On the rare occasions I watch television, I’m always shocked at how unapologetic people often are about treating their children with utter disrespect for their privacy and personal space. Parents confess to doing things to their teenagers that they would never admit to doing to other adults. Going through the teenagers’ pockets and cell phone usage histories, controlling the music they listen to and the books they read, spying after them online, invading their Facebook pages, installing controls on their computers are just some of the measures taken against children and then gleefully discussed as examples of good parenting.
All of these efforts have no practical purpose except giving parents an illusion of control over their children. There is no actual possibility nowadays to control what anybody does online, talks about, reads or listens to. Every instance of spying on children and trying to prevent them from exploring the world the way they want to pushes teenagers further into despising their parents and destroys any form of legitimate human contact.
If you are a parent bent on controlling your teenager or if you know a parent like that, please read this great post on strategies a smart teenager used to fool her controlling parents. Read the post and ask yourself whether there is really any pressing need to force a kid to develop all these mechanisms to protect their privacy from you. If you are a teenager who is controlled “for your own good,” this post will show you how to escape from the unhealthy behavior of your controlling and disrespectful parents.
When I was raising my teenage sister, I knew that the most important thing was to preserve an honest human connection between us. She’d leave her diary and her backpack all over our apartment and she never deleted her ICQ (this was in the late 1990s) history because she knew that I would never stoop to policing her. She also knew that whatever happened and no matter how much she messed up (that’s what teenagers do, they mess up. It’s an important part of their growth), she could always share with me and expect to be treated with respect. This is why today, thirteen years later, we have a very profound, close relationship.
Clarissa's Blog 
You never know where De Devil could be hiding. He could be lurking in the very next diary entry or in the next search of the website “history” records. He’s a wily old fellow Dat Devil.
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I have a friend whose parents are strict about the books she reads. We used to pass them back and forth on the bus so she could keep the ones she was reading at school and I could keep the ones for which she didn’t have room in her locker.
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When I noticed my daughter had watched a movie I wouldn’t have necessarily chosen her on netflix (streaming), I simply had a brief conversation with her. What did you think about that movie? Did you find it too violent, disturbing? etc… I wouldn’t think to exercise prior censorship. I think it’s more important for the kid herself to develop good judgment about things, because we can’t be around every moment to be making every decision for her.
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Exactly! I wish there were more parents like you around.
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Well there is evidence that exposure to porn at a young age 12 or so increases the likelihood (if the viewer is male) that the user will grow up to be a rapist. (I can’t find the study now, I’m sorry 😦 ) And personally I think that pornography can be very damaging and confusing to all children and adolescents, so I will try my best to restrict computer use when I have children.
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The damage done to children by policing parents is much greater than any putative damage inflicted by pornography. In any case, if a kid wants to look at porn, there is absolutely nothing anybody can realistically do (except locking the kid permanently in a basement) to prevent that from happening.
Besides, all of these horrified stories about how porn can damage one for life are inspired by nothing but the incredible sexual uptightness and ignorance of this puritanical society.
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You’d think parents would consider porn a “safer” sexual outlet since it won’t get your teenager or their girlfriend pregnant, or expose them to any STDs
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Great point!
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How is porn confusing to all adolescents? There are those of us who understand it just fine.
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Good question. 🙂
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Seems like it’s the parents who have more trouble understanding it. When my dad discovered I’d been looking at lesbian porn when I was sixteen he didn’t talk to me for days. (He wasn’t even prying…he just went to play solitaire and I’d been stupid enough to forget to close the browser window.) He’s loosened up a lot lately and he’s cool now, but he used to be very strict in his morals and it really threw him at the time. Meanwhile I was terrified for months with the thought that he didn’t or couldn’t love me anymore and I deserved it because I was sick and a sinner.
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It’s our duty to educate our parents and bring them towards a more progressive, liberated attitude to everything. I find that parents are normally very teachable. They don’t have much of a choice if they want to preserve a relationship with their adult children.
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Again, at 11 you would not be confused by a gang bang?
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“Don’t look at porn, kids! You’ll rape!”
How’s that turning out for everyone here who ever during their adolescence saw pictures of people fucking?
I think the problem there would lie in the kid not being educated in models of sexuality beyond the male-dom/female-sub dynamic that characterizes much pornography, and so comes to take that kind of porn as the model of their own sexual behavior. Clearly, the responsibility is for parents to be forthright about facts like not everybody enjoys being fishhooked. (Also we could stand to see a quite a bit less treating women like toilets in porn.)
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Also, that porn is image designed to titillate, not necessarily a representation of the realities of sexual behavior between consenting adults.
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I’m not a rapist, so no damage was done to me. 🙂 of course, I’m not a man either. It’s male sexuality that is perennially suspected of being potentially violent and brutal, isn’t it?
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That’s definitely the reputation, but I do suspect that my male friends, who are not rapists either, all probably looked at porn when they were teenagers.
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That’s exactly what I mean. So I need to talk to my 8 year olds that not all women enjoy bukake?
Again i think bukake and domiating sex is just fine. But that is a very confusing dynamic to a young child. How could they understand that extreme dominating submission (usually of the woman) does not mean women are usually submissive in other areas of life?
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I know that anecdote is not evidence, but I was exposed to quite a lot of pornography when I was a young kid as I figured out how to use the satellite TV equipment well before my parents realized I was smart enough to do so (early 80s, where it was much harder — imagine manual toggle switches, no channel readouts, etc.) and I am glad I did so — in my arch-conservative area, it was the only sex education that I got.
Though of course porn wasn’t incredibly accurate, and even at eight I was aware enough to realize that, it was anatomically revealing and I feel it greatly enhanced my sexual development and anatomical understanding.
In other words, pornography exposure as a child was a positive experience for me, and I am glad I was as precocious as I was — and I’ve never raped anyone as a result (and there are other studies that suggest that porn reduces rape, however they aren’t conclusive, but then again I doubt the study you don’t cite is all that conclusive, either.)
However, I am an outlier — always have been, always will be. I can just cite my personal experiences, though, as that’s all I have to go by.
BTW, I had no problem understanding porn was fiction, and bad fiction at that, when I was eight — gangbangs, what have you. How could that not be freakin’ obvious?
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Well, different strokes for different folks. If and when you have children we can re-visit your stance on no policing your kids actions. Hopefully it works out fine. 😉
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Please read carefully. I already brought up a kid and the results can be observed today when she is almost 30. And it worked better than fine, to be honest.
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Good for you, I guess your model works, well, at least with one kid. 🙂
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Clarissa, I see a problem here since you brought her since age of 16 (or 15?), not since age of 9-10 of pre-teen. That’s not to minimize your achievement, which is a big one, but it *is* different. I remember my own pre-teen and after 13 year old age and the differences are big, every year counts a lot. 14-15 year olds watching porn is one thing, but 9-10 year old child is different.
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“Clarissa, I see a problem here since you brought her since age of 16 (or 15?), not since age of 9-10 of pre-teen. That’s not to minimize your achievement, which is a big one, but it *is* different. I remember my own pre-teen and after 13 year old age and the differences are big, every year counts a lot. 14-15 year olds watching porn is one thing, but 9-10 year old child is different.”
-Since my parents both worked full-time, I was responsible for my sister all day long since she was 5. When one starts discovering an interest in porn is up to each individual.
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El, but why would 9-10 year old be interested in watching porn in the first place? If a kid prefers porn to, let’s say, WoW, at age 9-10, it means something is wrong in that kid’s real life… Porn in such situation is a symptom, not an isolated issue…
And, as one datapoint, my daughter grew up without internet filters.
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By the way, that study you cant seem to find is just plain old nuts.
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I’m not sure what “old nuts” mean in this particular context. 🙂 🙂
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. 🙂
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Lmao, lets just say the porn doesnt seem to roast these one’s quite like they used to. 😉
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Hee hee hee. 🙂 🙂
And here I feared this would turn into an aggressive thread.
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no need to be rude
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Really? And you dont think that saying boy’s who watch porn are more likely to grow up and become rapist’s rude? Mind you it is probably not quite rude but just very ignorant.
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Parents do have varying degrees of success in controlling childrens’ behaviour. My first wife never saw a movie until she was in college, since her parents considered Hollywood to be sinful, because of all the divorces. Not having internet access at home would probably be pretty successful, too. I also am acquainted with a woman who will not allow her teenage son to watch MTV, since it “objectifies” women, and she wants to be sure that he never learns to do that.
I believe that the level of effectiveness of these efforts is directly proportional to the damage they cause to children.
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She should not allow her teenage son to watch MTV because everyone on that station is a complete asshole moron and also the programming just plain sucks. Its only benefit, if it has one, is like that “16 and Pregnant” horrorshow: case studies in how to fuck up your life.
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No I would fully encourage it, but I’m in the room and can speak about it. And say wow what a bunch of idiots.
Unfortunately, I probably wont be in the room with my son when he sees a woman sucking of a donkey to let him know that thats animal abuse.
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Unfortunately??? This is a really terrifying statement you just made.
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“I believe that the level of effectiveness of these efforts is directly proportional to the damage they cause to children.”
-Absolutely.Many people grow up too beaten down to resist. And then there are those who actually are grateful for what was done to them. Those are the saddest cases.
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I was in my late twenties before I saw any nudity in films. I never saw any porn as a teenager, unless you count reading Tropic of Cancer when I was 18 or 19.
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I don’t think my relatives would be OK with me watching porn as a child or a teen. Since we got a computer only after I went to high school in Israel, the point was moot anyway.
On the other hand, at <=13 age I could read every book in our house. F.e., Kuprin's "The Pit", which is described in wiki as "sensationalist novel about the lurid life of prostitutes", his short stories, any other book. Kuprin was very tame, compared to D/s "Story of O" (it has an entry in wiki, if you're interested), which they bought out of curiosity, I guess, after USSR's gates opened to lots of (probably mainly trash) books. Years later I checked it on Internet and was bored after 1 page, but then it was kind of interesting. It didn't do any damage to me since, unlike many young people I've heard of and seen some, I didn't think it was reality. Not something I expected to experience in the future or imagined that people around me thought as expected/usual.
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It didn’t do any damage to me since, unlike many young people I’ve heard of and seen some, I didn’t think it was reality
I meant that many not experienced people see porn as “real sex”, which it isn’t, not that they read “Story of O” too. And many men do get expectations that a woman should do XYZ since it’s “a norm” after seeing XYZ in porn.
Btw, have you read this novel?
When I recently asked my mother about my age of reading it, she said close to 13 and that she would be afraid of a younger child becoming disgusted with sex after reading such a book at too young age. I agree it can happen, especially if a child can’t go with questions to parents. Which wasn’t my case and, besides, don’t remember any questions from it because of seeing it as fiction, not “How To…”.
Personally I could read everything practically, if wanted, without any damage. But seeing on a screen is very different for me. At this age, after enjoying “The Pit” a lot, I was glad to see there was a movie on Kuprin’s novel, so I gladly switched on TV and after < 5 min turned TV off because of naked women in this house and a couple as if having sex on a bed. Until this day I kind of remember those 2 min. Don't want to think what impression would "Story of O" movie make, were I forced to watch it then. For some reason reading was great, but seeing – disgusting. Interesting whether it's shared by many or not.
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So you see? A child who is not interested in seeing naked people on the screen will simply walk away. Why police the kid then?
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Here is my story, just FYI.
As a child, I really liked erotic literature. But then I starting looking at porn (I was 9) and was very surprised. I didn’t like it at first, but I kept watching because I had heard from so many sources how fantastic it was. Actually it sort of freaked me out, I had never seen a penis before, and I had no idea how any of it worked at all.
Anyway I developed quite a masturbation addiction that lasted with me until high school. It took me longer and longer, more and more pressure, and more and more extreme videos to get me off. By the time I got a bf I was extremely disappointed with the whole thing, and even an experienced boy could not make me cum. The more you masturbate, the less sensitive you become to masturbation – this is a function of our dopamine system.
Porn is much more exciting, and is the only way I could come over and over and over and over.
Once I quit masturbating so much and to porn I regained sensitivity and could come from someone else manually stimulating me.
So, I would prefer if my children did not get addicted like I did. Of course exposure to porn and masturbation does not lead to addiction. But with all other areas the parents are there to guide the children. A parent can prevent a child from eating chips all day and to partake in moderation.
I would prefer not to have the talk when my children are 9, so before then I would like to limit alone time with pornography. At some other time I will speak to them about sex and masturbation and BDSM and homosexuality and I guess just about everything. Won’t that be fun!
Anyway, sorry if that’s TMI but I thought it would be interesting to share my experience. Don’t take too too much away from it when judging my views – they are influenced by a lot of other observations and experiences as well.
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Personally what I plan to do is put a code on the computer, so a youngster can’t use it without an adult unlocking it. (I’m very tech savvy and plan to remain so, so I believe I can do this effectively).
Of course, they will get their hands on it at school from friends, and perhaps attain magazines. That’s fine.
The danger lies from watching hours and hour of porn a day (a very common phenomena) and if a very young elementary school child or middle schooler sees the image without knowing what any of it.
I plan to teach my children very thoroughly about sex and how wonderful it, but I don’t want porn to beat me to it.
You think a 10 year old who sees a man shitting on a woman or engaging in rape play or cumming on her face won’t be confused? If you think porn is the equivalent of play boy magazines in motion you haven’t watched enough porn.
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“You think a 10 year old who sees a man shitting on a woman or engaging in rape play or cumming on her face won’t be confused?”
-Is there a reason why in this description it’s a man doing all these things to a woman? The likelihood of one seeing porn where a woman (or many women) is very active is equally high.
“The danger lies from watching hours and hour of porn a day (a very common phenomena)”
-It’s a common phenomenon among children who are severely traumatized by an intolerable environment at home.
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When I was a kid, I would’ve broken that code one way or another in about a day. 🙂
Now, it’s even easier, with virtual machines, imaging software, etc. Any savvy kid would be around that without you even knowing in a short order.
At least I would’ve been. Doing things like that to kids — at least to me — made it a fun challenge to get around, and also made me resent and hate my parents.
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Look. The typical images in porn are of a man dominating a woman. So perhaps girls who watch porn at a young age end up more submissive. I say nothing about how men actually are but how porn actually is.
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“Look. The typical images in porn are of a man dominating a woman. ”
-That’s completely and utterly wrong.
“So perhaps girls who watch porn at a young age end up more submissive”
-One thing I was never called is “submissive.” 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I didn’t say anything specifically about you. One example neither supports nor counters a general statement.
Yes? Browse through XXXXXX. This is the most popular porn sight in the world.
many if not most videos feature a ‘money shot’ at the end. If that’s not a woman being submissive, I don’t know what is.
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Sorry, no links allowed. I edited the url out of your comment.
Links to your own blog are, of course, welcome.
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“The typical images in porn are of a man dominating a woman. So perhaps girls who watch porn at a young age end up more submissive. I say nothing about how men actually are but how porn actually is.”
Seen a lotta porn, starting from when some kid at summer camp passed around a ratty Hustler (I was 10). Not very submissive.
There is, unfortunately, a popular subgenre of porn in which women are shown as being badly abused, and the extremes of that subgenre seem to influence how people conceive of porn in general. Most porn, however, tends to show women aggressively pursuing and enjoying the fucking.
Now I’ve set you up to make the claims that the women aren’t “really” enjoying it (maybe not; they’re actors paid to make those faces and noises), and that the aggressive pursuit of sex by women in pornography is complicit with another hetero-masculine desire: the one in which men want all women to want to fuck them, while the (often faceless) cock functions as a stand-in for the male viewer. That’s not how I’ve ever watched porn, but have at it.
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No it could easily be a woman shitting on a man, a man walking in stilletos on his back, a woman fucking a woman with a strap-on. Whatever. Usually the woman is in the position of submission though.
I don’t think that’s true at all. Anything interesting (porn is very much so) and that can be hidden very well can become a huge huge draw. Many boys in my high school admitted to two hours a day. Who knows how much they actually did but man, thats a lot.
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Yes, a lot of porn really is terrifying. In all honesty I would fully encourage masturbation. But the types of porn out there are scary and much more sinister than you can even imagine.
If you think bestiality, feces porn, rape porn, bloody dangerous porn and other things are uncommon than you are naive.
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It isn’t porn I found terrifying in this statement.
And a parent encouraging masturbation? How do you propose to do that?
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Probably with a detailed discussion about sex and how its normal blahblah to feel urges
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Re encouraging masturbation – I thought healthy individuals sort of spontaneously arrive at this possibility without encouragement, especially from their parents, and they need a lot of discouragement to actually stop…
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-One thing I was never called is “submissive.
So at how young age did you start watching it? 🙂 🙂
More seriously, Anonymous, where does “The typical images in porn are of a man dominating a woman.” come from? From personal experience or from reading about it? The violent porn does not start raining on you the moment you enter an average porn site. Yes, you can find it, relatively easily and for free, but choosing it over countless other possibilities, for example threesomes, or cheating housewives, or whatever else rocks ones boat, requires making a choice. And if someone makes a choice to watch violent porn and not the porn where women (sometimes unsuccessfully pretend to) enjoy sex means that someone was screwed by something in real life before starting on porn.
I find the reports on excessive use of porn desensitizing dopamine receptors in the brain credible though…
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Ah! I found some interesting studies, trying to sift through them to see which ones are credible (it’s not easy). I have a big physics preliminary and a spanish test tomorrow, so I most likely wont be responding for a while, but don’t let that lull you into thinking I’ve declared defeat 🙂
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Good luck on the Spanish test from me!
And I’m sure reader V will wish you the best of luck on your physics test. 🙂
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The danger lies in letting children watch HOURS and HOURS of ANYTHING. Kick them off the computer or TV after a previously determined duration, and make them do something in real life. If they complain that they can’t finish their homework, tell them to get more efficient and do the homework before starting the social networking.
I was physically active and had hobbies and friends and events in my childhood, and I am glad that my folks allowed 30 minutes per day, maximum, for TV viewing.
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“The danger lies in letting children watch HOURS and HOURS of ANYTHING. Kick them off the computer or TV after a previously determined duration, and make them do something in real life. ”
-Hear, hear. There is a catch to that, though. The parents themselves should lead the way and not watch the TV and sit at their computers all the time.
“I am glad that my folks allowed 30 minutes per day, maximum, for TV viewing.”
-I’m sure this must mean they didn’t watch more than 30 minutes of TV either, right?
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The hilarious part of all this is the fact that its the parents who actually own all the electrical social media stuff. Though I know Clarissa might not agree with this but maybe the parents should be parents and just turn the freaking stuff off or just not pay the electrical bill. 😉
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And then the entire family moves into a bunker for good. 🙂
Of course, if things are so dire that there is no contact whatsoever left between parents and children, families often move into a state of permanent civil warfare.
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I agree with you, bloggerclarissa. But you failed to mention mandatory random urinalysis drug-testing…
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Surely parents don’t do that?
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An eleven year old is not the same as someone older. So no, not all children and adolescents would be confused. And it’s better to discuss it with them, no matter how old they are–and no matter how confused they are (if anything, the benefits would be greater if they were confused). Not allowing them to see porn with no explanation or discussion won’t do anything but solidify a child’s belief that their parents can’t be trusted completely.
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“Not allowing them to see porn with no explanation or discussion won’t do anything but solidify a child’s belief that their parents can’t be trusted completely.”
-Exactly. And once the trust is gone, good luck rebuilding it.
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Several issues here. A very young person (10 or 11 say) exposed to porn is likely to not be all that interested. You have to separate out cases where someone is showing porn to a kid on the way to or in the process of molesting them, for example, from images that kid might see randomly, and most probably would turn away from in disgust or simple lack of interest. When I was 14 I liked pictures of breasts Playboy style, and didn’t know anything else really existed. I don’t believe there is one uniform or typical porn in which men are sticking to women. Rather, a variety of tastes that respond to what fantasies and fetishes actually exist. It is not porn doing harm to us, but our own fantasies that give rise to the porn. The demand drives the supply.
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‘A very young person (10 or 11 say) exposed to porn is likely to not be all that interested.”
– I agree completely. This is why parents who engage in policing to prevent accidental viewing of porn by their children are acting in their own unhealthy interests rather than out of any concern for the children.
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A somewhat related musing I had a few years ago:
http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/2011/02/iron-lung-of-patriarchy.html
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On Dopamine pathways: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/11/naomi-wolf-porn-and-the-misuse-of-dopamine/
“Porn is portrayed as a dangerous addictive drug that hooks naive users and leads them into sexual depravity and dysfunction. The trouble is, if this is true (which by the way, it isn’t, research suggests both males and females find porn generally enhances their sex lives, it does not effect emotional closeness and it is not linked to risky sexual behaviours) it would also be true for sex itself which relies on, unsurprisingly, a remarkably similar dopamine reward system.”
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Yes, Naomi Wolf has sadly become profoundly anti-feminist. 😦
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Agreed so much. My parents were always very hands-off in terms of what I was allowed to do, though they always expressed their opinion if they saw me reading/watching/playing/listening to something they didn’t approve of. However, they never tried to force me to stop.
I am now 20 years old and proud to be nonviolent, nonalcoholic, non-promiscuous, and certainly not addicted to drugs of any kind.
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How’s your prayer-life?
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I thought all evidence indicates that the act of rape has little, or nothing to do with sexuality…
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I think it’s always a lot more complex than the currently fashionable “rape is always and only about power.”
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