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

[LadyBiscuit]

That's in 5 mins :)

From the BBC website:

" "Shag bands" are thin coloured rubber bracelets, indicating how far the wearer will go sexually if the band is broken.

Purple for a kiss or yellow for a hug may seem comparatively harmless but some of the other colours such as black for full intercourse or blue for oral sex ring alarm bells.

A Wakefield MP recently campaigned to stop shops selling them after complaints from parents including a mother who innocently bought some for her 6-year old's party bag. Elsewhere schools have banned "shag bands" after finding pupils wearing them.

Part of playground culture, they're often worn innocently or in a show of bravado but there is a darker side where early sexual exploration strays into the easily accessible world of internet porn. Where children once passed notes, they now use their mobile phones to share explicit images and there's peer pressure through social networking sites.

Presenter Miranda Sawyer, herself a mother, investigates whether society and parents are aware of just what their children are getting up to and asks how concerned should we be about the sexualisation of children in media, advertising and fashion such as sale of padded bras for pre-pubescent girls or sexual references on T shirts for primary-aged kids.

Even though teenage pregnancy rates are falling, Britain still has the highest rate in Western Europe. As many as 1 in 4 teenagers have underage sex with anecdotal evidence of sexual experimentation including anal sex to avoid pregnancy. However sex education is improving in schools and access to contraception and STI screening has never been better.

But there are concerns that unlike the 'dirty mags' of their parent's day, teenagers now access porn which can be addictive, desensitising and threatening to healthy relationships in the future."

Scary but essential listening I think

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.

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.

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.

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, this argument of "it never did me any harm" is really dangerous. By definition, if your childhood did you harm, you don't realise it.

It took me until I was in my forties, before I understood the extent of damage my childhood had wreaked on me. For years I thought I'd emerged unscathed.

It is really really sad to think of the terrible sex lives that so many young people are going to have. Sexual liberation was supposed to liberate people to experience the Joy of Sex - hence that zeitgeist book - and the porn culture is slowly and surely taking all the joy out of it, leaving only performance as the main focus.

cross posted SSA

I wasn't crazy for sex when I was 13. I was starting to think about boys. Big difference.

I disagree with "all you could think about" being necessarily true as well. If everyone is talking about it, watching porn, teasing each other, etc, then maybe it is going to be hard to think about anything else - thank goodness that wasn't the case for me. I had lots of fun and did and thought about lots of different things when I was a teenager - lots of the things that formed my interests, skills and personality long term.

Some of the most important thinking of my life was done when I was a teenager. Perhaps I wouldn't have had time to do that if we had had wrap around soft porn, I mean, music videos on TV. Now I am older and have to work I miss the chance to really think about things the way I could when I was younger and had more time and freedom. What a waste if young people are just using their time to consume crap media. And who benefits? Hm?(meaningful look, chin stroke)

The way Sunny writes reminds me of Brave New World. Everyone is happy, no one challenges everything, sex is healthy recreation...

I think coming to Japan and not watching TV at all, and films hardly ever, has liberated me in so many ways. I literally cannot be marketed to because of the language barrier. I understand Japanese but not 100% so it's V easy to tune it all out.

Got a bit of a MN obsession though

Malificence wrote - "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."

A depressing prospect I see ahead is that if the consumers of porn do happen to somehow discover that they have poor sex lives, they will look more and more to other more extreme types of porn to try to improve that poor sex life. The reliance on porn will therefore grow.

Speaking of the Joy of Sex, back in the 1972 edition, people in the images had bushy pubic hair. In the more recent edition, they're shaved. I think that's a sad change.

Teitetua - that's a real shame.
I've got the lovers guide dvd box set and they are pretty much natural in that, I think that was done in the 90's though.

Must admit that the last time DH and I had a trawl through DS1's browsing history, DH said, 'He hasn't searched a single porn site. D'you think we should be worried?'

Had to go out Sakura, but I get ya (from a couple of hours ago)

Vezzie, that was a fantastic post at 11:50

I have said this so many times.

Discovering and exploring your sexuality as a teen should be an incremental process. Step by step. With people at a simiar-ish level of sexual development as yourself.

The pornification culture throws them straight into thinking they ought to be doing things that some of us didn't try until we had been married for 10 years! (I shall not elaborate ). And that if they are not doing those things, they are not "doing it right"

It is very sad that something so wonderful has been trashed, tbh

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

Well not really considering I have been in a monagomous relationship and married for 8 years. I am just saying I have no problem with people doing a range of different things and dont think people should get judged on it.

When you think about it if you are a girl who has sex young society says you were coerced, have low self esteem, did it to force a boy to like you, did it cause you crave love etc. Whereas if you are a boy you did it because its a normal biological urge and you wanted to. I think its ridiculous tbh.

'
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".'

Realistically the vast majority of males have played COD and GTA etc. Most people have seen all types of scary movies/gore etc. It is however an extremely small amount of people who would get involved in happy slapping or being really violent to another person..

Same goes for the porn thing. Most people watch porn and most are married in normal relationships and are loving to the opposite sex.

'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'

What kind of porn are you talking about? Not all porn is extreme and loads are female friendly as such. I stigmatise absolutely no sexual preferences at all. I dont mind if people use porn, strip clubs, have sex with 100s of people, only 1, stay celibate, are gay, have relationships with whoever and whenever. I am all for letting people do whatever they want to do.

I dont think society is ready for this attitude yet as most people try and stop people by shaming them in to thinking their way is right. I think whatever you chose to do is up to you as long as you arent coerced and are protected.

No sunny, quite often if you're a boy you do it because you're too bloody scared not to - you think that's what's expected of you because of the bravado of your friends and "everyone else has done it already" and if you're one of these boys who has been groomed by porn, because um... you've been groomed by porn to think that that's what you're supposed to do to be considered grown up, whether or not you're ready for sex.

What point are you trying to make sunny? That the pornification of our culture is good?

I think the point that sunny repeatedly makes is that the pornification of our culture is good for her and fuck the wider consequences

Well it would seem so, AF, it's not a very robust philosophical stance, is it?

not really, no

I think that people who are anti porn dont think about the fact that a lot is from people who want to be a part of it. There are many different types its not all extreme or just catered to men. There are also many, many women who like porn. You cant stop porn just because you think kids will watch it.

If your teen is watching porn you can minimise the chances of them seeing it. A poster earlier in this thread said that an 11 year old downloaded on to their mobile. Well why the fuck would a parent give their 11 year old their own mobile? Same as paddded bras and all the rest of it. Its the parents letting them wear or have access to things. Porn is for adults and I dont think there is anything wrong with it personally no.

With the underage sex thing I still think that girls are told that if they like sex or act on their urges they are not good people which is something I feel strongly against personally as I think some people are ready for sex young. That doesnt mean all young people must have sex but that the teens are educated and seen that what they are doing is normal and they arent some kind of deviant.

'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.'

Right so what about the greek (or was it roman) murals of them all having sex and doing each other up the ass etc. My grandma just came back from a cruise and and said about it when she came back from her saga holiday and she is 85. I dont think doing anal, homosexual sex or multiple partners has started since we got porn lol.