DS 14 and violent porn

[Hairsterical]

Real or set up kidnaps of teen girls getting gang raped, "slave" auctions, close ups of butthole plugs in use - these are among the images my young teen accessed recently, now unfortunately burned into both of our brains.

I believe he only recently started to be interested in sex/masturbating, and I was not surprised when I saw some very slightly racy content a few weeks earlier in his YouTube history. Now, still at the start of his whole sexual journey, he is being stimulated by harmful images that could set his baseline.

DS has been under the spell of influencers and appears to have developed a misogynistic view of the world that involves women rightfully belonging to men and violence against women being normal and correct. Through YouTube videos, Twitter memes and the like, he seems to have followed this thinking straight down the path to violent porn.

We are on a course of action to counter these views and frankly step the f up on our parenting, which was a bit lackadaisical on this and some other areas, primarily making sure our family values are instilled into him - such as treating each and every human being on this earth with respect. I think we assumed DS shared our values but of course teens are testing boundaries and looking for their own identities, and I think DS is currently attracted to extreme views.

I'm looking for thoughts and advice on how to deal with this. Every podcast or report on this topic seems to find that a vast amount of porn is violent --- so why on earth is this normalised and seemingly accepted - boys will be boys.

DS's school supposedly has been tackling these very issues around influencers and misogyny and consent. Yet my impression is that some boys are just learning not to express their real opinions because they know what they are "supposed" to think. Should I notify the school of my concerns and my son's recent behaviour perhaps?

We had some controls on one of his devices but another was free and clear to bring anything into our home. We have clamped down on that, but before this DS claimed to be the only one of his friends with any time limits or controls. When I looked on threads here, it seemed indeed many parents had zero controls on their 14 and 15 year olds. So do you know what your teen is looking at?

IMO interest in sex and images is 100% normal but society seems to be moving toward sex and violence toward women being part and parcel. I despair.

@Freddiefox for us it was CAHMS, accessed after discussing the issues with our GP. She agreed it was far too much for a young brain to deal with and could lead to warped ideas of healthy sexual relationships.

Educating young boys is so important, I have discussed consent, contraception, misogyny and porn with my DS. It is difficult to shield teenagers from everything but educating them on the most important topics is vital. He is nearing adult age now and I hope I have done everything I possibly can to ensure he’s a respectable man.

My son first heard of pornhub aged 12 on the school bus by the older kids. More needs to be done to regulate the internet and what children are being exposed to.

I think the "but we set a good example of feminism at home" does not really address something which is effectively like telling someone about drinking by giving them a pint of whisky to start with.

The issue is that we don't as mothers want to acknowledge that some of our boys are really misogynistic and that will have developed from our own homes and husbands, and then is made fully toxic by Andrew Tate etc. You hear posters all the time here, grown women, talk about sexual bullying and piggish behaviour from their own partners and a lot of effort to try and "work on it". I'm not saying this is the OP but I think it's wrong to say that this dynamic isn't relevant.

When we remember ourselves as young women. In fact I bet every poster on this thread remembers that a minority of teenage boys were absolutely horrible, loved to show their use of porn to girls as a way to humiliate or show their power. Not all boys, but a minority.

Misogyny is best addressed by men. Responsible men raising boys will do it. They have to, so the OP is going to have to get her husband to actually raise his boy, set some limits on the phone, and explain that being a man is not the same as being a sexual bully.

I know that “not all men” are this perverted, but it’s so very depressing that enough are, to make this mainstream.

It seems clear that that the majority of those who watch porn online are into violent porn.

Question is, what proportion of men watch online porn?

Every man I've ever been involved with, every man my friends have ever been involved with. IMO those who say they don't will be lying.

This. From conversations with young adult women, I know there is now an issue with young men getting erections when their girlfriends cry. Because porn has programmed them to become sexually aroused at women’s distress.

If you think ‘set up’ rape scenes are ok you are incredibly naive about the porn industry, of the effect of women on ‘acting’ these scenes ( those things are really happening to them), as well as having absorbed a phenomenally amount of misogyny that has normalized sexual torture and abuse of women that makes you think it’s ok for men to masturbate to this, as long as it’s not ‘real’. . It’s not. Would you think it’s ok for white people to enjoy the torture and degradation of black people if the people of color were actors? Would you think there would be no ill effects on the people of colour who acted in it?

I am terrified by all this rape porn and the impact on girls.

But i just wanted to raise that totally mainstream tv focuses on murder and rape all the time. Its not specifically to cause sexual arousal obviously. And the industry is different so its safe to watch. But as a society we consume horrible things for entertainment. Im not sure young people realise how different the production of porn is, if noone sits down to tell them.

Learning about sex from porn I'd like learning to drive a car from Grand Theft Auto. It's absolute crap.

However, the truth is that every woman who parents girls equally needs to have a very clear conversation with their girls about unacceptable behaviour from boys and that conversation needs to be pretty detailed in terms of what is not okay.

That is the world they are living in. Honestly, I hope my own daughters will understand that a man who is conditioned by this stuff is useless, absolutely useless as a husband or any kind of long term partner. Women are strongly conditioned to stay with really unsuitable men and it's a lot easier to say don't even go there than get out.

@Alwaystheweather
i never said it was okay and I apologise if my clumsy wording made it sound that way. I said that this sort of stuff on Pornhub is legal - not OK. it shouldn’t be legal - many of the women are trafficked or coerced into acting these scenes but the Government hasn’t made made the Pornhub website or watching violent porn illegal. I think it should be - I personally would be in favour of banning all violent porn.
it’s just that so many people were saying that the DS in the original post was acting illegally and would be picked up by the police etc. He wouldn’t be - this is mainstream porn now and it’s awful. Let me just repeat again to be clear - none of it is OK!

My youngest is a little older but the question of how to block porn is very difficult.

My teens has phones that were supposed to block adult content by the phone company but it was easy to get around. For example Google images of pornographic images still worked.

I suggest that you Google "how to get around X software" with X software being the parental controls. A lot of parents don't realise that the software they install to keep kids safe can be used to dupe parents. For example location can be faked.

I think that the controls I installed helped until they were y7 ish when they found out about ways to get around controls like using VPN software or private browsing. (If your son knows that you saw his search history then he will use private browsing next time. Keep this info to yourself if you can so you can check in future) Does he have Snapchat? Messages disappear which means that parents can't monitor what he being sent and received. There was a post earlier this week when a parent found that their child had a hidden messaging app and was sending and receiving videos.

So worrying how quickly these things escalate and how easy it is to find vile porn. I don't know what the answer is but deepfake and AI technology is going to make things worse imo. 😡

I think this is a really interesting point. So many of the tv programme that we watch have some type of violence and abuse towards women that’s its common place, that we watch
freely and entertain us.

Even if these programmes are acted out and the actors are professional and protected we do become immune to it.

How about the parents also stepping in.. ? Surely responsibility for this starts at home?

More thoughtful and helpful replies, thanks. Agree that was an excellent reply from Alwaystheweather. Also agree with Spendosend that this violent messaging is not only happening in the shadows.

Humans are instinctually repulsed by the sight of a dead body yet that repulsion has been worn down and turned into a twisted excitement by showing us 1000s of dead bodies and lingering ever more graphically on body parts and the extreme violence leading to the dead bodies. I think it's even moreso with the violent porn, it has just worn down normal reactions to find it repulsive.

I love psychological thrillers but have had to stop watching some that presented rape and murder of women as sexual and even sensual, and lingers on their dead, abused bodies. It is disgusting.

And it happened so fast -- what was X rated in my childhood is now light entertainment. Now teens can very easily watch Breaking Bad, Squid Games, take your pick - and that is all embedded into them as mainstream entertainment. I can take the hits on the chin to our parenting coming in here but I think this can happen to anyone really.

I am pretty sure my son was introduced to porn through memes and shorts on youtube, reddit, twitter. I'm often stumbling on only fans previews and other sexual content on twitter.

A deep fear -- is this free for all going on with sex and violence just holding up a mirror to our society and telling us that many or most men actually want to control and hurt women on some level, and now they have licence to express this?

This!

Of course, but it clearly not working, some parents can barely parent provide the bare minimum.
Teens are so influenced by their peers, you can have all the fillers and rules regarding phones but they will still be shown inappropriate content by others.

my ds was shown porn age 11 by another child on the way to school. Now he’s not allowed to walk with that child any more, and it all kicked off between me and the parents. But he’s still seen it, and he shouldn’t have.

I do thing that porn and the free easy access is having such a derogatory affect on our children that the government are very lacking in their response.

Many years ago when films and their content were censored, the guidelines were very very specific that arousal based on rape, depictions of it, and suggestions that women enjoyed violence in sex were banned.

This was always with us and men knew (because they made these rules) that there was a significant percentage of their own sex who enjoyed sexual violence.

This disappeared with an unregulated internet. Previous generations knew about the problems of violence and sexual sadism very well. Common access to it was considered harmful to women and children.

It normalizes sexual sadism. I'm going to have to tell my daughters that because other people can't have a decent conversation with their teenage boys about this stuff.

It is clear that the porn industry aren't interested any more is straight sex, and have upped the anti into violence and misogyny

You must live somewhere where CAMHS have nothing else to do.

It's absolutely not standard for CAMHS to see young people because they're accessing pornography

I also have two lovely ds's (18 & 16) but it's completely naive to say 'not all teen boys are like this'. Yes we know. The problem is that an alarming amount of them are. That is the issue we are all trying to deal with. As the mother of a dd 14, it is a massive concern that does not need belittling by 'offended' mum's of nice lads.

CAHMS are withering away. One branch employs a secretary to tell people that there are no professional staff available - sigh.

The normalisation of pornography, and using stupid phrases like 'property porn' and 'food porn', in pernicious and our children are paying the price. Our daughters mostly painfully.

I wonder @Hairsterical does he have any other outlet for expressing curiosity about sex? eg. anyone he can come to with questions, concerns, etc?

It’s normal for teenagers to be curious about sex and it’s incredibly unfortunate that porn seems to be where they turn to get answers (probably in most cases because they have nowhere else to get them without feeling shame or embarrassment).

Like others have said you don’t have to wander far on mainstream porn sites to find incredibly extreme content. I would doubt he went looking for it intentionally (at least not in the first instance).

I agree with a lot of the points on here but I also feel like we need to vote with our feet and not entertain the favour of men that clearly exhibit dodgy traits.

For me it feels like a cop out to just say that women are conditioned to put up with this shit. Once you've recognised this fact you're acting on your own free will if you choose to continue in spite of it.

No doubt somebody will say I'm victim blaming but the logical extension of that is that we're also victim blaming men if we believe that male violence is down to social conditioning and that people can't break free from their conditioning. It's not logical to excuse the actions of women as dictated by social conditioning but then expect men not to be subject to the same predicament.

We talk about toxic masculinity but then as a sex we continue to prioritise men that display these characteristics as being eligible partners. Even if posters deny it there's no doubt that men who are successful in attaining power/money/status/material wealth will usually be successful in attracting women. Usually these men are highly competitive and dominant with a perspective of putting themselves first. Classic toxic masculinity.

The acid test of whether people want to actually address it or just use it as a vehicle for self pity is usually evident in how they respond. I feel like there are many who are happier to moan than actually try and resolve it and in many cases they're just unhappy people who are using this as the catalyst to express if - it would be something else if they didn't choose to focus on this.