I'd also like readers to think about this twitter thread from a young woman who was a transman and who has now detransitioned. It's not a perspective we often hear.
thread
i’ve been ranting and raving against porn a lot more lately because every day it’s becoming more clear to me how much the normalization of extreme and grotesque online porn has played a role in the gender phenomenon in teenage boys and girls
long mfer incoming
i can only personally speak from the female perspective but one can’t help but notice that there’s also a sharp increase in teenage boys thinking they are girls, and that many of them have highly erotic reasoning for this identity,
a noticeable number of these MTF’s perceptions of what a “girl” is and what makes them a “girl” is often based in very outlandish fetishes and erotic ideas that have become much more prevalent with the mainstreaming of extreme pornography
in the recent “Survey of 100 Detransitioners” from Lisa Littman published in Archives of Sexual Behavior, there are 12 total heterosexual male participants. further along in the study, it shows that 12 males reported erotic motivations for their change in gender identity.
🤔 t.co/Ar6mxj1pKO
young people now are exposed to pornography often times before their puberty even begins. their first introductions to sexual sensation, fantasy, dynamics between men and women in mature contexts, and more developmental milestones are within the confines of extreme online porn
as many people who use porn report, there is kind of a “tolerance” that builds where people will seek out more and more stimulating or extreme porn than they started out with. this is likely compounded for young people who began consuming it in early developmental stages
it really is not far fetched to me that access to on demand extreme porn during crucial identity and sexuality formation stages could warp this sexuality and identity formation in adolescent boys. it would be far fetched to think it wouldn’t.
as for girls there’s another angle. in girls you will notice a similar phenomenon but reversed. many girls have the same extreme, hyper sexualized characature of what a “girl” or a “woman” is, and it serves as their reasoning for why they ARENT a “girl”
porn influences this both directly and indirectly. indirectly, the normalization and near universal regular consumption of on demand, online porn has desensitized the population at large to sexual content, resulting in hyper sexuality everywhere you look
on social media, it’s normal for women to farm attention and money by either presenting a highly sexualized image of themselves or actually selling pornography. everything from fashion to advertisements to selfies can be what previous generations would consider straight up porn.
in adolescent (minor) internet subcultures, it’s normal to talk about the porn you watch, what kinks you have, with people as young as 12 saying they have a daddy or a knife kink or that they’re “bottoms” or “tops”
in a lot of porn and in most of these porn inspired conversations, “submission” (and in many cases, what amounts to sexual torture in porn scenes) is a concept interchangeable with “woman”
this is completely normalized, and in so many cases actually seen as “EMPOWERING” for women, to the point where even if a young person felt uncomfortable with it all, they’re pressured and gaslit to not only repress those feelings but to participate in porn culture nonetheless
even for girls (and boys, probably) who DONT watch porn, who don’t participate in the porn culture (or if they do, just to fit in) the stuff is so pervasive that they will have seen (and felt horrified and violated by) pornographic imagery,
and been steeped in the hyper sexualized porn culture by their peers and social media.
the absolute PERCEPTION WARP this can cause in a young persons conception of sex, intimacy, men and women and their relationships, cannot be understated.
to girls who do not want to be sexual objects, who do not want to be sexually tortured, who do not want to become porn, but are gaslit into regurgitating that it’s all so cool and empowering and owning the patriarchy, the idea of being a “woman” under this conception is repulsive
many of us females grow up with and intuitive notion that when it comes to sex stuff, we’re inherently vulnerable. because we are. ideally a girl would explore sex in a safe way, with someone she trusts and who cares about her. but today, that developmental pathway is superseded
like boys, girls are often introduced to pornographic content before they even hit puberty. and all around them is a hyper sexualized porn fueled culture that is inescapable. the inherent anxieties of being a human female with vulnerability can be intolerable in these conditions
because it’s so pervasive, and because the world can now feel so unsympathetic to a young woman who is not hypersexual, some of these girls feel like there’s no way for them to be a girl. they are terrified of what the porn culture world is showing them a girl is supposed to be.
they don’t want to compete with porn for the attention of boys. they’re scared that all the boys are watching and loving this stuff that scares them so much. they feel inferior to other women who seem to be thriving in the porn culture, they feel something is wrong with them.
so they end up thinking that their short hair and white t shirt makes them not a girl
twitter.com/lacroicsz/status/1456999565299789836?t=Gx_y76QxVrYp2-0OqdWPZA&s=19