The CBC’s Doc Zone had an interesting show last night about the sexualization of children. At one point a group of high school girls were talking about the way porn affects boys, and they said it teaches them to treat girls with contempt and call them bitches, sluts, whores, cunts – you know the drill.
If they’re right, that seems a rather depressing sign for the future.
My son is 17. We’ve been having lots of talks with him lately, and a lot of them cover this topic.
One thing which has stuck me the way his view of the world is so powerfully connected to the way life is portrayed in movies and television. He thinks all cops are John McClain. He thinks if you’re in really good shape you can dodge bullets, or jump off a six-story building into a dumpster and live. He thinks you can hack the Pentagon with a cellphone.
So of course he thinks the typical porn he and his buddies find on the internet is the way you “do it.”
Sigh. More in a long string of bullshit to try to counter in the effort to raise a kid who isn’t a dick.
Ow ow ow, god that must be horrible.
The Doc Zone episode is viewable, by the way. Maybe suggest that he watch it!
Dan Savage recently interviewed the woman who created the makelovenotporn website. It was an interesting discussion. But her solution to the ubiquity of porn is to have realistic video depictions of real sex (not “reel sex” filmed to the specifications of websites specializing in “real” sex.)
That’s a good thought, Ophelia. Sometimes it’s hard to get him to sit down and take these matters seriously. But it’s worth a shot.
The video is “currently unavailable” at the link, but I will dig around. Maybe it’s temporary, or available elsewhere.
Trigger warning
The first porn flick I saw when I was a curious teenager ended up showing a mouthy woman complaining to her boyfriend/mate who then flies into a rage at her whining and punches her to the ground, and then he rapes her while she was screaming for him to stop. And after he was finished, I guess to add insult to injury, the actress says “I LIKED it!”
I felt sick to my stomach for about two days straight, literally felt like throwing up for two days nonstop. This was regular pay-per-view available on basic cable, not some weird rare shit. I avoided porn after that. There was no warning that this was violent porn, I don’t even know if it would be considered violent porn by most people. And I got the message, be careful when you talk back to a man.
Another reason why I think that having a girl instead of three boys might actually have been easier… *sigh* At least I have a few years before this issue comes up.
*By easier I mean that so far, it looks like teaching someone how to not abuse their privilege and open their eyes to the non-privilege of others is going to be a tougher job than teaching someone to stand up for themselves in a world stacked (even a little bit) against them. I don’t know, but day by day that’s the impression I’m getting. Or maybe I’m just particularly depressed about the future tonight.
By the way, Ophelia, I very much enjoy your blog, even though a lot of the time I find your topics depressing and disheartening. Thank you for writing, thank you for making me think, just thank you for being out there.
Sorry, should have added a trigger warning. Can you edit my post Ophelia to add one?
Alternet had a fascinating article a while ago, The Absurd Myths Porn Teaches Us About Sex. There’s mention of a teenaged boy who seriously believed that all women — no matter what they may say to the contrary — really want to be called sluts during sex. One woman interviewed mentions a boyfriend who informed her that she was masturbating “wrong” because she was touching her clitoris, and another who had never seen a naked woman except in porn and genuinely didn’t realize women have pubic hair.
If pornographic tropes are a reflection of current or past sexual mores, perhaps it isn’t a portent of the future, but a relic of the past.
If high school girls are an especially good source of information on the effects of porn, that is indeed a rather depressing sign for the future.
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