Bunny Slope

I'm worried about where the youth of today are getting their porn. I know this seems silly, because kids shouldn't have porn, right? I mean, you don't buy an 11 year old a subscription to Playboy. But I'm starting to think that maybe you should keep one in the house.

Flashback to the early 90's, I was a young boy in search of information. Sure, I'd had 5-6th grade "sex ed" and been told by 50 something year old women what was "happening to my body", and I'd seen the terrifying cross sections of male and female genitalia, with the uterus and ovaries completely see through and looking like some sort of demonic goat. My parents were no help, because I was far too shy and ill informed to ask the questions that would have mattered, namely "How does one go about having sex?". To say to an ill informed child that you put the penis in the vagina is a little like telling one that in order to make a Long Island Iced tea, you mix white liquors and Coke. Sure, I knew the ingredients, but their nature and the dynamics of the combination were lost on me. My friends, despite having more confidence in their answers than me, also seemed ill informed. So I search the home for information. I imagine most boys do. And they find it. My parents being rather conservative, the pickings were slim. My neighbor gave mom her old Glamour, Redbook, and on the rarest of occasions, Cosmopolitan magazines. Those were usually good for some information, and the occasional sexy picture. Dad had the special erotic issue of American Photography stashed under some stuff in the cluttered corner of the den. This had the clearest pictures of naked women I had ever seen and was worth more than those classes in 5th grade by a long shot. Then, I discovered that the Playboy channel, which was always scrambled but you could occasionally see something, would magically unscramble itself for about five minutes before 3 o'clock every day. This is where I saw what sex could look like, and let me tell you books didn't do it justice. And so until I got to college and had internet access, I learned about sex through snuck porn, magazine articles, and eventually, God bless her, my friend down the street. I imagine the experience was similar for most people my age.

Now look at today. Most kids have internet in their home. Some have it in their room. So it's not like kids have to sneak into their father's drawer for a Playboy anymore. So what are they seeing? Let's face it, the internet is messed up. How do we explain to children the idea of "Beginner Porn"? Because in most homes, Dad's magazines and videos and Mom's novels probably have nothing near what can be found with a few clicks on the net. And no matter the arguments to be made about all porn being degrading to those involved, I think it is safe to say that some porn is more degrading than other porn. Dad's Playboys don't use the term "cum guzzling slut", but a google search yields 9110 hits, 30,200 without the quotes. Children use porn as education in many ways, and I'm not sure there's anything wrong with that. They certainly don't get solid information from schools, and even the most progressive parent usually can't provide sufficient visual aid. And I'm not opposed to more extreme kinds of porn. Hell, I like some of it. Porn is a great realm to explore fantasy. But it's certainly something I've had to grow into. I'm curious as to what impression our pre-teen boys are getting of sex these days when sex is divided up for them into categories of fetish.

I'm not saying I'm going to start a porn site that is marketed to 12 year olds. But someone with a better lawyer than me probably should.