this that you mean a larger conversation, of which this little bit of chit chat is only one small part. Am I right?

This 1.5 pages is only a single drop in a much larger, infuriating bucket of roundabout, alarmist, completely-besides-the-point drek.

 

[midwestyankee]

"Personal access." Yes. Access, self-confidence, curiosity. That's all a guy needs.

Before they invented the printing press, somehow people were fucking! And if art is any guide, some of that fucking was quite imaginative.

I don't know. On the one hand, I can't imagine why a self-confident, sexually curious guy with personal access would use porn as a substitute for actual exploration. On the other hand, I am repeatedly stunned by the number of guys who show up here and ask something like, "My girlfriend wants me to tie her up and use her, so NOW what should I do?" I'm also stunned by the number of people who respond to that type of thing by saying, "It's great to read the library!"

So maybe porn is to general sex as online BDSM info is to kink? People now have this notion that there's a standard to follow. Or something. Again, I don't know.

This is actually the curiosity that I alluded to in an earlier post. I wonder if there's also a fair amount of "it says so on the internet so this must be how I'm supposed to be a submissive/dominant" going on out there.

As Keroin mentioned in another post, it's stunning how many people buy into the faux reality of so-called reality tv. If it's on tv (or, these day, perhaps also on the internet) it must be true, right?

In the absence of good information, people will seek out any information that's a) available, and b) confirms what they already suspect.

 

[midwestyankee]

I'm only 24, so I grew up in the porn generation. I don't really think it's quite as bad as some people seem to think. Hell, I wrote my first BDSM story before I even knew such a thing existed or even saw a porno. I was actually a bit surprised once I got to the internet and found out that it wasn't really that original. Really, the only thing I was off base on was a certain member's pet peeve, the clit. I didn't know it existed until I got into researching techniques. I did assume that women got oral too, though, since they sucked guys' dicks.

The bolded part doesn't speak very well about the quality of your sex ed, now, does it? Yikes. It's good that you were curious and interested enough to research techniques.

 

[midwestyankee]

I think Cindy has a point. There are so many women out there that think being some skinny model is the only way they can be sexy and/or beautiful. Given that, it wouldn't surprise me that many men think commercial pornography is how one should have sex. But as mentioned before, I don't think all young men take commercial, hardcore pornography as the absolute truth.

I do wonder what exactly Cindy's experiences are like. Are they like:

Him: "Let me come on your face; you know you want it"
Cindy: "Ummm, no thanks"
Him: "Why not? Why wouldn't you want it?"
Cindy: "Because it just doesn't do it for me."
Him: "What's wrong with you?"

Or

Him: "Where do you want me to come? Would you like it on your face?"
Cindy: "Ummm, no thanks"
Him: "Well...ok. Shall I just come inside you then?"


My point is that it's understandable that young men would use commercial hardcore porn as a guide to sex and honestly, I see nothing wrong with this, AS LONG AS, he keeps his mind open to the fact that all women are different and commercial hardcore porn is often not what women want.

In bold: this is her point. My question to you then is this: why do you figure that this is understandable?

 

[infinity706]

The bolded part doesn't speak very well about the quality of your sex ed, now, does it? Yikes. It's good that you were curious and interested enough to research techniques.

Actually, my sex ed sucked. It was taught by a heavily religious nurse, that the schoolboard just let teach whatever she wanted. The entire program was a video on the mechnics of reproduction (minus an indication that there was ever sex) and serveral videos on stds, mostly AIDS. Questions were heavily discouraged and the question about birth control was shot down directly. I actually wrote a whole BDSM story from a surprisingly accurate dream I had. Until I went to college, though, I had pretty much zero sex education. Of course, the only time I asked my parents about sex, I was about 5 and they obviously didn't go into a ton of detail at that point. I just guessed at how sex might work from people talking about it and the fact that I'd seen some of the neighbor girls naked when I was younger.

 

[satindesire]

imo, porn has done more harm to body image than to sex education. while i have definitely noticed that younger people tend to pick up sexual "technique" from porn, the vast majority of folks grow out of that. what is more damaging is that many men feel like their penises are freakishly small and inefficient, and many MANY women feel like their genital areas are freakishly deformed and ugly, all because they do not match up to what they see in hundreds and hundreds of pornography films. somehow i do not think there would be such a concept as cosmetic vaginal "rejuvenation" surgery, if not for pornography.

I agree with this. From the counseling/question-answer sites that I've frequented over the years, I see FAR too many questions from people whose views of what is "normal" in sex has been damaged by porn.

The greater question is, WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT?!

The answer in my eyes? Educate the younger generation. Talk to our kids, openly and honestly, with REAL sexual education. Answer people's questions without being embarrassed and ashamed to talk about sex in reality. Not "this can get you pregnant, so don't do it." that the schools push these days. Even though my parents were far more open than most, I still didn't know what a "clitoris" was until I was 20 years old, which I'm not going to do to to my daughter. My parents did so much of a better job at sexually educating me (even though it was incomplete) that I found the sex ed in school boring.

This 1.5 pages is only a single drop in a much larger, infuriating bucket of roundabout, alarmist, completely-besides-the-point drek.

*dies laughing* WOooOow! SOMEone is craaaanky today.

My point is that it's understandable that young men would use commercial hardcore porn as a guide to sex and honestly, I see nothing wrong with this, AS LONG AS, he keeps his mind open to the fact that all women are different and commercial hardcore porn is often not what women want.

I view hardcore porn almost like sexual brainwashing. If a young sexually inexperienced and uneducated guy sees 1500 videos of a guy ramming a girl's cervix while she screams orgasmically, he's GOING to think THAT is how sex REALLY is, in REALITY. If a person sees something often enough with little other influence or education otherwise, that's what he's going to believe.

ETA: unfortunately, young inexperienced girls often don't have the courage enough to tell a guy "Hey, stop, that hurts." or "Can you touch my clit while we do it?" because she might not even know what vaginal penetration isn't going to get her off! That's the trouble with porn, it gives an unrealistic viewpoint about sex that too many people take as truth. Is it their fault for being naive, or is it our fault for not educating them? I think it's both. I think it's a whole myriad of little problems that leads up to men and women having really bad sex and not understanding why it's bad, because "Isn't this how sex is supposed to be? Why doesn't it feel good? Why can't I orgasm? Why does it hurt?" etc etc etc...

 

[midwestyankee]

This 1.5 pages is only a single drop in a much larger, infuriating bucket of roundabout, alarmist, completely-besides-the-point drek.

I'm sorry you found this discussion to be alarmist and completely besides the point. Perhaps we should put up a disclaimer for any discussion started by someone over the age of 30?

Frankly, my reading of many of the comments has been that the influence of online porn has been comparable to the influence of other forms of erotica that were available to people before the widespread availability of the internet. None of it has been alarmist and much of the discussion has been interesting.

But then I'm not a twenty-something so I can't see the world through your eyes. I trust you to help us out through your contributions here. But if you'd rather not, that's entirely fine.

 

[sb2009]

here is my take, and it's not about just pron but life in general...we have had in the past 20 years, more change to our information gathering and disbursent than in the previous 500. We have whiplash.

Why do I worry about my parenting about 1000 times more than my grandmother did? Because she didn't have access to 10,00 uber mommy blogs to compare herself too. She had some books, but they were greatly outnumberd by the real life people she saw, warts and all.

Why do I tend to think I'm not that attractive? (shut up, I'm not fishing, I just didnt' want to use a general "you") Because I see way more people on the interwebs and tv who are super duper gorgeous than my mom did. In fact, I see more media people than I do real live people.

I could go on. I don't think it's either good or bad, it just is. We'll adjust as people. Right now, my theory is that we are in the middle of it so it's hard to see what's happening.

 

[Netzach]

This 1.5 pages is only a single drop in a much larger, infuriating bucket of roundabout, alarmist, completely-besides-the-point drek.

FWIW the social retardation I alluded to in which people can't say "can you put your hand there" is NOT more a feature of your generation than others. I hope I made that clear. I think a lot of people well into the other generations have been so gripped by virtual life that they can't function in the meat world.

Also hello - men have been watching the porn since it was made - the real new thing is "are the girls unable to escape feeling like they have to be this?" because their access to hardcore is equal for the first time ever - and how is that different from any other media? I think the role of the media in fucking with the girls' heads is huge and bad and yet overstated. The real reason for eating disorders is not a commercial with Kate Moss too many and the real reason for sexual insanity is not merely access to rump plunderers vol 856.

Overall I think the access that women have to sexual material - unprecedented - without having to go into the sleaze world for it - is mostly good.

Conversations like this one used to take place through meetings found on the backpage of free weeklies - I didn't have the balls to go that route more than once in my life, and I didn't have to because people were *online* I was told. Wow.

 

[Netzach]

I had very good sex ed that was accompanied by a lot of discomfort and heavy awkward and spent a few scant minutes on how sex feels good and had an anonymous questions box, but honestly, it didn't cover anything beyond mechanics.

If we were teaching people *how to talk to one another and how to respect one another* and said "by the way kiddies, everything you learned in ethics class applies when you are making out" and actually had a discussion like that it would have been useful.

The weird thing is how *non* radical some of the things that need to happen are. They're the kinds of things that might lead a kid to actually *independently choose to abstain* given the options - if the discussion is had.

 

[sb2009]

Netach - what you are describing is almost word for word a class that I had at a seminar when I worked in the Sexual Assault Prevention field. I can't remember the program, but the premise was that in order for sexual assault to be reduced, a shift in the idea of communication and talking about sex needed to happen. I am so not describing it well, but it was amazing, listening to this guy talk about how he would give classes to college kids and they would work up to things like "oh my god, it feels so good you sucking on my cock, can I put my finger in your panties?" type thing...that the whole way we talk about sex and even negotiate fucking is so rife with opportunity for misunderstanding,we need to re think the whole thing.

 

[Netzach]

Can you imagine if there was porn in which people actually talked and it wasn't stupid and it wasn't self consciously "educational" man, that might be hot.

Yeah, I think that it's time for "implied" to die a swift death. "Implied" gets you into court. "Implied" gets you bored mechanical ramming from behind *every* night (more power to you if you love that) "Implied" makes sex into an awkward moment of non-connection unless you get freaky lucky. *implied* is ever guy wondering if it would be OK or really really bad to cum on her face but secretly wanting to.

 

[JMohegan]

Why does that stun you? Because there are so many videos and stories out there to "explain" what one does next?

No.

Because I can't imagine feeling the urge, or the need, to ask for help.

 

[Netzach]

No Internet, but we had plenty of spectacular Playboy pics, back in the day. We also had plenty of Penthouse Letters. But only a fucking idiot would have considered it likely that a perfectly proportioned substitute teacher would show up one day and initiate a wild gymnastic after-class encounter, culminating when she shrieked in ecstasy while he spurted three quarts bareback during simultaneous orgasm.

Are people postulating that young guys are more gullible today?

Also, what assumptions are folks here making about sex ed, back in the day? That is, what is that people assume Internet porn has replaced, in this regard?

OT -

One thing I've found hysterically funny as I've gotten older is how many people I meet who have what I think of as a penthouse letter kind of experience in their past. It makes me feel positively prudish - because I'm very much a "that doesn't happen when you get a pizza!" person.

 

[infinity706]

I seriously doubt the increased use of porn is as much of an issue as some people think. Having sampled every age group from 20-80some, I can say that there's a lot of people from the pre-porn era that aren't that great at sex, either. I'm even casually dating a woman old enough to be my mom, that's had double digits worth of partners and still, I've had to teach her quite a bit about sex. (she has taught me a lot about other things, though and is an above average fuck)

 

[Netzach]

No.

Because I can't imagine feeling the urge, or the need, to ask for help.

JM bondage leads to the most injuries of anything we do. That's a little sobering. And yes I mean pantyhose to headboard and fuck kinds of stuff. Permanent nerve damage is just not cool.

I'm kind of glad that people are like "I want to do this and don't know how"

Even the common sense stuff about tying people up only mitigates that risk, doesn't eliminate it. People who get hurt weren't always doing the stupid.

 

[infinity706]

OT -

One thing I've found hysterically funny as I've gotten older is how many people I meet who have what I think of as a penthouse letter kind of experience in their past. It makes me feel positively prudish - because I'm very much a "that doesn't happen when you get a pizza!" person.

Hey, don't feel bad. I haven't had any Penthouse letter experiences related to pizza deliveries, either. Of course, I also haven't ever had pizza delivered since I've been an adult. (when I want pizza, I go to the pizza buffet, so I can have some of everything)