Sex Porn and Teenagers 8pm Monday 4/10 BBC Radio 4

I'm reading the Gail Dines book at the moment. It's so sad.
I am feeling very sorry for the boys who go around thinking they must be crap at sex and unattractive and doing it all wrong because women in normal social interactions do not throw themselves at them, their penises are smaller than the ones on-screen, the girls don't moan with pleasure at the slightest touch etc.
(which is nothing to how sorry I feel for the girls).

yes it's up to the parents to educate children against the messages that they are being told by society. But the problem is that the next generation of parents will the ones who played the shag band games. They will think it is all harmless fun and games and no big deal and will give children money to buy the latest colour shag band.

It was all so depressing wasn't it? I guess the only thing we can do as parents, is instil in our children a healthy scepticism about media messages, especially the Hollywood/ porn barons/ peer group moron type. And of course, self-worth and confidence.

he's exactly right Lancelottie. There is no escape from it, it is all pervasive, and that's exactly how the shapers of society want it.

I listened to some of this with my (deeply embarrassed) teenage son yesterday.

His take on it was, 'What if you DON'T want to go on about, y'know, IT all the time, and you don't want to do, errm, it yet either? Even the SRE lessons all go on about being normal to want to, and ask you things about, umm, how you feel doing it, and what happens when girls, err, mumble mumble, blush, and then you feel a real weirdo for NOT doing it...'

I agree Claig - crap like shag bands are the thin end of the wedge.

You have that when you are a child, porn on mibile phones when you are a teen, flash your tits for the lads in a night out, High Street Honeys and stripper fashion for when you are a bit older.

It has seeped in a pernicious way into the mainstream. I worry for my dd - I just hope that by talking about my feelings about porn, strip clubs etc that she is able to understand how frightful some of it all is. However it is all very easy for me, in my 30s, to stand up for what I believe in, less easy for her at the age of 14.

What is the objective behind the social conditioning to accept porn? Why are shag bands no big deal to some people?

It is the brutalisation of human beings, it is the desensitising of human beings and the objectification of human beings (mainly women, but in some cases also men). It is the removal of the standards of decency that have created a fair, stable society with respect for each other. It is exposure to desensitising and dehumanising porn that eventually leads to soldiers raping prisoners and forcing prisoners to perform sex acts on camera. We saw this a few years back, and female soldiers took part in the filming. They had been so conditioned, so brutalised, so desensitised that they passed the pictures around openly and thought it was funny. How had they descended to such a level of barbarity? They had been conditioned.

We see exactly the same thing with young people being endlessly conditioned by violent movies and video games, which also desensitise them, and lead to them thinking that videoing attacks on people is funny. They think it is so funny that they even call it "happy slapping".

sorry, just want to clarify my post to AF (because I'M confused about what I meant myself)

I think that in a our culture, everybody is socially conditioned, one way or another, to some extent.
Porn exacerbates that. IT's not about female sexuality.
IN an ideal world, nobody's sexual preferences would be stigmatized.
But when people's preferences appear to mirror porn, we can only assume that they've been influenced by it

Vezzie - (great name btw ) - that's a brilliant post.

Discovering sex as a teenager is (and should always be) a wonderful, safe and loving experience - it's being taken away from young people by the corruption of good sex by porn.

DH and me still talk about our early experiences as 16 year olds, some 28 years later.

If young people think that porn-style sex is good sex then I feel very sorry for them.
It's like putting a teenager behind the wheel of a car when they haven't learned to drive.

Agree Vezzie. Kids lose.

NO, I know you didn't think there should be.

But I then they're just as bad as some of the people on MN who stigmatize "Mundanes".

Both are reacting to social conditioning.

Opt-in v. Opt-out - good idea. The person who suggested it meant specifically the internet. What if you could apply it to society as a whole.

Maybe 13 year olds are all crazy for sex (they aren't - surely all kids develop at different rates) but that doesn't mean they have to have porn. That is a completely different thing. Rolling around with a contemporary who is at a similar stage of development to you is completely different from being exposed to a huge commercial adult juggernaut of pornography. It's sex abuse in an analogous way as if the 13 year old were rolling about with a 30 year old.

Discovering sex (in the broadest sense, including snogging etc) is potentially one of the loveliest experiences in life. You can spend ages on it and every single moment can be precious and personal and special (even if you aren't going to marry your partner). I am very sad to think of all this being coopted by porny sensibilities, not because I don't think young people should have sex, but because I think they should completely love it.

I didn't say there should be, but there is, certainly within the circles i move in

hmm.. there shouldn't be a stigma if people want to live differently, but at the same time it's funny how "sex" thesedays = male sexual expression i.e porn. It's becoming more and moreso.
Agree with Malificence, young girls and womens' sex lives must be V unsatisfying

sakura..some people on these boards would have us think so

I don't think that is the case in RL, I still think there is stigma attached to people who live in unconventional relationships

good point. I think that is in fact the intention behind these things. Shag bands are just another step along the path to normalising porn and denormalising loving sexual relationships.

I get the feeling that people who talk about strip-clubs, polyamorous, are the same ones who sneer at loving sex or monogamy.

It's as though PORN is the NORM and loving sex is a fetish, thesedays

I've never heard of these before and I'm 31, never happened in my school. Average working class place in East London, like some others have said, kiss chase was about as far as it went and that was late primary. Secondary was all girls, catholic school.

If young people mature thinking that porn sex is anything remotely like real sex then there will be a whole generation with absolutely crap sex lives.

I find it quite ironic that Sunny feels that she hasn't been affected by early sex and porn use, when it's obvious that her ideas/beliefs about sexual relationships are rather extreme.

But the condoms aren't 100% foolproof and the pill has some nasty side effects like thrombosis and you had to get it from the doctor (!!) and there was no way I was going to do that, when I could have an orgasm with my BF without any of those things.

I just think it all depends on how you view sex even now I dont think being in a couple means you have to be monogamous and dont see anything wrong with people in alternative setups like swingers, polyamourous etc. I also dont see anything wrong with having as many sexual partners as you like or having sex young.

I suppose we will all never agree as I dont see anything wrong with porn. I have worked on cams/lines myself and enjoyed it. I know strippers and an acquintance I used to go out clubbing with at 16 now works in America as a porn star through her own choice. Its not something I see as a big deal but again I realise why are all coming from completely different viewpoints so wont ever agree.

I never worried about pregnancy when I was young as I always used condoms and the pill together. I dont see the difference between having sex like that young or having sex casually when your older. There is no way I would of kept a child with anyone I had casual sex with even when I was older, like a lot of people wouldnt, that doesnt mean I was going to abstain from sex.

That's why I think it should be an opt out system rather than opt in. It will make it less likely for friends parents to have access to porn online because they would have to actively request for access.

Also phone internet tends to have protection in place already where you have to call up and request access to 18+ etc.